It matters greatly, my dear friend, and dear friends listening to Divine Passages. What matters is the pressing issue that concerns you right now. If this program could address that, it would be a success. But there is no such program. At least, ours is not that kind of program.

It would need to speak to each person about the particular issue they face at that particular moment. Divine Passages cannot do that. Here we are together again, with Vasilis Hatzinikolaou, keeping one another company and trying to talk about things in general. You often tell me that these things concern you personally. In many of the messages you send, for which I thank you very much, you say, ‘You speak as though I were right in front of you, as though you were speaking to me.’ But it is those words ‘as though’ that make all the difference. I speak as though you were in front of me, but you are not. I say things that touch you too. Yet a real relationship between people, between husband and wife,

between children and their friends, their parents and their brothers and sisters, concerns what they are living through at each moment and the problem troubling them right now. You too have a sorrow on your heart today. The only one who can truly meet you in that sorrow, as it is today, is God.

And there are the people beside you who try, as God does, to understand what you are feeling right now. Today I might speak to you about love, humility, patient endurance, or what to do when people slander and insult us. You may say, ‘That sounds lovely, but I need someone to speak to me personally, someone to listen to me.’ Do not expect a program to do that. You will do it with the people who live under the same roof as you, who work with you, walk with you, and sleep beside you. That is the wonderful thing. That is what God does: He meets us where we are. What is troubling you today? One person is getting married tomorrow; another is getting divorced. What presses on one of them is...

the opposite of what presses on the other. At least when we are with loved ones, at home, among friends, or even at a parish gathering, it would be good to move beyond discussion in the abstract and speak about the problem troubling us then and there. We think of God as distant and out of reach, as someone blessed in another world who watches us. Let us bring Him into our problems, let Him work within them, renew them, change them, transform them. That is what we long for

which we are called to reach and which holds great beauty. You can experience it, for example, in confession when it is done well, or in a good conversation with people you love: you bring out your sorrows and your pain, share them, and place them in someone’s care. Do you know what it means to place what troubles you in someone else’s care? Someone once told me something I agree with deeply—and I agree with you, listening to me now: ‘I am tired of abstract, merely spiritual conversations, abstract conversations. I want to be able to say what burns inside me, what is troubling me, and then bring what you teach me into my life. But first, let me express my own sorrow and pain.’ Thank you.

Suppose you tell me that grief is overcome through faith in God, and that for someone who believes in God, in Christ’s Resurrection, and in eternal life, everything can be endured: the human soul lives on, all will be well, there is no problem, and so on. Is that what you say? Very well. But may I say something too? I do not feel well at all.

‘You know, we believe in God, and we have been giving you a beautiful sermon all this time. May I tell you what I believe and what I feel? Or do you want me to say what you want to hear?’ This is what I mean today by the pressing issue. You need somewhere you can at least place what weighs most heavily on your life and speak it aloud. I am not saying you are right. I will not judge whether what you say is right or wrong. But at least...

let someone listen to you. I might preach a lovely sermon on eternal life while a child who has lost his father sits before me. I think I have convinced him: ‘There we are, my child. Your father lives on. There is eternal life. We will hold the memorial services in the Church, and everything is settled. Come, smile now. I want to see living, warm faith blossom on your face.’ But the child has things inside him that he wants to say. He has anger, a huge unanswered question, and pain. He wants to hit something, to kick, to scream.

Sometimes I preach in such a way that, as young people say, I am in a world of my own, broadcasting away. I leave no room for the child to say, ‘You know, my friend, that all sounds lovely. Well done, you speak so sweetly. But I am angry with God, and I want to say so. That is what is troubling me right now.’

‘He has disappointed me. I feel betrayed by Him. I feel that He has not been good to me, that He has not answered me. I asked Him for something. I lit a candle, prayed, fasted, struggled, made vows to Him, and my father died. Now I am furious. I do not want to go back to Church for a while, and I do not know how long that will last.’

