Making a Difference: Henri Nouwen in Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine enters its tenth horrific week, I have been thinking, as I often do, what would Henri say? What would Henri do? He would certainly be saying and doing something.  In 1965, when Martin Luther King Jr. was marching from Selma to Montgomery, Henri drove all night from Topeka, Kansas to be with the marchers.  He spoke passionately at rallies against the Vietnam War and led protests against nuclear arms.  In 1983, he undertook an exhausting ten city tour of the United States denouncing American involvement in Nicaragua.  During the Gulf War, he joined the protestors in Washington, DC.  

Henri Nouwen had a personal connection to Ukraine, which he visited twice, once in 1993 and again in 1994.  The visits were short - just ten days each - but powerful, both for himself and for those he encountered.

His visits were at the invitation of his friends Zenia Kushpeta and Borys Gudziak.

Zenia Kushpeta had moved to Ukraine shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. She dreamt of starting a L’Arche community in the newly independent country. She helped organize the first communities of “Faith and Light” in various Lviv parishes.  These were intended to bring people with disabilities and their families together in fellowship. Henri knew Kushpeta from her days as an Assistant at L’Arche Daybreak, his home community in Toronto.  

Borys Gudziak was a former student from his Harvard years.  He was the American-born child of Ukrainians who had immigrated to America in the 1950s.  In 1983, the year they met, Gudziak had just returned to the United States after attending seminary in Rome, studying with Cardinal Josyf Slipyj of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.  In 1992, he moved to Lviv with a dream to be part of a movement to revitalize the Ukrainian church from its years hidden in the ‘catacombs’.[1]

Henri had a dream of his own.  Like his spiritual mentor Thomas Merton, Henri dreamt of the union of the Christian East and West.  As early as the 1970s, Henri lectured on the wisdom of the Desert Mothers and Fathers.  His book The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry (1981) aimed to share his ideas more widely.  One semester he taught a course on hesychasm – a mystical tradition of contemplative prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

He was also drawn to 19th century Russian mystics, and was familiar with the Philokalia, an anthology on prayer in the Orthodox tradition. Excerpts from Igumen Chariton’s book, The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology (1966), were often in his course handouts. It is from the Christian East that Henri learned the Jesus Prayer, which formed the foundation of his own spiritual practice.  His prayer life was also nourished by iconography.  His book Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons (1987) conveys his ability to enter into the Eastern Christian mind and heart.

With Zenia, he ministered to families of Faith and Light, and with Borys he gave retreats for youth groups.  He also kept a personal journal.  In an early entry he records:

“We keep wondering whether the future will be any different. With so many voices in Russia wanting to reclaim Ukraine as part of their territory, there is constant fear that independence might be a very frag­ile thing. The fact that the U.S. pays so much atten­tion to Russia and so little to Ukraine, except in pres­suring it to give up its nuclear arsenal, makes Ukrai­nians question how much international support their independence will get when push comes to shove. The somber faces of the peasants certainly are not full of expectation for a better future.”

During his second visit in 1994, he uses his journal to record the deep sadness of the Ukrainian people and commits to listen to them.  Nathan Ball, a close friend who accompanied Henri on both trips, recalls that Henri once asked the assembled crowd if they had any questions.  A young man raised his hand and spoke.  Henri sat silently with the young man’s question.  “It was much longer than comfortable,” Nathan recalls.  

Perhaps he saw that his homilies of hope and joy, so resonant in prosperous America, were out of step with the lived reality of the Ukrainian people.  He needed to listen in the silence of his heart before responding.

He also needed to bear witness.  He observed the mothers of children with disabilities:

“It became clear to me how isolated most of these mothers felt.  Many of them had no spouse and very little help on a day-to-day basis.  Faith and Light offered moral and emotional support, but many basic necessities were still lacking.  I realized that I should not be too fast in calling people to joy, peace and gratitude. Important as that is, many parents need a space to express their accumulated feelings of frustration, disappointment, anger, resentment and deep physical and emotional fatigue.  They need to be heard with a heart that wants to understand, and with a mind that looks for ways to make their lives a little easier.  Sometimes a new wheelchair, a typewriter, a new ramp, a regular visitor, etc. can make all the difference.”

A typewriter? How did that make it onto Henri’s list? The story goes that shortly after Henri’s death, his brother Laurent got a call from a Ukrainian man claiming that Henri had promised him a typewriter. Could he still hope to get it? Laurent followed through with his brother’s promise.

The delivery of the typewriter was the first of what would become a convoy of goods that Laurent Nouwen would deliver to Ukraine.  For the next two decades, he would pack delivery trucks with all kinds of donated goods: computers and school desks, washing machines and beds for psychiatric hospitals, and more. Gudziak, who befriended Laurent after Henri’s death affectionately calls him the “Practical Apostle”.

While Henri was alive, his Ukrainian journals were published in the New Oxford Review, but he also hoped to publish a book on his experiences for a North American audience.  Laurent updated the vision and partnered with translator Maryana Karapinka and Lviv publishing house, Svichado, to publish the journals specifically for Ukrainians. They were released in December 2021, the 25th anniversary year of Henri’s death.

At the book launch translator Karapinka shared her experience of seeing Lviv through Nouwen’s eyes saying, “I was struck by the fact that Father Henri looked at our post-Soviet reality with the eyes of love. He doesn’t understand everything, he is sometimes annoyed, but he tries to comprehend the situation to its core, he is not afraid to meet suffering people.” [2]

A few days later, on December 23, 2021, Borys Gudziak, now Archbishop-Metropolitan for Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, had the opportunity to present a copy of the book to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who was on a visit to the United States.

(source: Religious Information Service of Ukraine)

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was months away, but perhaps that night Zelensky read with shivers an observation from Nouwen that speaks across time and beyond death.  The journal entry was written a day after Nouwen’s second trip to Ukraine from Poland enroute back Canada.

“Being in Poland made me aware that Ukraine is like the foster child of Europe, not highly respected, not well supported, not given the attention it needs.  I suddenly remembered that in the story of the last judgment, God judges not individuals, but nations.  The question:  "What have you done to the least of mine?" does not simply refer to individual poor people but also, and maybe first of all, to poor nations.  God loves the poor, God even has a preferential love for the poor.  Ukraine is poor, very poor, not just materially, but also emotionally and spiritually.  To care for the poor means much more than to reach out to people who need food, jobs, clothes and a safe place to stay.  It means also to care for nations that are crushed by the forces of history and live under the burden of being ignored and rejected by the international community.”

How would Henri have responded in world now so brutalized by hatred? He would have responded with friendship, with showing up, by listening deeply and standing with people in their pain, by helping with practical needs. Like Laurent, Zenia and Borys he would dare to make a difference.

[1] The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was illegal from 1946-1989.  It was the biggest illegal church in the world and was known informally as ‘the church of the catacombs’.

[2] Quoted in “Ukrainian Journals of Henri Nouwen presented to Philadelphia audience, December 22, 2021, Archeparchy of Philadelphia website (https://ukrarcheparchy.us/archeparchy-news/knigu-ukrainski-shhodenniki-otcja-genri-nouena-predstavili-v-filadelfii)

Love, Death and Fear - A Reflection with inspiration from Henri Nouwen and Mirabai Bush

I recently attended an online meeting of the Empty Bell community. It is an inter-faith contemplative group, founded by Robert Jonas, a close friend of Henri Nouwen.  For this gathering, Jonas had invited Mirabai Bush to speak about her book Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying (2018). The book was co-written with Ram Dass, the late American spiritual teacher known for incorporating Hinduism, Buddhism, and Muslim and Jewish mysticism — into his teachings.

Mirabai explained the origins of the book: “Ram Dass was dying.  We decided to intentionally set aside time to tell each other what we knew about death. Not what we thought we knew, but what we knew.”

Mirabai gave a brief reflection on the topic of love. We were then given an opportunity to ask questions.  But love was not what people wanted to talk about.  Instead, we seemed to resonate more with the themes of death and fear.  The first questioner, Peggy, wanted help with her fear of dying alone.

It called to mind an insight I had the day before about Henri Nouwen.  I was re-reading his book Here and Now. In it, he recalls that as a child he asked his parents repeatedly if they loved him. I have always imagined little Harrie (as he was then known) standing in his crib, gripping the rails with little red fists, crying, “Do you love me?” 

It is such a poignant image and one that I have shared in many talks to illustrate Henri’s life-long struggle with crippling insecurity and neediness. But as I reread the text, I realised that another question followed the first: “Am I going to die?”  

I had never really noticed this second question before and was perplexed by the young Henri’s logic.  If he wasn’t loved did he think he was going to die?

My attention returned to our meeting. Mirabai was suggesting that when we feel anxious or sad, we could develop a practice of saying: “I am not the heaviness I feel.  I am loving awareness. I am not the sadness in my heart, I am loving awareness.”

David, a Zen practitioner, asked a follow up question: “Is there a difference between ‘awareness’ and ‘loving awareness’? I thought: “Perhaps this was Henri’s question - Is there existence without love?” 

Another participant, Margaret, offered, “When I was first taught meditation in the Vipassana tradition, I was taught to focus on the breath and become true attentiveness.  What I found as I did this with more and more focus, is that love would just bubble up.” As she spoke she demonstrated what she meant by drawing her arms up in an arc, simulating a fountain. “But no one was talking about that,” she continued  “So, I found myself drawn back to my Christian roots where the reality of love is a central theme.”

Mirabai replied, “In the Burmese tradition that I was taught, we spent a few days meditating on the breath, then a few days on the body and then we moved to a loving kindness meditation in which we practised loving kindness to ourselves, to others we love and to others we do not love.”

The conversation tacked: what does it mean to feel loved? The Zen practitioner answered, “For me it means a feeling of home, a feeling of not needing anything, a feeling of completeness. And when I experience cessation of neediness, I become aware of the state of love and this is why awareness and loving awareness are the same thing in my experience.”

