St. Teresa of Avila taught her sisters that one sure way to deepen your spiritual life and development is to engage in what she called "meaningful conversation" with someone you love or with a dear friend. She said that meaningful conversation has the power to open one's soul so that God becomes almost touchable.

   I was thinking about that earlier this week when I came across several quotes from Anne Morrow Lindbergh that say pretty much the same thing.  She told a group of women gathered for a conference that "Good communication, a good conversation with a friend is as stimulating as a good cup of black coffee and just as hard to sleep after." And in an interview with a journalist she talked about how see lived for good conversation. She said, "A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom do married people achieve it." Lindbergh went on to say that she grew the most in her life whenever she took the time to have deep, meaningful conversations with dear ones.

  In your life right now, do you ever take the time to have such conversations with your spouse or with good, close friends? If you do, you already know how enriching such conversation is and how it really does open up a deeper spiritual side of life.

   As you make your way through this season of Lent, why not deepen your spiritual life by taking the time to have breakfast alone with your spouse, or by getting together for coffee and conversation with friends?