This is the great thing: being able to speak, to bring out the strange, dark, confused, troubled parts of your soul. That is what the disciples of the Lord did before Christ. They told Him what they truly felt: their jealousy, their envy, their desire for revenge. ‘Lord, which of us will be first in the Kingdom? I want to stand out and be seen.’ ‘Shall we call down fire on this town that did not welcome You and punish them?’ They showed Christ their true selves, their real wounds. Christ did not gather around Him people who were ashamed to open their souls. He did not create a ready-made, rigid, oppressive morality that gives rise to this word

so many people speak of today: ‘I feel stifled and oppressed. I want to let it out. I want to say that I do not like this.’ Instead, someone says, ‘My child, you will marry this man. God wants it. He is a very good match. You will be married, everything will be fine. Off you go, and you will be happy. You will see.’

But inside, that person wants to tell you, ‘I do not want to. I do not agree.’ Can someone beside you say that? Can you share real parts of yourself, even the dark places in your soul? Can you truly say to someone, ‘You know, lately I have felt jealous about this. When you spoke to me that way, and when others admired you, I was jealous. Forgive me. I want to tell the truth.’

Could you say something like that to your spouse, your children, or a friend, knowing you will not be met with a slipper, a punishment, or a raised hand and accusing finger saying, ‘How dare you?’ ‘It was not something I chose to feel; it just came out. Yes, I felt anger and dislike. What you said makes me feel I do not want to see you for a while. I feel very uncomfortable around you. I want to share that with you. Forgive me. This is how I feel. This is the state of my soul. I do not take pleasure in it, but before I change it, I want to admit it.’

Have you noticed that you and I, all of us, so often put on a false front and rarely let others see us as we really are? ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine,’ when you are in a terrible state. You cannot say it; you have not learned how to communicate. We have not learned. Our society, the pace of life, our hypocrisy, and the image we try to keep up have made it hard for us to be truthful. You do not dare to be yourself, because you fear that if your real self is seen, you will be condemned and punished. Perhaps you have experienced that before. So you say, ‘Never mind. I will smile, though I am crying inside. I will say yes, though inside I want to say a resounding no.’

Years ago, a young person said, ‘Whenever I went to confession, I felt such awe that I would come out saying yes to everything I was told: “My child, throw away those CDs with that kind of music. Stop spending time with those friends.” I felt such awe. But that awe kept me from saying what I felt after I left confession.’ What was that? Before long, the awe gave way to another reality, where that sense of awe met ordinary life.

The point is not simply to learn to confess by reciting, ‘I did this, I did this, I did this.’ Very well, you have said it. That is a formal confession. The point is to learn to lay open your soul and explain why you act as you do. Spiritual fathers, saintly people, and our Fathers all say that the first condition for healing a situation is to identify it: to see what is really troubling you, where the root of the problem lies, why you do what you do, what you are seeking beneath it, and what hurt you. Do you see? Suppose you tell your wife that the food is wrong, that she served it late, that she has not done this or that for you today. But the real cause is something else, and I do not know whether you have admitted it even to yourself. Perhaps what you need to say is, ‘Do you know what?’

‘It has been a long time since you said a kind word to me, and I miss it. So I lash out at you over anything. The other day it was the socks I could not find where they belonged. Then it was a towel whose color changed in the wash. Today it is the food; tomorrow it will be the noise your heels make. I will find fault with everything, because there is something else I want to say. I have not learned how to share the thing that really weighs on me with you. I miss your appreciation, your warmth, and the sense that I matter to you, which you once gave me and have not given me for some time.’ Vasilis, you are very good, and I want to show you the appreciation you deserve. Please do not hold anything I have said against me! We should remember these things too. I thank Vasilis Hatzinikolaou, and I do not mean that as a formality. I want to share with him what I feel for him at this very moment: I thank him, and I am grateful to

him. I mean it. I am grateful for the beautiful music he gives us, for his CDs, old and new: ‘Blues in the Plagal Mode,’ ‘The Blues of My Soul,’ and other Byzantine chants performed in English for those who live abroad. You have those too, do you not? I am not sure.

