5:00 a.m.

“We want to be men and women who love and worship God, but we also want to protect a little corner of our inner lives for ourselves….When we begin to think about living and thinking always in God’s loving presence we experience the immediate temptation to select carefully the thoughts that we bring into our conversations with God and the ones we reserve for our own private time… .This withholding from God of a large part of our thoughts leads us onto a road that we probably would never consciously take. It is the road to idolatry. Idolatry means the worship of false images, and that is precisely what happens when we keep our fantasies, worries and joys to ourselves and do not present them to the Lord of our hearts. By refusing to share these thoughts, we limit our own healing, erecting little altars to the mental images we are withholding from the divine conversation….”

Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome, 1979