Think of a child asleep in her mother's arms; the abandon with which she gives herself to sleep can only be because she has complete trust in the arms that hold her. She is not lying asleep on that heart because she is worn out with anxiety. She is asleep there because it is a delight to her to be asleep there.
Caryll Houselander
The expensive people are those who, because they are not simple, make complicated demands--people to whom we cannot respond spontaneously and simply, without anxiety. They need not be abnormal to exact these complicated responses; it is enough that they should be untruthful or touchy or hypersensitive or that they have an exaggerated idea of their own importance or that they have a pose--one which may have become second nature but is not what they really are.
With all such people we are bound to experience a little hitch in our response. In time, our relationship with them becomes unreal.
If we have to consider every word or act in their company, in case it hurts their feelings or offends their dignity, or to act up to them in order to support their pose, we become strained by their society. They are costing us dearly in psychological energy.
The individual who is simple, who accepts themselves as they are, makes only a minimum demand on others in their relations with them. Their simplicity not only endows their own personality with unique beauty; it is also an act of love. This is an example of the truth that whatever sanctifies our own soul does, at the same time, beneft everyone who comes into our life.
We all know persons who are exaggeratedly house-proud, who concentrate on the neatness, cleanliness, beauty of their house, to the exclusion of its comfort. Their house is not a home, nothing must ever be left about, out of place. To come in with muddy shoes is a crime; it is a crime to disarrange the cushions. In such a house one can neither work nor rest; one is never at home, because it is not a home.
There are many people who are 'soul-proud' in the same way. They spend their whole time cleaning up their soul, turning out the rubbish, dusting and polishing. Like the house-proud person, they become nervous, tired. There is nothing left in them to give, for they have wasted themselves on the silver, the curtains, the ornaments.
Christ wants to be at home in your soul. He will not go away and leave you if the house is chilly and uncomfortable; he loves you too much to leave you, but how often, how tragically often, he must say nowadays: 'The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.'
Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another.
All this may seem daring, but it is true; it is the meaning of the Incarnation.
This excerpt is offered in a book called A Child in Winter, writings by Caryll Houselander collected by Thomas Hoffman.
It is very easy to believe in the indwelling presence of Christ in the souls of imaginary people, to believe in it in people whom we do not know. But it is very difficult to believe in it in the case of our own relations and our intimate friends.
Somehow it is difficult to believe that the Holy Spirit abides in people who are not picturesque. When we think of Christ in the workman, we think of him in a special kind of workman.... We do not think of him in the man who delivers the milk or calls to mend the pipes.
The law of growth is rest. We must be content in winter to wait patiently through the long bleak season in which we experience nothing whatever of the sweetness or realization of the Divine Presence, believing the truth, that these seasons which seem to be the most empty are the most pregnant with life.
It is in them that the Christ-life is growing in us, laying hold of our soil with strong roots that thrust deeper and deeper, drawing down the blessed rain of mercy and the sun of Eternal Love through our darkness and heaviness and hardness, to irrigate and warm these roots.
The soil must not be disturbed. Above all we must not disturb it ourselves by our own egoism. We must not turn it over and dig it up by anxieties and scruples. We must not shift it by fretting for a sense of personal perfection: to feel sinless that we may feel free from the pain of guilt and anxiety; to feel pure for the sake of vanity; to be reassured of the hidden presence of Christ in us by experiencing sensible consolation.
The seed must rest in the earth. We must allow the Christ-life to grow in us in rest. Our whole being must fold upon Christ's rest in us, as the earth folds upon the seed.
How small and gentle his coming was. He came as an infant. The night in which he came was noisy and crowded; it is unlikely that, in the traffic and travelers to Bethlehem, the tiny wail of the newly born could be heard. God approaches gently, often secretly, always in love, never through violence and fear. He comes to us, as God has told us, in those whom we know in our own lives. Very often we do not recognize God.
Christ wants to be at home in your soul. He will not go away and leave you if the house is chilly and uncomfortable; he loves you too much to leave you, but how often, how tragically often, he must say nowadays: 'The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.'
Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another. All this may seem daring, but it is true; it is the meaning of the Incarnation.
In Mary the Word of God chose to be silent for the season measured by God. She, too, was silent; in her the light of the world shone in darkness. Today, in many souls, Christ asks that he may grow secretly, that he may be the light shining in the darkness. In the seasons of our Advent - waking, working, eating, sleeping, being - each breath is a breathing of Christ into the world.