And so, Vasilis, thank you for your love and for the beautiful music you're playing for us today.

So let us speak about what is pressing on us right now. What is troubling me? I was struck by something a friend at a monastery on the Holy Mountain once told me. He said, “I was on edge and I took it out on someone. I didn't tell him that was why; I'm telling you. I asked him, ‘Why don't you do this?’ and he said, ‘I'm tired of it.’ I got angry and spoke sharply to him, as though I were in the right. But the real problem was the anger I was carrying from other things, and I was taking it out on him.” How hard it is to say such things, to open up, to overcome our fear, and to feel the safety of open arms before us. Can you offer those open arms? Can I? We all say, “Other people have never embraced me.” That's what we say.

But let us turn the question around. Have you offered that embrace to anyone else? Of course it is wrong when others fail to embrace you in their own way. If someone has insulted you, that is wrong. We don't excuse it. But we cannot go to your friends now and ask, “Why did you speak to your friend that way?” or “Why didn't you listen to him?” That is for them to face. If they reflect on it, they will understand. The question is whether you make it possible for others to open up. So often our conversations are stiff and empty. Even our spiritual conversations can be far removed from what is happening in our lives. What we talk about is not what really concerns us. Something else is burning inside us. Thank you.

She wanted to learn about the Second Coming: when these events would happen, when one thing or another would take place, when apocalyptic events and the resurrection of the dead would occur, and all the rest. She kept asking, asking, asking. She spoke to me a great deal, and... Wherever she went, she would come to speak to me and ask me questions. I could tell that something else was troubling her beneath all this. More than anything, she wanted someone to care for her and love her. She wanted to feel that she mattered to me, that I paid attention to her and did not look down on her. I do not know whether she was as concerned at that moment with the Second Coming as she was with my presence in her life: whether I respected her, loved her, gave her time, spoke with her, and truly connected with her soul. And in the end...

She saw that I was not giving much attention to these questions about the Last Things. I couldn't answer her. Forgive me, but I couldn't give her dates or signs; she knew all those things. When she saw that I wasn't taking up those questions, she finally told me the truth. “Why don't you pay attention to me?” she asked. I said, “I will. I will give you my attention, but let us talk about what you really want to tell me.”

“You are saying it this way now, and understandably so, because I, as a priest, have taught you to speak to me this way. Since I am a priest, you feel you must speak to me in a priestly way. You wonder, ‘What do priests want to hear if I want them to care about me? What should I tell a priest to gain his love, his interest, his concern?’ You will tell him something spiritual. You won't tell him the price of car tires or gasoline. You might say, ‘Father, I once went on a pilgrimage to such and such a place.’ ‘Oh, really, madam? Tell me about it. How wonderful!’ You see? You think, ‘There it is. I mentioned pilgrimages, and now he is paying attention to me.’ But that is not what matters most to me. What I really want is to be able to say, ‘Father, I feel so alone in this world. Father, I have been hurt so deeply by people. I feel abandoned by my husband, who left me...’”

“...ages ago, you know, and left me alone with our four children.” Or it may be something entirely different. That other thing is what weighs on us most, and we do not share it.

Our basic human needs are few. We all want love: to feel loved and safe, to feel that we are not threatened by danger or by someone who might harm us, wound us in soul and body, or steal our home and even our heart. We want safety, to feel well, and freedom. We all seek freedom, not to feel stifled or oppressed. That is why women who can truly open their hearts say things like this: “I feel terribly oppressed in the home where I live. My husband puts so much pressure on me. I feel I am never myself.”

“I don't dare tell him how I feel. He frightens me, and I cannot breathe or speak of what truly hurts me and what my heart truly desires.” These are the things we need, and pleasure too: we all want a good life that brings us joy. As I speak to you now, no one has a hand around my throat. My leg, my arm, and my stomach do not hurt. No one is threatening to harm me. I enjoy doing this. We all want life to be pleasant. These, then, are our basic needs, and all our problems are rooted somewhere in them. Think about whatever is troubling you right now. Try this as you listen to me: what troubles you means that someone has hurt you in one of the ways I have mentioned. That is, what troubles you either makes you afraid...