I was reminded of another talk on love by a Muslim teacher from the Philippines.  He said that in the Muslim creation story, God so loved God-self that God created human beings to love God too.  This struck me because in our culture we seem to have a difficult time with self-love. Thich Nhat Hhan went so far as to say that the main difference between Westerners and Easterners is our wobbly sense of self-worth.

I think about my own life, and about how important other human beings are to my sense of feeling loved.   When love is absent I fall into a vulnerable state of fear. Like Henri, my (il)logic is that without others to validate me I’ll disappear. I’ll die.  Similarly a friend of mine, recently divorced, has night terrors of disintegrating into a million particles by her sense of aloneness. “It feels like no one will ever find me again,” she shares.

Fortunately, Henri Nouwen matured and his insight about the connection between love and death offers me and my friend an alternate way of holding our fear.  It is to turn to loving presence of God.

As a child he understandably looked to his parents for protection, then as an adolescent he turned to Jesus, later as an adult to his vast network of friendships, but finally, after many losses, he turned to God.  God who he called by many names including God-with-us, God-in-us, God-the-source-of-all-love. 

I like to think that at the time of his death, when he was moving from life to beyond life, into the love he spoke so passionately about and wanted to share with others, he remembered his own words: “If you only know one thing know this: You are the Beloved.”

I wonder about my own ability to do this.  How much more interested am I in human love to support my self-worth? But human love is fickle, and often disappointing. God’s love is that fountain that Margaret illustrated with her gesture in our meeting.  It is unconditional and ever flowing.  It is where we all come from and to where we all return.  

The meeting was drawing to a close. Mirabai gave us this final wisdom to ponder, particularly in the context of preparing for our own deaths. She asked: “How much are you willing to be with what arises? “A lot”, I thought to myself, “if I know I am loved.”

A Sorrow Shared: Moving From Loss to Hope with Henri Nouwen as Guide

[This is the text of a talk I gave at the Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark’s College, October 16, 2021. A video recording is available here.]

We are living through a time of great upheaval, fear and suffering.  Our collective and personal losses are staggering.  How do we mourn our losses and find hope and courage for the future?  

I notice in myself a persistent state of grief.  It is anticipatory grief and a re-activation of early trauma and loss.

It flows of course, betwixt and between, the ordinary moments of my life, between the tender moments of kinship, between the nourishment of beauty, and the goodness, but grief is there, flowing in the underground stream of my life.  

Today, I am grieving the distressing fragmentation of society, the growing silos of people who are suspicious of others outside their group.  My heart weeps at the ugly reality of Canada’s colonial past as we finally acknowledge the unmarked graves of Indigenous children.  I mourn the degradation of our beautiful planet - the loss of entire species, the coral reef, old Growth forest and arctic ice.  I grieve the rampant run of greed that has created suffering in all quarters of the globe. 

On a personal level, I grieve the long, protracted death of my friend Lyn to a rare form of cancer.  I grieve the aging of my friend Sue who has been like a second mother to me.  I grieve the recent diagnosis of breast cancer in my friend Jen. 

And deep within, I continue to ache with the loss of my only son Heiko, who died 13 years ago at the age of 4 from acute myeloid leukemia.  

When I faced this terrible loss of Heiko, I had been Henri Nouwen’s archivist for eight years.  I had read every book this gifted spiritual thinker had written and almost every letter he penned.  I had sorted through his manuscripts and his teaching notes and had met many of his family and friends.  While I was deeply impacted by his penetrating insights about the spiritual life, I had no idea that it was all preparation – a kind of apprenticeship – for how to live my son’s illness and eventual death.  For Nouwen’s terrain of enquiry is suffering.  He taught me how to understand, live and even give meaning to this cataclysmic event in my life.  

You will have your own litany of loss. Like me, you may be experiencing different kinds of loss simultaneously on both a personal and global level.  How will you live these losses? Much pain is beyond our personal control.  And yet, as Nouwen understood, we retain the power to choose how we will respond when suffering comes our way.

In his book, Here and Now, Nouwen writes, “ We do have a choice, not so much in regard to the circumstances of our life, but in the way we respond to these circumstances. Two people can be victims of the same accident.  For one, it becomes the source of resentment, for the other, the source of gratitude. That does not mean that the life of those who become bitter was harder than the life of those who became joyful.  It means that different choices were made, inner choices, choices of the heart. (Here and Now, 32)

In this reflection, I want to share some of the choices I made, under Nouwen’s tutelage, to move from loss to hope. Perhaps some of what I share will resonate with you and help with choices you are making.   

Henri Nouwen can be trusted as guide on this topic because he knows the landscape of brokenness - and with a gentle and sensitive heart he invites us through it. 

The crux of his struggle was loneliness.  Nouwen had hundreds of friends, his classes were filled to capacity, thousands showed up for his talks, letters from readers arrived by the hundreds each year, but somewhere in his core he questioned his lovability.  This need for affirmation began in childhood and continued until his death.  It was the hungry ghost of longing.

In his classic book The Wounded Healer, Nouwen writes, “The more I think about loneliness, the more that I think that the wound of our loneliness is like the Grand Canyon – a deep incision at the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding…” (The Wounded Healer, 90)

How stunning this last sentence is.  Henri Nouwen experiences loneliness as a deep incision yet his chooses to see its generativity, its beauty and its link to self-understanding.  Can we, like Nouwen, look to our pain for its hidden gifts?

Leonard Cohen did.  Our famous Canadian bard responded to the darkness and chaos of the world with much the same spirit as Nouwen. In his song ‘Anthem’ he writes, 

“The birds sang at the break of day

Start again I seem to hear them say

Do not dwell on what has passed away 

Or that which is yet to be.

Now the wars will be fought again.

The Holy Dove will be caught again.

Bought and sold and caught again.

The Dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring. 

Forget your perfect offering. 

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.” 

(Leonard Cohen, from the album The Future, 1992)

Nouwen’s wound of loneliness persisted all his life, yet he, like Cohen learned to see it as a gift of light.  It would become the source of his most profound insights.   

Let me tell you a little about Henri Nouwen, our guide for moving from loss to hope:

Henri Nouwen was born in 1932 in Holland.  Considered one of the most important Catholic spiritual writers of the 20thcentury,  Nouwen attended a Jesuit seminary and was ordained as a diocesan priest in 1957. After seminary, he obtained advanced degrees in psychology and theology.  In the 1960s, Nouwen left Holland for the United States to study religion and psychiatry at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.  He became an academic, teaching at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard University.  

An inveterate seeker of God’s will for his life, Nouwen periodically explored a monastic vocation in a Trappist monastery in upstate New York.  For a period, he lived in Peru to work in solidarity with the poor.  In 1985, when he was 53 years old, Nouwen left academia to become a pastor for L’Arche Daybreak, a community for people with mental and physical disabilities just north of Toronto.  He died in 1996 at the age of 64 of a heart attack.

Nouwen’s main focus was the Christian spiritual life. He published his first book in 1969.  It was called Intimacy and it articulated the central question of his life: “How can I find a creative and fulfilling intimacy in my relationship with God and my fellow human beings?”  (Intimacy, 1)

He went on to write 38 more books and to date seven million copies of his books have been sold in 34 languages including such classics as The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery and his bestseller The Return of the Prodigal Son a reflection on Rembrandt’s painting of the biblical parable. 

Henri Nouwen’s signature gift was naming what ails us – he wrote, “I am trying to give words to what often remains hidden under the threshold of consciousness.” (Love Henri, 72) Nouwen could also articulate his own inner experience with precision and then share his insights in highly readable prose.  “This book was written just for me,” is an oft spoken word of praise from his legions of devoted readers.  What stands out about Nouwen is his ability to reach across the political and religious spectrum.  His readers run from Catholics to Evangelical Protestants and everything in between.   

Henri Nouwen appeals to people because his writing is personal, confessional.  For many of his readers he is like a best friend, someone who listens to their pain and isn’t scandalized by it.  He relieves our own suffering by being so brutally honest with his own.   Readers relate to him because he wrote about the many difficulties we all face at one time or another: loss, sickness, injustice, finding and losing love, discerning a career or vocation, handling conflict, managing our emotions, and coping with self-doubt.  He believed in the value of bringing our pain into the light, writing, “I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don’t want to know the pain.” (Life of the Beloved, 93) 

How would Henri Nouwen help us face our pain today? What would Henri Nouwen say to us about living our losses?

First, I think he would gently invite us to name them.  Sometimes we minimize what has happened to us, sometimes we pretend our losses aren’t real.  Sometimes we keep them hidden from our friends and colleagues, and even from ourselves.  Sometimes we convince ourselves that our losses are little in comparison to our gains.  Sometimes we blame others for what we have suffered and lost instead of feeling what we feel.  

But for Nouwen, there is another option – the possibility of mourning.  He wrote, “You cannot talk or act your losses away, but you can shed tears over them and allow yourself to grieve deeply….The world says, ‘Just ignore it, be strong, don’t cry, get over it, move on.’ But if you don’t mourn you can become bitter. All your grief can go right into your deepest self and sit there for the rest of your life.” 

“It is better to mourn your losses than to deny them…” he concludes.  

(Henri Nouwen on the theme of mourning, as compiled and edited by Michael Christiansen and Rebecca Laird in Spiritual Formation, 42)

After inviting us to name and mourn our losses, he would join us in our pain.  He would not leave us alone. There is nothing as healing as a person standing with us in our pain, not aiming to fix or cure us, but just being with us in our vulnerable state. Nouwen liked to illustrate this idea with the biblical story of Jesus’ reaction to the grief of a widow who had just lost her only son: “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, ‘Weep not’.” (Lk 7:13). Another way of translating  the words “he had compassion” Nouwen would remind us, is to say Jesus felt the widow’s pain in his “guts”.  This is compassion.  Compassion is to let the pain of others connect with our own.  Nouwen taught that the word compassion literally means “to suffer with.”  Many people can’t do this.  It is too frightening.  It requires a willingness to be vulnerable.  But Henri Nouwen modelled this kind of compassion and solidarity with people who suffered.  I can’t count the number of times he dropped whatever he was doing to get to the bedside of a sick friend.  He would hold their hand, be with them and feel their pain in “his guts.”

