When you no longer have expectations, the unexpected kindness of others and small acts of consideration become like "sweet manna from heaven." The feeling that rises spontaneously within one's heart at such times is true gratitude. When one is accustomed to kindness, one can lose the feeling of gratitude. One must constantly return oneself to the spiritual starting point of no expectations.
As many of you know, Nan published six books from 1996 - 2009. These are:
Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness--1996
Meditations and Mandalas: Simple Songs for the Spiritual Life--1999
Lumen Christi: Journey to Awakening--2002
Journey Into Love: From Fear to Freedom--2007
Walking with Wisdom--2009
These five titles are widely available in bookstores and online. The sixth, Peace Planet: Light for Our World, was self-published and can be ordered from Friends of Silence. Contact Anne (annestrad@sbcglobal.net or 11 Cardiff Lane, Hannibal, MO, 63401) for further information).
Psalms for Praying is perhaps Nan’s best known work. Over a period of years, she reworked the Hebrew Psalms, not, as she writes, "to replace the well-loved . . . Psalms of the Hebrew Scripture" but to "stand as a companion, a dialogue, if you will, of one age speaking with a later age."
Journey Into Love is perhaps the most autobiographical of Nan’s books. It explores the literal, metaphoric, and archetypal concept of the journey in the New Testament. It is the belief in, and discovery of, the story of Jesus as one's own story, a process she describes as reaching toward Love Consciousness.
Walking with Wisdom is "a stunning sequence of twenty meditations for our time. . . . In today's violence-torn world and in our fragmented everyday lives, Wisdom is needed as never before . . . When we seek this Wisdom of the Heart, we leave behind false emotions of guilt and fear, and we enter the Infinite Reality that exists beyond all time."
Both Journey Into Love and Walking with Wisdom were completed and published after Nan became ill. She remained true her Beloved’s call throughout her life.