...that something will happen. Or it may leave you feeling trapped, or feeling that you have no worth: that someone insults you, belittles you, and never says, “You matter to me. You are precious to me. I take you seriously, and what you think matters to me.” Or perhaps you are missing affection, love, and tenderness. Think of a woman, a man, or a child longing for a mother's embrace and kiss, yet never having known the pleasure and joy of that kiss. That is a deep hurt, and it will come out in ways that seem unrelated. The child will get angry over schoolwork, chew on a pencil, or punch a classmate. Then everyone will ask why your child is so badly behaved.

Yet the child is a good child. What is missing is warmth and tenderness shown in a real way, and that is why the child lashes out. The child has not yet understood the hurt. How could a little child understand it? How could a child put into words what is really going on inside? In a way the child knows. The child cannot understand it consciously, but feels that something is missing.

Something is missing. We all long for that look, the look that fills our souls with a deep sense of safety. We seek that look from God, from the people of God, and from one another. Why do you go to the Church you attend? Because people there love you. If you go somewhere and no one pays attention to you, you may not want to go back. Why would you? You feel you do not matter there.

But suppose you share an opinion somewhere and everyone looks at you and says, “That was very well said.” You think, “I'll come back! When do you meet again?” Why? Because there I found recognition. My opinion matters; I am a person in my own right. And let my husband shout if he likes. Do you see? Why do some women readily go to the Church even when their husbands say, “Stay here,” and they argue but go anyway? Sometimes they receive more appreciation at Church than they do from their husbands. At Church, the sexton, the helpers, the chanters, the priest, and the parishioners greet them as soon as they arrive. A woman thinks, “Here I have room to use my gifts. People recognize my worth.” At home I served him a meal, and he barely noticed.

I cooked for the parish once, and everyone said, “My goodness, we were licking our fingers! That chicken and rice, that baked pasta, that pilaf you made were wonderful!” So she says, “I'll cook for the parish meal every Sunday now.” Her husband may shout, but she thinks, “At home I get no affection. I cook there and never hear a thank you. I get no caress, no smile. But here I do.” These are the things we all seek. They are at the heart of a real relationship. Beyond the meal your loved one serves you, see the care and time given to you. Appreciate it, and respond with something in return. That does not mean you must cook too.

She cooks, and you say thank you. She cooks, and you tell her, “I love you.” She will put that love into the meal, and she will say the words aloud to you as well.

And when something goes wrong, let us talk about it. We are human beings. We will argue fiercely, and then we will love each other again. Sometimes we speak very sharply to the people we love. We may quarrel bitterly with someone we love deep down. Do you believe that, Vasilis? I have lived it. You love someone, and yet after a time something happens. Think of Cain and Abel: one brother kills the other, though he is his brother, his own family. Even with a relative or a close friend of many years, you may have a terrible quarrel. Our souls carry dark, untamed places, and sometimes we wound the very people we love, even crucify them, while still loving them.

Can we really say that the human soul does not love God? Does a person hate God? Deep down, we seek Him. He is the shelter where we can rest. Thank you. Yet we approach Him in strange ways. That is why Christ does not take offense at us. He loves us with patient endurance that has no end and forgives us again and again. He says, “I know you do not...” As the prayers say, “Do not hold these things against us, Lord. Do not take everything we do at face value.” Deep down, we do not want to be Your enemies. We want to love You. Sometimes, when you quarrel with someone, you are also testing that love. Somewhere beneath the surface you are asking, “Will this person still love me?”