When my son Heiko died, I had a powerful experience of compassion.  On the day after we left his lifeless body in the hospital morgue, we had a knock on our door.  My husband and I opened it to find our neighbours Stan and Hiroko and their teenage daughter Miyuki standing there.  Their faces were mirrors of our sorrow.  The visit was less than a minute and very few words were spoken, but they stood with us in the pain and it was very healing.  

Our neighbours showed us human solidarity.  But there is more.  Nouwen would remind us that we can connect our pain to a larger pain. “Nothing we are experiencing”, he would say, “is alien to God.  All has been suffered already by Jesus.  Loss, humiliation, torture, powerlessness, abandonment, death.  Jesus lifts up our suffering to himself and joins our suffering to his all-compassionate heart.”  This is divine solidarity.

I was shown how to join my pain to the larger pain by Sister Sue Mosteller, one of Nouwen’s dear friends.  Sue walked with me closely during the first few years after Heiko’s death.  One day she suggested that I connect my sorrow about Heiko with Mary, Jesus’s mother who had also lost her only son. It was hard at first - I was so seared into isolation by my own experience that I resisted - but eventually, using my imagination, I would sit with Mary and then, all the other women around the world grieving their lost children.  I was comforted by our mutual longing and grief. 

A natural question after experiencing loss is why me? We try to find explanations and root causes to know if we could have changed the outcome.  By joining with Mary and other mothers who had lost children, I was able to begin the process of letting go of the whys and ifs and find comfort in my sameness with others.  The finding of community, even if just in my imagination, opened up the possibility that Heiko’s death was not an aberration.  It was part of the human experience.  

This was healing because, as hard as it is to admit now, for months after Heiko’s death I was heavy with a burden that my life was cursed.  Heiko’s death was not the first major loss in my life.  My father died when I was 2 years old and my best friend Nicky died of cystic fibrosis in our final year of high school.  Other deaths followed, and when death came for my beautiful son, I had chilling thoughts that everything I loved was taken away from me.  

I tried to make sense of death’s regular visitations, and in the deepest chambers of my heart, I struggled with the distressing idea that I was doomed by God to a life of loss because I was not worthy of love.  Thinking of my life as cursed had two corrosive effects: it made me blame and evaluate myself as unworthy of lasting relationships and perhaps worse, it made me question the reality of a loving God.  

Nouwen understands this very human reaction to loss. He writes: “When we lose a family member or friend through death, when we become jobless, when we fail an examination, when we live through a separation or a divorce, when a war breaks out, when an earthquake destroys our home or touches us, the question “Why?” spontaneously emerges. “Why me?” “Why now?” “Why here?”

“It is so arduous to live without an answer to this “why?” that we are easily seduced into connecting the events over which we have no control with our conscious or unconscious evaluation.”

“When we have cursed ourselves it is very tempting to explain all the brokenness we experience as an expression or confirmation of this curse. Before we fully realize it, we have already said to ourselves, “You see, I always thought I was no good. . . . Now I know for sure. The facts of life prove it.” (Life of the Beloved, 78-79)

What a relief it was when I read this all those years ago.  It seems to have been written just for me! Nouwen names, with such accuracy, the roots of my suffering: self-blame and an evaluation of myself as unworthy of love.  His antidote is counter-intuitive at first.  He says, we must place our loss under a blessing. “The great spiritual call of the Beloved Children of God” he writes, “is to pull their brokenness away from the shadow of the curse and put it under the light of the blessing.” “This is not as easy as it sounds,” he continues, “The power of the darkness around us is strong, and our world finds it easier to manipulate self-rejecting people than self-accepting people. But when we keep listening attentively to the voice calling us the Beloved, it becomes possible to live our brokenness, not as a confirmation of our fear that we are worthless, but as an opportunity to purify and deepen the blessing that rests upon us. Physical, mental, or emotional pain lived under the blessing is experienced in ways radically different from physical, mental, or emotional pain lived under the curse.” (Life of the Beloved, 78-79)           

Nouwen was asking me to put Heiko’s death under the light of the blessing.  I can share with you that this is indeed easier said than done, but I do believe that when I chose to live my life under the blessing, and took it on as real discipline – meaning I practised it with intentionally - I began to experience a lifting of the guilt and shame that shrouded me and kept me locked in darkness.   

The key was learning to accept that suffering is not evidence of an uncaring, unloving God but instead is an opportunity to experience God’s love right in the midst of it.  When I began to shift my focus from what I had lost to the reality of love coming to me through so many various ways –through the love of my friends, family and community, strangers, doctors, nurses, flowers, trees, gifts, meals, toys for Heiko, quilts and cards, I was overwhelmed by the reality that God indeed never left me alone.  

Suffering comes with the territory of being human, but what a difference it makes to think of suffering as an opportunity to experience God’s presence.  The words of the Psalmist began to take on renewed power for me:  

‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil: for thy art with me; they rod and thy staff comfort me.’  (Psalm 23:4)  

I would recite Psalm 23 to remind myself of my decision to live under the blessing and to feel God’s presence in my loss.  And when I did this, something beautiful happened: I was able to let myself feel Heiko’s love for me again and love him back! When I was focussed on the tragedy of his death, I wasn’t able to let in the love of my son, it was too painful.  It pressed in on the sore places where he was absent.  Yet, when I shifted my perspective from curse to blessing,  a new portal of creative energy opened between us.

This idea that one person’s love for another can be a portal to something new and generative, is cogently expressed in a poem that became important to me in the months after Heiko’s death. It is called ‘Motherroot’ by Marilou Awiakta, a Cherokee, Scots-Irish and Appalanchian poet from Tennessee.   Awiakta wrote the poem  to acknowledge the role of her mother and husband in her life, but I read it as a love-song between Heiko and me.  It is about the root that holds me steady.  

MOTHEROOT 

Creation often 
needs two hearts 
one to root 
and one to flower 
one to sustain 
in time of drought 
and hold fast 
against winds of pain 
the fragile bloom 
that in the glory of its hour 
affirms a heart 
unsung, unseen.

(from Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet, 2006) 

This beautiful poem is about the people who are in the nurturing position and those in the blooming position.  I had to metamorphize my role of mother and let Heiko be the root, the nurturer, but when I did I transmuted his death to life, by becoming alive again myself.  My blooming is only possible when I connect to his nurturing love.

My ability to reclaim my relationship with my son didn’t happen overnight or even over years.  It is a long, arduous journey, that continues to this day.  But it points to something important: Part of any journey from loss to hope is to claim our past.  Nouwen says, “what is forgotten is unavailable and what is unavailable cannot be healed.” (The Living Reminder, 22).  It is tempting to shut down after loss.  For years I couldn’t look at photographs of my life with Heiko, and even to this day, I can’t see his face without both a pang of longing along with the surge of joy.  

Nouwen understands.  In his book Here and Now, he writes, “When we look back at all that has happened to us, we easily divide our lives into good things to be grateful for and bad things to forget. But with a past thus divided, we cannot move freely into the future. With many things to forget we can only limp toward the future.” (Here and Now, 108)

His remedy for this condition is one of the great spiritual challenges:  Even after loss, especially after loss, we must choose to be grateful for all that we have lived.  He says, “True spiritual gratitude embraces all of our past, the good as well as the bad events, the joyful as well as the sorrowful moments…Everything that took place brought us to this moment, and we want to remember all of it as part of God’s guidance.” “That does not mean that all that happened in the past was good,” he reminds us, “but it does mean that even the bad didn’t happen outside the loving presence of God…” (Here and Now, 109)

Another equally important truth is connected to this idea of claiming the good and the bad of our past.  It is this: We must accept that we live in a world surrounded by the powers and principalities of evil, death and destruction.  Why is this healing? Because by accepting the reality of the human condition we are better able to live our suffering not as something to rebel against but as an opportunity to change our hearts.  In his book Reaching Out, Nouwen writes, “Every time in history that men and women have been able to respond to the events of their world as an occasion to change their hearts, an inexhaustible source of generosity and new life has been opened, offering hope far beyond the limits of human prediction.” (Reaching Out, p.42)

We heal from loss not by rebelling against the situation but by keeping our hearts open for love.  By no longer supressing reality we can live in a spirit of gratitude.  

What I have been suggesting as ways to live loss are not easy.  They are challenging, particularly spiritually challenging, and you, like me, will need help.  Nouwen was convinced that nothing was as important than regular time each day for dwelling with God.  A daily practice of prayer is a statement to yourself that God’s love is a reality and that with God’s love you are able to live your losses in a way that brings life.  Prayer is a necessary component of any journey from loss to hope.  It is the place where living with gratitude begins, it is the place where our capacity to be free for others has its roots, it is the place where we hear God’s voice that calls us the Beloved, and it is the place we can bring our broken hearts to rest.

How do we pray?

