Having posted this morning's offering, it was time to drive Hattie Gandhi back to her favourite city for a blissful reunion with her university and her friends. She was like a champagne cork popping with joy and excitement as we followed the road through the Forest of Dean and south from Monmouth, so I really couldn't indulge in soggy-mother behaviour - a great relief all round, I'm sure. Though it has been blissful to have her company for the past 3 weeks, it's even better to know she is so happily settled at Cardiff, and her pleasure in life there lights up the rest of us too.
I guess I knew I might need a morale boost on my return home (so an "amnesty" for lurkers could have spelled triumph or disaster). In the event, it was lovely to find such positive responses, - so I now feel all warm and smiley. Thank you!

I might have gone in for alot of slightly silly "I can't imagine why you bother" noises in the light of those friendly comments, were it not for to-day's Henri Nouwen offering.

One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, "If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me," we choose the road toward darkness. Often we are made to believe that self-deprecation is a virtue, called humility. But humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters, and the determination always to live our lives according to this truth.

Nouwen's writing so often says exactly what I feel, (or more often don't feel, but do need to be told), and another friend said something that struck a similar note very recently, so perhaps I'd better try to listen. Self-belief is not the same as arrogance, and clearly God believes I'm worth it...