“Will they still love me tomorrow, after what we said today?” Sometimes you quarrel, the other person leaves, and your thoughts run wild: “Well, that's it. After what we said today, they've surely grown cold toward me. They won't speak to me for two or three weeks. We will never be close again.” Then you see that the person comes back. A friend once told me, “The person closest to me is someone I can argue with so loudly over dinner that the whole restaurant hears us.” I once said to him, “Is it right for us to keep arguing like this? What will the staff think? They know we're Christians and people of the Church.” The other man answered wisely, “That's all right. The staff will see that Christians too have anger and a readiness to forgive, bad tempers and love. They may see us arguing today, but they will also see that, despite the argument...”

“...we are still sitting at the same table.” That is a great achievement. I am not telling you that you must never argue with your wife. You may argue fiercely, but come back together. Hold each other, fall asleep in each other's arms, eat at the same table, and stay in the same home. Can you do that? That is a tremendous achievement in a human relationship. Success does not mean saying, “Everything runs perfectly in this house. No one raises a voice. We never argue or have problems.” That is not always a sign of health. Let me ask you this: human beings have impulses, aggression, irritability, a desire for revenge, and all sorts of things within them. We all do. Don't you? How could none of these things ever surface in your home? If they are absent, you would be a rare kind of person.

Or perhaps those feelings are there, but covered up, pushed down, and stifled. Stifling something does not heal it. Something may be festering underneath, like dirt hidden under a carpet where mold begins to grow. You may ask, “Does that mean we should freely act on everything we feel?” There are times when you need to say what you feel, and to say, “Where would I go? This is my home.” You will speak, I will speak, and despite the quarrel we will come back to loving each other. You will value the fact that I spoke honestly to you, and I will value your honesty. That is why I love you. And as time passes, you will come to see it more clearly, and you will say...

In the end, I didn't marry an angel, a saint, or someone who never makes mistakes. But I still love you. And the other person will say the same about you, because you aren't an angel, infallible, or perfect either. I once asked a little girl, “Who runs things at home?” She fell silent and looked at me. “Come on, who's in charge, Daddy or Mommy?” She looked at me without answering. “Well, will you tell me? Who's in charge?” Again she looked at me, embarrassed. “Don't you know what ‘runs things’ means?” Of course she did. “Don't you know what ‘in charge’ means?” Of course she did. Still, she just looked at me and said nothing. What was I to do, get angry? What if the poor child couldn't speak?

Then off she ran to the edge of the meadow, turned suddenly, stuck her tongue out at me, and called back, laughing.

Let me tell you something I once heard at a table with some friends. One of them asked another, “How long have you known Father?” He said, “We've known him for many years. At first I thought he was perfect and never made a mistake. Now I've come to see that he's human too.” He was talking about me. “I've seen him in ordinary human moments,” he went on, “in moments of weakness, irritation, and anger.” Yes, all of that was about me, and he'd seen more besides. I thought, “O Most Holy Theotokos, what will he say next? He's going to embarrass me by telling everyone what he's seen of my weaknesses.” But then he said to the others, “That's why I've come to love him more in recent years. I've seen that he's someone I can be myself with.” At that, I took a deep breath and said to myself...

“Thank goodness.” I was relieved he hadn't gone on to say, “Since he's human like everyone else, with moments of weakness, anger, and irritation, I want to leave and never speak to him again.” I had expected him to say just that. I've found, as I think you have, that the people I love and feel close to aren't people who never make mistakes. They're people I can share my mistakes and my real self with. I don't feel like a hypocrite around them. I don't have to think, “All right, what time is it? Let's put on a little show for the two hours we're together, then go home and talk about what really troubles us: our frustration, our hardships, our exhaustion, how fed up we feel, and everything else.” With him, I don't have to put on a show.

And he doesn't have to put on a show with me. People like that make life beautiful. What I find hard, and I admit I struggle with this myself, is when someone won't acknowledge what's going on inside them. It doesn't trouble me if someone has made mistakes, or tells me in a friendship or any human relationship, “This is how I think. This is how I feel. I've done this; I want that; I have these spiteful thoughts.” That's human. What troubles me is when they won't admit it, when they pretend to be someone else, tell lies, and present a polished front. That saddens me. You might say...