Nouwen would say set aside at least ten minutes a day to “waste time” with God.  “Waste time?” you might say, “I don’t have enough time as it is!”  And I understand. I struggle with the same issue, but our concern with time belies what we sometimes do with our prayer lives.  We try to make them productive.  But Nouwen is calling us to a different kind of prayer.  Nouwen is inviting us to create space in our lives for nothing but listening to God.   This might involve carving out a sacred space in your home.  It could be a room or just a corner or shelf.  But in some way we need a place set apart from the hurly-burly of our busy lives.  Light a candle.  Put out meaningful images that draw your closer to the Divine.  Nouwen himself prayed every day in the morning, even when he felt apathetic or spiritually arid (which was more often than you’d think.)  He would read a scriptural passage or some other word of wisdom and sit with the words in silence, allowing any images to emerge in his mind. He would try to enter into the words as deeply as possible so they, in his words, “found a home” in him.  I particularly like his habit of then hanging these images on the walls of his inner room, so that throughout the day when he met with people they were nurtured by them too.  In his book Here and Now, he wrote “Whenever I meet people during the day, I receive them in my inner room, trusting that the pictures on my walls will guide our meeting.” (Here and Now, 129)  

By praying in this way, we deepen our connection to the reality of God’s love in our lives and God’s deep compassion for our pain.  Now let’s turn our attention to hope.  How do move from loss to hope? To help answer this question I want to read a letter Nouwen wrote to a man called George.  He wrote it in 1981.  

Henri Nouwen received over 16 000 letters in his lifetime and all of them are preserved in the Nouwen Archives at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto.  I had the great privilege of compiling some of Nouwen’s letters of response in a book called Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life.  In the letter I am going to read, George has written to Nouwen asking him if humanity would survive the century.  At that time - in 1981- the world was on high alert not by a pandemic like us, but by the threat of nuclear war.  Nouwen writes, 

Dear George,

I really don’t know if our civilization will survive the century.  Considering the growing threat of a nuclear holocaust, there certainly is reason to wonder.  But important for me is not if our civilization will survive or not but if we can continue to live with hope, and I really think we can because our Lord has given us His promise that He will stay with us at all times.  He is the God of the living; He has overcome evil and death and His love is stronger than any form of death and destruction.  That is why I feel that we should continually avoid the temptation of despair and deepen our awareness that God is present in the midst of all the chaos that surround us and that that presence allows us to live joyfully and peacefully in a world so filled with sorrow and conflict.  

Please be sure of my prayers for you in these tempting times.

Peace, Henri Nouwen

(Love, Henri, 45)

It is tempting to fall into despair at the persistent number of losses we each face both personally and collectively.  But Nouwen asks us to move from despair to hope.  Hope is very different from optimism.  As Nouwen explains, “Optimism is the expectation that things will get better… Hope is the trust that God will fulfil God's promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.” (Bread for the Journey, January 16)

I could not be an optimist about Heiko’s death. Nothing was going to bring him back.  But I could be hopeful that his death and my reaction to it could lead to true freedom.  I couldn’t change what happened but I could trust that all that happened was part of a larger story of God’s love.  When I let go of Heiko’s death as an aberration, when I let go of seeing myself as cursed, when I named my loss and mourned it, when I connected my pain to the greater pain and let my suffering be an experience of God’s love, I was able to slowly move from bitterness to gratitude, from a hardened heart to a soft one.  And by some mysterious alchemy Heiko’s death was redeemed.  If my grief had kept me locked in despair I would never have tasted the sweet fruit of love.  

WORKS CITED

Awiakta, Marilou. Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet. Dublin, VA: Pocahontas Press, 2006.

Cohen, Leonard. “Anthem.” The Future.  Columbia, 1992. Transcript of lyrics.

Nouwen, Henri.  Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith. New York: HarperOne, 1997.

Nouwen, Henri. Here and Now: Living in the Spirit. New York: Crossroad, 1994.

Nouwen, Henri.  Intimacy: Pastoral Psychological Essays. Notre Dame: Fides, 1969.

Nouwen, Henri.  The Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World.  New York: Crossroad, 1992.

Nouwen, Henri.  The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ.  New York: Seabury/Crossroad, 1977.

Nouwen, Henri. Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life.  Edited by Gabrielle Earnshaw.  New York: Convergent/Penguin Random House, 2016.

Nouwen, Henri. Reaching Out: Three Movement of the Spiritual Life.  New York: Doubleday, 1975. 

Nouwen, Henri with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird.  Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

Nouwen, Henri.  The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. New York: Image/Doubleday, 1972.

The Archival Legacy of Henri Nouwen

From 2000-2016, I was the founding archivist of the Henri J.M. Nouwen Archives and Research Collection. To help promote the collection, I created a booklet to highlight the vast archival legacy that Nouwen left behind after his death. The booklet was published in 2011, and consists of a Prologue by spiritual writer Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, a visionary Epilogue by Sue Mosteller, CSJ, Nouwen’s Literary Executrix, high-gloss photographs of a sampling of the photographs, manuscripts, sermons, and other material preserved in the archives, and a summary of the projects undertaken by the Archives and plans for the future. The following is my Introduction. The booklet is available freely on the Internet Archives. Link below.

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), priest psychologist, brilliant educator and world-renowned author, is considered by many to be one of the most important thinkers on the spiritual life of the 20th century. At the opening of the Nouwen Archives in 2000, John Allan Loftus, SJ, stated “He is arguably one of the giants of contemporary spirituality” (National Post, 2000).

A writer of extraordinary capacity to reach a wide range of audiences, Nouwen’s work engages readers across the religious, cultural and political spectrum. In a survey conducted at Duke University and reported in The Christian Century in 2003, Nouwen emerged as the first choice of spiritual reading among both Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders. In 2000, Oprah Winfrey ran an extensive excerpt from Nouwen’s 1992 bestseller, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming in her magazine, O. In her introduction to the excerpt, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, stated that The Return of the Prodigal Son is the book that has had the largest impact on her life.

More than seven million copies of his books have been sold world-wide. They have been translated into 30 languages to date. Since his death in 1996, all but one of his thirty-nine books remain in print, including such popular titles as Creative Ministry (1971), The Wounded Healer (1972), Out of Solitude (1974), Reaching Out (1975), The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery (1976), Life of the Beloved (1992) and Here and Now: Living in the Spirit (1994).

In addition to writing, Nouwen had a distinguished career teaching in such areas as Christian spirituality, pastoral theology, and the psychology of religion. He was a compelling and committed advocate of disarmament, the poor, and contemplative non-violence The peace activist, John Dear, calls him a “true prophet of peace and justice.” (Remembering Henri , 46).

Above all, Henri Nouwen was a pastor who used his ministry to create space where people might find inner freedom and love. His approach to Christian leadership, grounded as it was in scriptural wisdom and deep faith, provides a model of tolerance and compassion for the 21st century. His legacy has an ever-increasing relevance for those seeking unity and peace in our fragmented world.

When Nouwen’s papers were donated to the University of St. Michael’s College in 2000, the Archives immediately became the international centre for Nouwen Studies. In the past decade, more than 800 researchers have made use of its vast holdings. This publication showcases the richness of the Archives and invites readers to discover for themselves the breadth and depth of material related to ministry, peace studies, pastoral theology, and psychology and the unique inter-disciplinary contribution Nouwen made to these field of study.

Click here for the complete booklet.

Advent Hope with Henri Nouwen: A Meditation with Reflection Questions

“The situation in our world is frightening, and many people experience deep anxieties.  More than ever we will be tested in our faith.  I hope and pray that the Lord will deepen our faith during these weeks of Advent and will fill us with peace and joy, which belong to his kingdom.  Hope is not optimism and I pray that we all will be able to live hopefully in the midst of our apocalyptic time.  We have a promise and God is faithful to his promise even when we are doubtful and fearful.  As Paul says: “Our hope is not deceptive because the Holy Spirit has already been poured into us.(Romans 5:5)

-       Letter from Nouwen to Catherine Dueck Doherty, December 20, 1980, in Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life, 44.

Readers of Henri Nouwen will be familiar with his habit of describing the spiritual life as a series of movements – from loneliness to solitude, from fear to love, from hostility to hospitality to name but three examples.  Today, I want to focus on Nouwen’s insights about the movement from fatalism to hope.

A fatalistic person says, “What is the use?”;  “Nothing can be done about it;” “You can’t change the world”; “You must be practical and realistic.”  I expect we have been hearing these sentiments around us quite a lot lately.  Maybe, we have even uttered them ourselves.  

Is this Advent period the ideal time to consider becoming a hopeful person instead?

First, a clarification: taking a hopeful position in life is different from being optimistic.  Nouwen explains: “Optimism is the expectation that things – the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on – will get better.  Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God’s promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom.  The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future.  The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.” (Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

Let’s slow that down and focus on the last part of the sentence and ask ourselves: Do I have knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands?  You might want to take out your journal and explore what stirs in you from this question.

For myself, I can tell you that I can’t always hold onto this way of being in the world. But, Nouwen’s portrait of God in The Return of the Prodigal Son has certainly helped me to hold on to this vision of reality more frequently.

Recall Nouwen’s image of God: “Looking at the way in which Rembrandt portrays the father, there came to me a whole new interior understanding of tenderness, mercy, and forgiveness.  Seldom, if ever, has God’s immense compassionate love been expressed in such a poignant way.  Every detail of the father’s figure – his facial express, his posture, the color of his dress, and most of all, the still gesture of his hands – speaks of the divine love for humanity that existed from the beginning and ever will be.”  (Prodigal Son, 88)

A hopeful person trusts that life is in good hands.  In Rembrandt’s painting, the hands of the father rest on the shoulders of the returning son.  It is under these hands that Nouwen kneeled and was blessed.  He notices that one hand is like the mother.  The other like the father.  The hands that hold us are feminine and masculine – a perfect, balanced circle of love. 

But, as we know, particularly when life gets difficult, we are not always open to God’s love.  In fact, Nouwen’s book is so healing because it helps people who struggle with feelings of unworthiness to receive God’s love again (see p. 108 of Earnshaw, Henri Nouwen and The Return of the Prodigal Son). By naming self-rejection and connecting it to our reluctance to receive God, Nouwen touches on a core truth about many of us: we have deep wells of unworthiness. (see Earnshaw, 142).  

