Psalm 71
To you, Lord, have I come for shelter:
let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness rescue and deliver me:
incline your ear to me and save me.
3 Be for me a rock of refuge, a fortress to defend me:
for you are my high rock, and my stronghold.
4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked:
from the grasp of the pitiless and unjust.
5 For you, Lord, are my hope:
you are my confidence, O God, from my youth upward.
6 On you have I leaned since my birth:
you are he that brought me out of my mother's womb,
and my praise is of you continually.
There is a saying ascribed to Isidore the Priest warning that "of all evil suggestions, the most terrible is the prompting to follow your own heart."…Rowan Williams "Silence and Honey Cakes: The wisdom of the Desert" p49
…left to ourselves, the search for what the heart prompts is like peeling an onion; we are not going to arrive at a pure and simple set of inclinations. In the matter of self examination as in others, "the truth is rarely pure and never simple". The desert means a stepping back from the great system of collusive fantasy in which I try to decide who I am, sometimes to persuade you to tell me who I am (in accord of course with my preferences), sometimes to use God as a reinforcement for my picture of myself and so on and on. The 'burden' of self-accusation, the suspicion of what the heart prompts, this is not about an inhuman austerity or self-hatred, but about the need for us all to be coaxed into honesty by the confidence that God can forgive and heal..
……
God alone will tell me who I 'really' am, and he will do so only in the lifelong process of bringing my thoughts and longings into his presence without fear and deception.