“Shouldn't you love that person too?” Of course I love them, but I can't make them a friend or someone close in my circle. You try to help people like that open up a little. You say, “Look, there's nothing terrible about having eaten chicken on a Friday during a fast. It's human. All right, you didn't keep the fast.” They answer, “No, no, never. I only mentioned it as a thought, asked it as a question. It's never happened to me.” Well, I find that hard. So when you show someone that you've relaxed, admit it yourself: you too have sometimes failed to keep the fast, sometimes felt envy, and, like everyone else, had thoughts of gluttony, jealousy, desire, or malice. Haven't you thought such things too? When you give the other person that opportunity and they don't respond, you reach a point where you can't bear it. We can't be friends as well.

Keep those things to yourself if you wish, but I pray you build your life on honesty. I pray that you will be true to yourself. We've done a great deal of harm by teaching people to be false in front of us. Then we become false ourselves, and people can't even come to confession. Yet confession reaches beyond the Church's service: our whole life is a kind of confession.

What are we doing all the time? We are speaking aloud what we carry within us. That's what the word confession means: bringing it out into the open. Don't you do that at home? You tell your husband what you're carrying inside, and he tells you what he's carrying. I don't mean the Mystery of Confession, in which the priest reads the prayer of absolution. I mean living our whole life by speaking truthfully about what's in our hearts.

Christ tells us that evil thoughts, malice, murders, envy, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, and lies come out of the human heart. Don't all these things come from the heart? They can come out into the open too. You can bring them out, acknowledge them, and speak about yourself.

Holy Scripture. And I ask him, “How does all this touch you personally?” “Well, you know, my daughter has gone to Thessaloniki to get married, and we have this house...” You hear talk about all the things around a person: houses, weddings, daughters. But the person doesn't speak about himself. “How do you feel about all this?” “Well...” So I asked again, “How does all this affect you?”

“I feel insecure,” he said. “I feel lonely. My child has... I'm a little afraid for her future. Being there for her gives my life a sense of worth too. She may marry and move away, and then what will I do with my life?” “Good,” I said. “Go on. That's where we need to look. Tell me about that.” You may tell me you're building a house, how much the rent is, how much the loan is, and what the plot of land costs. But those figures aren't the heart of your trouble. How did we begin this program? I said I wished I could know what was really weighing on you. You told me just that in five lines of an email, and it moved me deeply because you went straight to what mattered: “This is what troubles me in my life. This is what I see in myself...”

Bring that real part of yourself into the open, the thing that's weighing on you. Do you see?

We will carry it with us into eternity. There, the mask will fall away, the outer covering will fall away, and so will the body that now lets us hide. A smile can conceal so much; another person cannot clearly see what's behind it. But when our personalities and the quality of our souls are laid bare, we will no longer be able to hide. That is why Christ said, “What good is it to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?” Think of the damage done to a soul that becomes false and hypocritical, divided, forever hiding and on the run. Our soul is like a fugitive. It keeps fleeing, and we can hardly catch it, touch it, and say, “Come, speak. Let me see what you're carrying.”

When Christ spoke of losing your soul, He didn't mean some vague, invisible spiritual topic for discussion. Aren't all these things part of our soul: our longing for love, the pain of loneliness, the need to share, the desire for a gentle touch, an embrace, affection, a kind word, a kiss, a loving look? Isn't that our soul? Doesn't our soul show itself through these things? What else would it be? Some vague subject for a conversation that concerns only a few people?

Talk about those other things too; they're good. But... well, our time has gone by today. I pray that your day goes well.

Let me give you an example. You'll go home and start telling someone this and that: “The program said such and such today.” But what I'm saying now is something else: don't say what the program said; look within yourself to see why you want to say it. Why do you want to say it? Do you want to feel that you, too, have something to offer in that home?

Perhaps you feel you're offering spiritual nourishment. Look within yourself and see why you're doing it. What is the real thing weighing on you? You may say, “The program said this today. You should hear it so you can put yourselves right.” But why do you say it? That's the question. What are you hoping to gain? Do you want your words to carry weight in that home, and to be valued as a person? Do you want to lecture them? Why?