Often, just when we need God’s love the most, we decide to go it alone – we get practical and realistic – but Nouwen models a different way.  He shows us that a hopeful person can instead “choose for the light” and allow ourselves to be loved (see Nouwen, Prodigal Son, 108-109).  In the parable, love is always there. Nouwen shows us how to soften our boundaries and open to this field of loving.  For many of us, learning how to receive God’s love, becomes transformative and profoundly healing (see Earnshaw, 143).

The question is will we allow ourselves to met by God as we come down the road this Christmas? We know that Nouwen’s struggle to accept God’s love would continue long after his book was published but this is strangely comforting.  We too can leave and return from “the distant country.” The difference now is we know, even if we forget now and then, that we are God’s beloved.  We are not walking in circles we are walking home.  

With this comfort, with this consolation, we can choose to move from fatalism to hope. Let’s live in hope!

Listen here for a conversation I had with Robert Ellsberg, Publisher, Orbis Books and author of All Saints about the meaning of hope in a time of uncertainty, the role of discernment, and the experience of the pandemic as a “long Advent season.”

Questions to ponder:

Write, draw, paint or imagine a portrait of God.  How is your portrait the same or different from Nouwen’s portrait in The Return of the Prodigal Son? 

Think back to all the times God was present in your life.  Start at the beginning of your life (you might want to start with the phrase “I was born”) and think of as many episodes as you can where God was present, ending with where you are in life now.  It is likely it wasn’t just in the good times but also in the hard times.  What do you carry with you of value from these encounters?  How do these memories of God’s presence in your life affect your “trust that all of life is in good hands?”

Robert mentions reading about the lives of saints each morning with his wife Monica.  What saints or people have modelled for you how to live a hopeful life?

Some people describe reading Henri Nouwen as an “unlearning.” Is there anything you are unlearning by studying Henri Nouwen and his book The Return of the Prodigal Son? 

What stops you from receiving love?  Will you allow yourself to be met by God as you come down the road this Christmas? 

 [Note: this blog post was originally written for Advent with Henri, with Paraclete Press, in connection with my book Henri Nouwen and The Return of the Prodigal Son: The Making of a Spiritual Classic.]

Join Me and the Community of Paraclete Press for a Virtual Advent Book Discussion!

My entire approach to Christmas changed when I first encountered the writing of Henri Nouwen. Before reading him, I would sprint to the finish line taking too much of the noisy marketplace with me. Henri taught me the value of active waiting, how to find joy hidden in sorrow, how to remain hopeful in anxious times and many other truths that have made the Advent season much more meaningful.

With all that is going on in our world in 2020, it seems to me we need the gifts of Advent more than ever, and Henri Nouwen, beloved Catholic priest and writer of thirty-nine books on the spiritual life, is a wonderful companion for the journey.  Just this morning, I came across a letter Henri wrote in December 1980.  Penned nearly forty years ago, it could have been written today.  

“He writes, ‘The situation in our world is frightening and many people experience deep anxieties. More than ever we will be tested in our faith. I hope and pray that the Lord will deepen our faith during these weeks of Advent and will fill us with peace and joy, which belong to his kingdom. Hope is not optimism and I pray that we all will be able to live hopefully in the midst of our apocalyptic time. We have a promise and God is faithful to his promise even when we are doubtful and fearful.’ (Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life, Convergent Books, 2018). 

Join me to walk the Advent path with Henri Nouwen as our companion. We’ll draw out Advent wisdom from my book about the making of his spiritual classic, The Return of the Prodigal Son, speak with special guests, share some of his writing, and much more. Let’s deepen our faith together so that by Christmas day we awaken to hearts filled with the real gifts of Christmas—peace and joy.

Each Tuesday of Advent, you will be sent an email containing a link to a special blog for this discussion, where you'll find a weekly reflection by me and a few questions to discuss. You will also receive a link to a short podcast conversation between me and Paraclete Press Publisher, Jon Sweeney, and other special guests.

I encourage you to buy a copy of Henri Nouwen and the Return of the Prodigal Son: The Making of a Spiritual Classic and the original The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen. You can read at your own pace; all at once or a little every week.

To sign up please go to the website of Paraclete Press.

Book Review - Healthy Caregiving: Perspectives for Caring Professionals in Company with Henri Nouwen by Michelle O'Rourke

“Self-care is not something to add to our already full to-do list or to relegate to an annual vacation.  It must become an intentional way of living where our values, attitudes and actions are integrated into our day-to-day routines.  To me, there is a moral imperative to making sure that we work diligently at this to remain healthy ourselves, but also to ensure that we have what we need to give to others.  We deserve it – and so do they.” Michelle O’Rourke

Note: this review was published in Fully Alive,  the professional magazine of the Religious and Moral Education Council of the Alberta Teachers' Association. Vol. 5, No. 1, Fall 2020.

Burn-out.  Fatigue.  Stress.  These are some of the issues facing caring professionals - including teachers - in our task-oriented society. Teaching during a pandemic has pushed these afflictions to new levels One antidote is self-care.  In this timely and affirming book, emergency room and parish nurse, lay minister and hospice founder, Michelle O’Rourke explores the concept of caring for ourselves so we can care for others.  O’Rourke notes: “Time and again, I have witnessed how beautiful hearts, including my own, have become tired and broken when the burden of caring becomes too onerous. With millions of people involved in caring professions in North America, and millions more caring for their own families and friends in an unpaid role, supporting and nourishing caregivers is a monumental but essential task.” 

If you have even found yourself asking “How do I care for my students without sacrificing my own well-being?” this book is for you.  While the book is aimed primarily at health-care professionals, there is much wisdom for teachers as well.   It is about spending time raising self-awareness so you can be a better caregiver.  O’Rourke, a practitioner with four decades in the field, observes, “Even if you’ve been engaged in the profession for a while. It is good to sit back and reflect.” She encourages readers to take time to be in touch with their heart and soul and ask what is going well, what is causing difficulty, and what changes might help redirect them to live more in line with their own inner values and who they want to be.

A key feature of the book is O’Rourke’s use of beloved Catholic priest Henri Nouwen as a wisdom teacher about healthy caregiving.  In fact, the book was commissioned by the Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust, the body responsible for his legacy since his death in 1996, to extend Nouwen’s spirituality to modern care practitioners.  

Nouwen wrote nearly forty books on spirituality and the inner life including The Wounded Healer and his understanding of care as one of mutuality and self-awareness sets the foundation for the book: “I definitely believe that we can only care to the degree that we are in touch with our own doubts and fears, just as we can only listen to the story of the other by knowing our own.” 

Nouwen’s insights are the foundation for each chapter, but O’Rourke also features the work of other experts including Parker Palmer, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen.  Alongside the experts, O’Rourke weaves in personal stories drawn from her own life as well as from chaplains, social workers and other professional care providers.  At the end of each section are thoughtful self-reflective questions “to encourage the reader to explore their own care experiences and inner landscape...” Readers could use these questions as the basis for a personal retreat or group discussion.  

An additional strength of the book is O’Rourke’s expertise in curating resources that readers might take up in their practice of self-care.  She includes a helpful summary of mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn, tips on how to use writing as a self-discovery tool and a good introduction to the practice of self-compassion by Kristen Neff to name just a few.  

The crux of the book is about the essential nature of care.  It covers such topics as suffering, power, and entering into the pain of the other.  O’Rourke explores the differences between job, career and calling, care versus cure as well caregiving as a sacred vocation.  The challenges of caregiving – the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual costs – are examined in detail.  Concrete strategies for compassionate care are suggested: examine your bias, acknowledge your judgementalism, give up control and enter into your weakness. Meditations on patience and time offer new insights that might change readers understanding of how to be present in difficult situations.  The power of listening and being (as opposed to doing) are also explored.  Brené Brown’s “myth of self-sufficiency” as well as the concept of “enough” are offered as useful tools for identifying ways you might sabotage yourself as you care for others.  The importance of building community with colleagues, looking out for signs of distress in fellow carers as well as tips on how to ask for help provide important lessons on how to sustain yourself as a professional caregiver for the long-haul.  Many of the suggestions would be applicable not just to classroom teachers but also the people who care for them, including school principals and other upper-level administrators.  

While the book is written for a broad audience, sections on sustaining the spirit will be particularly meaningful for religion teachers. O’Rourke draws readers attention to the concept of “sanctuary” by Parker Palmer.  It is about finding places, rhythms, practises that nourish the soul “for your own sake, and for those who you care for and care about.” Gratitude journals, telling care stories, inspirational reading, quiet time, formal retreats are some suggestions to nourish the spirit.  Other sections on growth and transformation will be equally meaningful.  

In 1976, Henri Nouwen, gave a public talk at Yale Divinity School called “Living the Questions: The Spirituality of the Religion Teacher.”* In it, Nouwen reflected on the role of teacher of religion.  He said, “The religion teacher is called to help students in the discovery of their own most personal search by entering with them in a common vulnerability so that in the mutual relationship between teacher and student the questioning Lord can be made visible.” Healthy Caregiving is the resource you need to take up Nouwen’s challenging call and flourish in the sacred undertaking of teaching. 

