Nowen writes, "It is clear that the distance between the turning around and the arrival at home needs to be traveled wisely and with discipline. The discipline is becoming the child of God. Jesus makes it clear that the way to God is the same as the way to a new childhood. "Unless you turn and become as little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Jesus does not ask me to remain a child but to become one. Becoming a child is living toward a second innocence: not the innocence of the newborn infant, but the innocence that is reached through conscious choices. ...The Beatitudes offer me the simplest route for the journey home, back into the house of my Father. And along this route I will discover the joys of the second childhood: comfort, mercy, and an ever clearer vision of God. And as I reach home and feel the embrace of my father, I will realize that not only Heaven will be mine to claim, but that the earth as well will become my inheritance, a place where I can live in freedom without obsessions and compulsions. ...The eternal Son became a child so that I might become a child again and so re-enter with him into the Kingdom of the Father. "In all truth I tell you," Jesus said to Nicodemus, "no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above." What an important thing to remember at this time of year.