"an epic film in slow motion"

 "For us, the ordinary people of the streets, obedience means bending to the ways of our times whenever they are not harmful...

When we surrender to them without resistance we find ourselves wonderfully liberated from ourselves...From the moment we wake up these circumstances take hold of us. It is the telephone that rings; it is the key that won't work, the bus that doesn't arrive or arrives full, or doesn't wait for us. It is the person sitting next to us who takes up the whole seat; or the vibration of the loose window pane that drives us crazy.

It's the daily routine, one chore that leads to another, some job we wouldn't have chosen. It's the weather and its changes - which is exquisite precisely because it is completely untainted by human doing. It's being cold, or being hot; it's the headache or the toothache. It's the people we meet and the conversations they choose to start. It's the rude man who nearly knocks us off the sidewalk. It's the people who need to kill some time, and so they corner us.

When we live with others, also means we set aside our own tastes and leave things in the place others have put them. In this way, life becomes an epic film in slow motion. Little by little, thread by thread, it eats away at the old man's frame, which cannot be mended and must be made new from the ground up. When we thus become accustomed to giving up our will to so many tiny things, we will no longer find it hard, when the occasion presents itself, to do the will of our boss, our husband, or our parents."

                                                       

                                                          -  Servant of God,  Madeleine Delbrel