* See https://discoverarchives.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/living-the-questions

For more information: http://www.twentythirdpublications.com/hecapeforcan.html

White Privilege, #BLM, Faith and Works - A Personal Reflection

Preamble

I have been a member of the progressive congregation of Trinity St. Paul’s United Church in Toronto for nearly twenty-five years. What hooked me was a fabulous choir led by a dynamic music director. I have sung Bach Cantatas, taize chants, modern Norwegian song cycles and many, many sacred hymns. Other ways I have contributed to the community include being part of the Pastoral Care Team and co-leading a series of contemplative retreats about the inner spiritual life. What I haven’t done is join any of the social justice action groups that are the life-blood of my congregation: climate justice, the conflict in the Middle East, LGBTQ+ rights, Indigenous rights and more. For reasons I get into below, I felt resistance to joining church led social action groups. I would join rallies and sign petitions as a concerned citizen but never as a member of TSP. George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and so. many. others. changed that. Recently, I joined the TSP Public Witness Circle to address anti-Black racism. I am part of a sub-group that is thinking about a theological framework for making an institutional statement. In our first meeting I intended just to listen. I felt like I had much more to learn than to offer. But, after everyone else had spoken, my friend Lynne asked: “Gabrielle, do you have anything you’d like to say?” My heart started to beat more quickly. What could I add of value? What did I know about how a church witnesses to racism? But words did come flowing out of my mouth, and what I found myself saying was not an answer but a question: “What I want to know is what is so passionate in us and our faith that compels us to do this work?” This question seemed to energize my group. We each agreed to write a personal reflection. Mine is below. I am sharing because I hope it inspires my white friends to consider their own reasons for stepping up and doing the work of dismantling systemic racism. Please share in the comments section if you are so moved.

Personal Reflection on my decision to participate in TSP’s Public Witness on Anti-Black Racism

I was born at a time when Canadian children were taught that racism was bad.  This was demonstrated in my home as well.  Racism was not tolerated – full stop.  So, when I observed what was happening to black people – intolerance, violence, discrimination – I would condemn it.  As a first-year university student I found a racial slur in a library cubby that said, “Go f**k a black chick” and while at first, I just left it there and tried to find another place to study, I felt an impulse to do something and went back to erase it.  I tried scratching it out with my pen.  When that didn’t work, I used my saliva and finger to rub it off.  That night I recorded in my diary: “It wasn’t much, but I feel like this one small act was something.” It was my first action for racial justice.

Fast-forward twenty-five years – George Floyd is killed and in all my circles the act is roundly received with horror.  Instagram, twitter, Facebook become a series of black boxes with the simple hashtag #BLM.  I follow suit. But then, the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement call me out further.  They say: “White people it is time to check your white privilege that allows systemic racism to flourish in 21st century society.” 

They were speaking Truth and it cut right through me.  For the first time in my over five decades of life I thought about the ways that my skin colour gave me advantages that people from racialized groups didn’t have.  I thought of my predominantly white profession of archives.  I have been a strong advocate for women in archives but have never considered the racial bias in our archival practices.  I looked back at my hiring record.  Of the 100s of people I have hired over the years how many were racialized? Very, very few.  I was confronted with a shameful reality: I had not only benefitted from a system that privileged white people, I had perpetuated it.

The leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement also said: “It is not enough to condemn black racism. White people must act to dismantle the racist systems.” Sandy Hudson, the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement presence in Canada spoke about this to our congregation in a recent sermon.  She began with passages from James 2: 14-25:

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters,[a] if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. 19 

 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25

Hudson’s words were very powerful, and her arguments for defunding police were convincing, but while she made an excellent case for “works” she left out something very important: faith. 

I came away from her sermon with a question: Where does my faith come into my response to white supremacy and systemic racism?  Many good, secular people are coming together to respond to systematic racism. How will mine, as a Christian, be a helpful addition?  

The question is a vital one. There are good reasons to leave my faith out of it altogether.  Christians have a bad track record when it comes to imposing their faith on others.  The United Church of Canada has issued apologies for its role in the Residential School System.  Missionary work to convert “the heathens” is roundly criticized now for oppressive hegemony that devalued others.  Much of the climate crisis can be traced back to a religious world-view that put humans at the centre at the expense of non-human ecosystems.  I don’t want to be part of something that later will be condemned as harmful.  

But faith has also been the rock on which such visionaries as Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Gandhi, have stood.  They are exemplaries of faith-based witness. What can I learn from them, and how will I stand on my own faith to respond to anti-black racism?  

I begin to answer this question by reflecting on the tenets of my faith.  What is my theological framework as it were? I come up with a list:

Tenets of my Faith

-       The Kindom is already here.  “I see a new Earth”. “We are a resurrection people”

-       All people are made in the image of God (Genesis 1: 26-27: Then God said, “Let us make man/woman in our image, according to Our likeness.”)

-       Jesus taught us to love our enemies; to love our neighbour as ourselves

-       We are called to be peacemakers

-       We are not alone.  We live in God’s world.

- We live in a world of abundance.

As I do this work of identifying the tenets of my faith, I notice that there is more to my inner resistance to joining this faith-based witness at TSP.  Not only have Christians got it very wrong in the past, I have also noticed that some Christian action is hardly recognizable from political action.  It can be accusatory, intolerant, and create divisions of “us” and “them.” It can be success-driven eerily mimicking the practises of capitalism.  Sometimes individual egos can inflame a situation rather than heal it.  A tone of self-righteousness can seep in.

The question now becomes how can I avoid these traps myself?  Here is a tentative list of ideas, many which need to be developed further.  My hope is that as a group we can practice (some of) them together.

How I want to practice Christian action

1.     Integrate contemplative practices 

-       All action will come from a place of deep connection with the LOVING God; I will be grounded in LOVE.  Contemplation is integral to action.

-       It is God that acts through me and I must be deeply attentive to God’s presence in my life; not me but God

-       I can use contemplative practices to develop sight to see the Kindom so I can point to it for others. 

-       I can dream with God for a better world (use the Christian imagination)

-       I can spend time in solitude. I can spend time in stillness and silence by myself and with others.

-       I can inhabit the words of Julian of Norwich: “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another.” 

2.     Integrate the Divine Feminine 

-       For millennia the masculine modality has prevailed.  In this modality it is fight or flight.  It is aggressive and power-driven.  What would it look like to bring in the divine feminine to this work? One person called it “tend and mend” – what would this look like? Other qualities of the divine feminine: spaciousness, softness, sweetness.  What else?

3.     Practise non-Dualism

-       Richard Rohr has been seminal in raising our awareness to how dualistic our frameworks can be.  How can non-dualism practises be brought into this work?

4.     Join the Fellowship of the Weak 

-       I am not alone. I do this work in community.  

-       I can let my heart break with God’s for the pain of the world (lament)

-       I can connect with times in my life when I have been “othered”; I can connect with the pain and lift it up to God.  I can connect my pain with the pain of other people and with Jesus’ suffering.

-       I can create space for listening to others.  I can take steps to widen my circle.

5.     Feed my soul with beauty and goodness

-       I can feed my soul with goodness and beauty as sustenance for the journey. I can do this in solitude and in community.

-       I can develop a discipline of celebration 

-       I can claim joy!

The Golden Thread: Writing, Happiness and the Progoff Intensive Journal Method

I still have my first diary.  It is cloth bound in a fabric festooned with red strawberries. Stickers of teddy bears, pigs, a cat, a rainbow and an alligator are arranged artfully on the inside cover.  The first entry, written when I was 12 years old, starts with a poem:

A diary is personal where thoughts can be concealed

A place where a mind and pen can write what is thought and feeled.

It doesn’t get much better from there.  Reading the ramblings of my pre-teen self is an exercise in humility.  No prodigious talent is hidden in its pages, just angst-ridden entries about crushes and the drama of the school yard.  Yet, that first strawberry notebook led to a lifelong habit of keeping a diary. Since then I have filled more than twenty-five volumes.

Lately, I’ve been writing less. I seem to be running out of things to say.  My words feel repetitive, thoughts circular. Ironically, I am preparing to write a book -  a memoir of sorts.  How can I write a book if I struggle to pen a journal entry?  Julia Cameron, the guru on the art of writing, recommends filling three, single-spaced pages each morning to warm up the writing engine. My engine, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to want to start. 

While grappling with this recently, an email dropped into my inbox. It was an invitation to join a journaling workshop based on the Progoff Method.  I signed up immediately.  It’s been two weeks since I finished and not only are my writing juices flowing, I am savouring other unexpected gifts, including that most elusive of emotional states: happiness! What happened? Let me see if I can recall the golden thread…

The Workshop

“Is the life you are living, the life that wants to live in you?” asks Evelyn, our facilitator, to the twelve heads bobbing on the Zoom screen.  “Get a blank piece of lined paper.  Write the date at the top and for fifteen minutes answer the questions:

Where am I now in my life?

What am I moving towards?

Where is my life leading me?”

“Try to get grounded in the journal,” she continues. “Tune into the inner and outer aspects of your life.  Try to position yourself in your life.  This exercise is to deepen contact with your Selves.  We know more than we understand.  How do we access this axis in ourselves?  

Begin with the sentence: ‘This is a time when…”

I write.  This is a time when I am trying to listen to the story in me that wants to be told…

A bell rings.  “You won’t be finished,” Evelyn says, “but we must stop somewhere. Put this piece of writing behind the green divider marked ‘Period Log’.”

The Period Log is one of twenty-five sections of what creator Ira Progoff called a “psychological workbook.” The Progoff Journal (which I was mailed after signing up for the workshop) is a black three-ring binder with a starburst on the cover.  Inside the binder are green, yellow, orange, blue, red and purple dividers.  Each colour is labelled.  Green is the “Period Log’, yellow is the “Daily Log”, orange is for “Dialogue Dimensions”, blue is “Depth Dimensions”, red is “Life/Time Dimensions” and purple for “Meaning Dimension.” Within each colour are further dividers with intriguing names like “Mantra/Crystals,” “Twilight Imagery” and “Now: the Open Moment.” 

Ira Progoff (1921-1998) was an American psychologist and professor who studied with Carl Jung. He first formulated the intensive journal concept in 1966. He described the workbook as an “open-ended means of gaining perspective on where you are in the movement of your life.” (Progoff, At a Journal Workshop (1975), ix).  He believed that journal writing was one way to access the ‘intangible’.  Meditation was the other.

Evelyn: “Close your eyes.  Get still.  Breathe deeply. Rhythmically.  Listen to the meditation….”

…My life 

Is like the shaft of a well.