That's a good question to ask yourself: why do you lecture other people? Do you want a little control over them? Does it feel good to hold the teacher's pointer and say, “Now, everyone...

“Pay attention. I'll tell you what to do”? Do you enjoy lecturing people? Do you want to direct them or manipulate them? Do you perhaps like putting pressure on them? Does it make you feel good when others feel constrained? Wherever we look among these questions, if we keep asking about the real parts of ourselves, we come to this: we don't feel loved, and that affects the love we give. We haven't received love, so we struggle to love others well. What we give then becomes a wounded form of love. It hurts others and it hurts us, and a vicious circle begins. Understanding this is the first step today.

Understanding. Understand all these things and admit them. Reach in and touch them. Don’t be afraid. We’ll bleed a little and feel some pain, but what can we do? This is surgery. As the saying goes, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You can’t reach into your heart without finding blood there. The question is how that heart will be touched. Let us pray to God that we may live real moments, a genuine, honest life. As much as we can, let us come down from our illusions, from the false selves we have made and the false picture we have of ourselves and others. Let us come back to earth and look within. Then we will see the world around us much more clearly.

Then you too will understand, dear lady, when you say, for example, ‘I can’t imagine what my son gets out of smoking.’ I thought that if she understood something about herself, about the strange desires we all have and enjoy so much, she might understand her son too. Smoking gives him something he likes. That kind of understanding...

May we offer that understanding to others, and may they find it in us. May they find people with whom they can share the real parts of their souls. I was so glad when a young person told me, ‘The advice you gave me once isn’t helping me. I don’t agree with it. I can’t do it. It makes me feel pressured, and I’m suffering.’

I said, ‘Tell me. Say it.’ ‘No, I don’t want to tell you because I’ll offend you.’ ‘Then offend me,’ I told him. ‘What do you mean, you’ll offend me? Are you going to choke back what you feel? Will you cut off part of your soul just to avoid offending me? Offend me. Tell me. I want to know what you really feel. I want you to live your own life, not mine. Stand on your own feet; don’t try to walk in my shoes.’ Your own shoes, your own feet, your own way of walking, your own build, your own personality. No one should destroy that in you. God certainly does not. Sadly, people of God sometimes do. I know because I have done it myself, and still do, though I pray I won’t. I pray that I will let others be their true selves, connect with God, and form their own personal relationship with Him and their own path toward Him. That path need not be the one I would choose for them. It must be the path each person is made to live, through their own journey. I pray it won’t be a path of wayward living. But sometimes I do not know what God wants for someone or how He is guiding them.

Some people tried so hard to keep others from going astray that they drove them further astray. Parents tried to keep their children from going astray, yet kept asking, ‘I don’t understand why my child does this. It makes no sense. Why stay up all night and come home so late?’ Those parents put so much pressure on their children. They could not understand themselves or feel what their children were going through, and they did great harm. I have stacks of emails from people crying out about the enormous, countless mistakes they made by behaving that way. Mistakes will happen. We do not encourage them or teach people to make them, but no one goes through life without making mistakes. You made mistakes too, even if you won’t admit them. Well, our time is up. Forgive me.

Now that the program is over, let us talk honestly with one another. Let us speak the truth and live what we have been saying.

Parts of ourselves. I want to thank you very much for the messages you have left so far, and for the strength and encouragement you give us. Thank you to everyone who has spoken so kindly about the two books we have published. The first volume, ‘Strengthen Your Soul,’ contains eight programs in written form, along with an MP3 CD. The second, ‘Love Forever,’ also contains programs you can read on your sofa, in your bedroom, on vacation, or in a beach chair—wherever you are and whatever you are doing, provided you are not working, of course. I hope you have a good week. I’m very glad we had this time together.

I think I was a little honest with you today too. Not completely, but as much as I could be. That is all for today. May you have strength as you go on, with love and truth in your hearts and in your relationships with those you love and those you are slowly learning to love. Farewell.