I go deep into it.

The life of each of us

Is a well.

Its sources are deep,

But it gives water on the surface.

Now we go inward,

Moving through the center point,

Through the center point,

Deeply inward to explore

The infinities of our well… (Progoff, The Well and the Cathedral, 67)

Evelyn encourages us to watch and listen for images that are surfacing. I find myself moving effortlessly inward.  

“Attend to the symbols, fragments of music, sensations that are emerging.  Note them.  Don’t judge or analzye.  We are looking inward but we are not looking merely for things that can be seen.  We are looking inward for direct knowings and sensations of every kind that may come to us when our attention is turned to the larger twilight realm of Self that lives between unconscious sleep and waking consciousness.” 

Moving through the center point

Into the well of our Self

As deeply

As fully

As freely as we can.

Through the center point

Exploring the deep places.

Exploring the deep places.

In the Silence…In the Silence. (Well and the Cathedral, 71)

The bell rings.  We record what emerged in our ‘Meditation Log.’

*

The workshop continues with a similar rhythm over six days.  We write. We meditate.  We read our words aloud to ourselves or to the group.  We explore recurring images. We record our dreams.  We do writing exercises with names like Steppingstones and Dialogue with Body. We look at life patterns and crossroads and tap into “the underground stream” of creativity; we practice non-judgement.

As we move through the days, I can feel my sense of self expanding.  Life choices that I regret become more integrated.  I learn to see how every aspect of my life has shaped me and brought me to the place I am now.  During one meditation I receive an image of a large green field. After “stretching it out” (as Evelyn put it) I sense this is a symbol of my life.  My future is as open as a vast field.

Discovering coherence in my life was one unexpected gift.  Another was experiencing the connection of my life to something larger.  I wrote and meditated my way into a renewed experience of contact with ‘the unity of being’ and with all of creation.  Progoff wrote, “…as we move inward through the well of Self, we are taking steps towards wholeness as we are deepening the relationship between our individuality and the universe” (The Well and the Cathedral, 161).

 Without any reference to doctrine, the Intensive Journal Method became a profoundly religious experience.  The deeper I  explored the depth dimension within myself, the more my heart opened.  I was filled with compassion for the world and its various crises.  More writing and meditation in the final days of the workshop gave me a channel to explore how to connect my life with the needs of the planet.   

“What do you want to do with your life that will be of consequence for the world? asks Evelyn. “Make a list under the heading ‘Ultimate Concerns’. The phrase ‘ultimate concerns’ was borrowed by Progoff from theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich.  According to Tillich, ‘faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.’  Take out another piece of blank paper.  Write the date on the top.”  

My list is long, but one item burns more brightly than the others:  “I want to write a book that gives witness to the power of love in times of loss.” 

I remember how certain I was when I wrote that. How happy. Henri Nouwen once said that “writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us.”

Today, I write this post to keep something alive. So, for you and for me, a recap of the Golden Thread to Happiness:.

1. Create time and spaces in your life to go inward in stillness and silence. Allow images to bubble up from the intangible.

2. Connect with your life and ask it periodically where it wants to go. Listen to your life. Give it a voice.

3. Accept and cherish everything that has ever happened to you. It got you to this present moment.

4. Find your ‘Ultimate Concern’, the thing that you want to contribute to the world, and do it.

And write in your diary. Start with “This is a time when….”

Books Cited

Progoff, Ira.  At a Journal Workshop: Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability (Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tracher, Inc., 1975).

Progoff, Ira. The Well and the Cathedral: An Entrance Meditation (New York: Dialogue House Library, 1977).

Nouwen, Henri. You are The Beloved: Daily Meditations for the Spiritual Life (New York: Convergent Books, 2017).

"My Story is a strange one, but I feel compelled to tell it"

When I am not editing or writing books, I work as an archivist for the Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust.  Part of my job is to identify books about Henri Nouwen that might be useful for researchers.  The idea is to assemble a collection of everything published by and about Nouwen and make it available through the Henri J. M. Nouwen Archives and Research Collection.  Today I discovered The Priscilla Revelation and the Discovery of the Apple Constellation by Carolyn M. Beehler, edited by Dana B. Goward (Xlibris, 2015).  Although not apparent from the title, Henri Nouwen features prominently, and makes this book an excellent candidate for our collection.  It is also an intriguing story of one woman’s spiritual journey following an unexpected, life-altering religious experience.

I found out about this book in an indirect way. I was going through old computer files and came upon a listing of letters by Nouwen that I had read in preparation for my book Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life.  One entry caught my eye: a full transcript of a letter to Carolyn Beehler of New Haven, CT from Henri Nouwen.  It was dated 1978 and Nouwen was in Rome on sabbatical, at North American College in Vatican City.  He wrote, “Many thanks for your very kind letters.  I am excited about your excitement and I share your hope that a woman wrote one of the books of the Bible.”  (letter can be found in the Nouwen Archives, Beehler accession, 2011 50).

By now I too was excited about the excitement; a woman wrote one of the books of the Bible?  I remembered a Dana Beehler Goward had contacted the Legacy Trust a few years ago for permission to publish some of Nouwen’s letters in a posthumous book she was editing of her mother’s writing.  The mother was, of course Beehler, recipient of Nouwen’s letter.  What had become of that project, I wondered.  An internet search indicated her book had been self-published in 2015, and I ordered it immediately. 

Carolyn Beehler came to know Nouwen while he was a professor at Yale Divinity School.  They met through a series of coincidences just as her ordinary life as artist, art teacher, wife and mother of three, was interrupted by an unusual event – a revelation, in fact.  Beehler was preparing for an art course she was to teach when she received what she called a ‘transmission of knowledge’, relating to The Letters to the Hebrews in the New Testament.  A voice seemed to tell her it was written by a woman and that her task was to prove it.  As an ‘occasional holiday’ Christian, she was flummoxed.  Why her, a woman with only a high school education?  “I had never studied parapsychology, nor was I a scholar or historian.  Yet for some strange reason, a message from an ancient woman came to me clearly, with an urgency that stirred me deeply.” (p.xiv).   

But somehow, as it was happening, she managed to write the transmission down and even had the presence of mind to turn on a tape recorder to record her thoughts, which were spilling out faster than she could write.  

I was drawn into her tale.  Beehler is a vivacious woman and her story has elements of a page-turner. She travelled to Rome, to the ancient catacombs, to the summer house of the Pope and numerous libraries. She met with theologians, Biblical scholars and eventually the Pope himself.  Ultimately, she made a historically significant discovery in a catacomb under Rome of a fresco depicting a tree full of apples, seemingly meaningless decoration.  Then she saw the apples represented stars and depicted a constellation, marking the time of Jesus’ birth.  The subterfuge was because of a ban on astrology at the time the artwork was created.  Beehler would achieve international recognition for this discovery of the “apple constellation.”

Henri Nouwen features in her story as a mentor and passionate supporter.  Some of her anecdotes create a portrait of a man Beehler describes as “the most spiritual and saintly man I had ever met.” (p.104)  She writes of her first encounter with Nouwen at one of his public lectures at the Mercy Center, a spirituality and retreat facility close to Yale.  She writes, “He wore glasses and a scratch tweed jacket.  Could this be our speaker, the priest? Father Henri Nouwen? He walked over to the lectern and did a most unusual thing.  He lifted the lectern, turned, and carried it off stage! He must be the custodian, I thought, for he left a very empty stage, devoid of anything.  But no, he returned and walked over to where the lectern had been and stood in its place! Not moving but staring out at all of us.  Of course, we were all staring back at this lone figure.  He stood there very tall and very still.  He did not speak for many embarrassing moments until all sound ceased.  We waited.  The quiet seemed to bring him to life.  He raised his head.  His extralong fingers reached out in an imploring gesture.  From the silence, a strange heavily accented Dutch voice broke the silence. “Now you will listen!” (p. 3)

In another anecdote, the two of them were together in Rome.  He was teaching and she was doing her research.  Nouwen had made arrangements for Beehler’s accommodation at a local convent. One night she stayed out late and found the convent door bolted shut.  After knocking in vain, she telephoned Nouwen for help.  He sprang out of bed and arranged for a taxi to bring her to his residence while he searched for a hotel for her.  Finding one they hopped back into a cab and tried to check in. “The hotel clerk tried to charge me twenty-four thousand liras, but Henri said, “No, it is too much.” The clerk said, “Twelve thousand lira” and asked for my passport, which was still back at the convent. Henri grew angry and spoke to him with such authority that anyone in the world would have obeyed.  The clerk demanded the money then.  Henri said, “No, tomorrow.” (p.46)  This is a great example of a flare of temper in Nouwen I have rarely heard about before.  

At one point in her research, Beehler started to lose energy for her project and questioned the whole enterprise. She recalls, “I met Henri at 10:30 a.m. as he was arranging my visit to the Scavi, the necropolis under the Vatican Basilica, where Saint Peter and so many others are buried.  I felt sad and depressed. I was bemoaning my helpless ways and questioning my worthiness for this mission.  Henri scolded me for my feelings.  How could I tell him I was overwhelmed and feeling unworthy of it all after he and everyone had done so much for me? Deeply frustrated, Henri nearly shouted that God and many people had continually helped me, could I not see it? What more did I want?” (p.54).  Beehler needed this bracing pep talk.  “It was a positive expression to shake me up and encourage me to go on.” (p.54).

This book indicates how supportive Nouwen was of women and speaks to his openness to unusual religious experiences.  Beehler sought help with her project from priests, theologians and people from religious orders; not all of them were receptive.  Nouwen on the other hand, was open to the hypothesis that a woman could have written part of the Bible.  He even hoped it was so.  And he never doubted Beehler’s capacity to find the answers to her questions.  He encouraged her while cautioning that it would not be easy. Beehler records, “His thoughts were that if I truly accepted the revelation, I must be strong enough to believe it through whatever the obstacles and problems that might arise.  I would meet some people who would think I was crazy, he said.  Others would be indifferent, some would believe, and still others would try to use me.  He asked if I prepared to accept the consequences of this revelation.  I did not know.” (p.48).

As is often the case, Nouwen’s words speak directly to me too.  Words of being strong in the face of judgement encourage me to persist with a personal writing project of my own that is proving difficult.  Perhaps you, dear reader, need these words as well. Nouwen’s advice to Beehler is for anyone daring to tell “a strange story.”

The book had one final gift for me as an archivist: a mystery of my own to solve.  It involves a painting of frogs that Beehler gave to Nouwen as a present early in their friendship.  A quote by Thoreau was the inspiration: 

Why should we be in such haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. 

Beehler gave Nouwen the painting when she noticed that he quoted the same passage in his book The Genesee Diary (1976). The last time she saw her painting was in 1979, as Nouwen packed it in his luggage bound for the Abbey of the Genesee, where he was headed for his second extended stay.  

Where is the painting now?  Curiously, it is not among the scores of objects and artwork preserved in the Nouwen Archives. I wondered if perhaps the Nouwen family in Holland might have it, but after checking with Laurent Nouwen, Henri’s younger brother, I am still at a loss.  Another email to Brother Augustine Jackson of the Abbey of the Genesee has turned up nothing.  I had hoped it was hanging on some lucky monk’s wall, but this is also a dead end.  The mystery of the missing painting continues. Carolyn Beehler’s book however, will be preserved for generations to come in the Henri J. M. Nouwen Archives and Research Collection -  a strange and compelling story wonderfully told.

Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son and the Pandemic

Henri Nouwen’s encounter with Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son was a turning point in his life. Is the current pandemic ours?

Dread and unease.  There are other feelings.  Fear is all around us and may be more infectious than the virus itself.  There’s very real suffering  –  the sick and dying, and those without enough food or security.  There is also the grief of those who have lost loved ones.  Even for the more privileged detainees among us, boredom is creeping in and we begin to question our mental stability – how will we pass the time when our games have all been played and our podcasts listened to?

It feels like a time of reckoning.  But what are we to reckon with?  Some see it as a time of unveiling - of how our way of life has damaged the earth.  We are seeing appalling inequalities and the ugliness of polarized world-views.  We are seeing the best and worst in human nature.  

At times like these my inclination is to turn to books for wisdom, and I find myself reaching for Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son.  This spiritual classic published twenty-eight years ago tells the story of Nouwen’s encounter with a poster of Rembrandt’s painting of the parable of the Prodigal Son. It was a turning point in Nouwen’s life.  Is this pandemic our turning point?  Nouwen’s book suggests that somewhere, individually or collectively, we have taken a wrong turn.  Can this pandemic help us change our direction?  And when it’s over, can our society reconfigure into something better? 

The subtitle of Nouwen’s book is A Story of Homecoming.  With most of us being housebound for the past month it may sound ironic.  But what about our spiritual homes?  Is this a moment to turn around and return to where we really belong?

Nouwen first identifies himself with the younger son of the parable.  He describes him as squandering his life and finally “coming to his senses”.  By giving in to his compulsions and addictions he has ended up dissipated and starving.  Are we having our own ‘coming to our senses’ moment?  How have we, as a society, been like the prodigal son – squandering the plenitude of beauty and natural wealth of our planet?  Will this be the moment we turn back from compulsive consumption and selfish greed?  I must also face the personal aspect of this. Can I look honestly at myself and ask:  Where have I been squandering my life?  My time?  My gifts?  My loving heart?  In what areas must I face the truth of my life?  Nouwen describes the younger son as being confronted with his unconverted self.  Am I also being confronted with a self in need of conversion?

Nouwen then relates to the elder son of the parable, who is equally ‘not at home’.  Although he has done all the right things, he is filled with anger and resentment.  Unlike his younger brother whose decrepitude is there for all to see in his rags and worn shoes, the elder son looks good by outward appearances, but inside he is raging.  His brother’s return brings up his competitive instincts and wounded sense of justice.  He refuses to join the welcome party.  In Rembrandt’s painting he is just outside the warm circle of light, his hands held stiffly in front of him like a shield.  Does the elder son show how I might have become rigid and calcified in my judgments of others, and complacent in my own sense of correctness?

Where in fact do I get my sense of self-worth?  Through his analysis of the elder son, Nouwen exposes how much we get it from where we work, how much we earn, what kind of car we drive, how much we travel, etc.  We use props to hide our propensity for self-rejection.  In this pandemic many of these external supports are missing.  Our identities are being shaken.  We are in a place beyond earning, doing and buying.  Who am I without these props?  This is the great homecoming; to return to the place where we belong without condition, to our true home.  Can the elder son see this? Can I? 

Nouwen shows us that Jesus’ parable is really about the immensity of God’s love.  This is what we need to be reminded of more than anything else in this pandemic – that we are loved unconditionally, extravagantly, by God.  As the world goes crazy around us, can we bring ourselves to allow God to place hands on our shoulders, bless us and welcome us home, with no preconditions, no questions asked?  

Nouwen remarks on the stillness at the centre of Rembrandt’s picture.  Rembrandt focusses in on the tender moment of reconciliation.  I am comforted by this.  Like the wayward son I can just “be”, with my rags and worn shoes.  Like the elder son, I can release myself from the need to prove my worthiness.  I can rest in divine comfort.  

Finally, there is an even greater spiritual challenge laid out by Nouwen.  It is the call to become the father in the parable.  Nouwen emphasises the quiet, gentle quality of God’s love.  Could we assume these qualities ourselves?  Not just to be like the Father but to actually be the Father.  Could we give up our childish ways and be the grown-ups the world needs right now?  In this pandemic the world needs mature people more than ever.  Will I be that person?  Like the Father in the parable, will I be the one who blesses people?  Affirms them?  Loves them?  This is the challenge before us.  Is the pandemic our time for transitioning from being restless, needy children to loving, forgiving adults?  

How could we do this?  Nouwen suggests three disciplines: grieving, forgiving and exercising generosity.  We must grieve what we are losing today in this pandemic.  We must grieve the loss of our childish naivety.  Lamentation must be our daily prayer.  Then we must forgive all whom we encounter who are fearful and who act out of fear, even when that fear is expressed toward us in anger.  And finally we must be generous with our time, with our gifts, and with our love, as we go through this pandemic together. 

But, as Nouwen reminds us, we don’t do it alone.  We won’t achieve it with willpower or harsh self coercion.  We do it by claiming that we are the beloved of God.

Nouwen provides us with a beautiful image:  “I have to kneel before the Father, put my ear against his chest and listen, without interruption to the heartbeat of God.  Then, and only then, can I say carefully and very gently what I hear.” (15).  What if I sat for ten minutes every morning leaning my head against God’s chest as I ask:  Who am I going to be today?  How can I be a source of God’s presence in a world that needs it more than ever? 

Sometimes the path of spiritual parenthood requires us to contend with loneliness and emptiness.  But the reward is joy!  Nouwen’s treatise on the parable teaches us that it is possible to find joy in the midst of sorrow. He claims that we don’t have to wait for everything to be perfect before we celebrate.  We can start now:

“Celebration belongs to God’s Kingdom. “Rejoice with me” is the voice of God…God rejoices.  Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness.  No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found. Look for hidden joy!... I don’t have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand.  This is the real discipline.  It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded by lies. I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim the joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways.  The reward for choosing joy is joy itself.” (Prodigal Son, 107, 108)

The Return of the Prodigal Son is a book about choices.  Will we stop squandering our riches?  Will we let go of our carefully constructed identities of success?  Will we choose spiritual maturity and the discipline of celebration?  These are small choices but ones with enormous implications for ourselves – and for our world.

The Making of a Masterpiece

I spent today answering a questionnaire from the publicity department of Paraclete Press, the publisher of my new book Henri Nouwen and the Return of the Prodigal Son: The Making of a Spiritual Classic. It is a long document - five pages. When it landed in my inbox about a month ago, I opened it and quickly closed it again, horrified at how much an author was expected to “push” their own book. But now, having acclimatized to yet more work an author does for free, I find myself enjoying the process. For one thing, I’ve been catalyzed to set up a “brand” on social media. I am now registered on Amazon Author Central (my url is amazon.com/author/gabrielleearnshaw) and have established a professional instagram account to share details of my new writerly life (glearnshaw is my handle - you can follow me by clicking below on the instagram icon). My newly updated twitter account is also below.

In addition to an enjoyable crash course in social media, I have been pleasantly challenged by the myriad of questions they have for me: “List 5 questions that would be a Q&A with the author”, “Please give us 5-10 key word phrases that readers might use to search for the book”, “What makes your book different, controversial, or stimulating” are some examples. It is like sudoku for writers! (Some answers: “How were you personally impacted by The Return of the Prodigal Son?”; “Adulting” “Includes never published letters from Nouwen’s personal archives.”)

A favorite question was “Give us 3 comparative title of your book”. One came to mind right away. It is the book I used as a model for my own. It is called Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece by Michael Gorra. This book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and is truly an exemplary model of a biography of a classic book. I like to aim high! Other books on my list of comparative titles include The Professor and the Madman:  A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester and Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. No doubt there are other and perhaps you’ll share them with me below in the comments section.

Meanwhile, I will get back to my questionnaire: “Please list any ideas you have of possible endorsers for the book”. Mmmmmmmmmm…….

New Website!

In anticipation of my upcoming book Henri Nouwen and The Return of the Prodigal Son: The Making of a Spiritual Classic (Paraclete Press, Spring 2020), I have created this website to showcase my work to promote the legacy of Henri Nouwen. Lots more content to add but a start. Looking forward to having this space to connect with Henri Nouwen readers and others.