Home

I am reading Lifesigns by Henri Nouwen and I came across this piece this morning.  It especially spoke to me because of the number of people who recently lost their homes in tornatoes.
   "Probably no word better summarizes the suffering of our time than the word "homeless."  It reveals one of our deepest and most painful conditions, the condition of not having a sense of belonging, of not having a place where we can feel safe, cared for, protected and loved.
   The first and most obvious quality of a home is its intimacy.  When we say: "I do not feel at home here" we express an uneasiness that does not permit intimacy.  When we say: "I wish I were home" we express a longing for that intimate place that offers us a sense of belonging.  Even though many people suffer much from conflicts at home, even though much emotional suffering finds its roots at home, and even though "broken homes" are increasingly blamed for crimes and illnesses, the word "home" continues to carry with it a warm love and remains one of the most evocative symbols for happiness.  The Christian faith even calls us to experience life as "going home" and death as "coming home at last."  In Rembrandt's painting of the Prodigal Son, we can see a moving expression of that fiaht.  The loving embrace in which the old father holds his exhausted son affirms our depest desires for a lasting, intimate home."
  That quote says to me that 'home' is not necessarily a physical building, but can be a place, anyplace that promotes a feeling of safety, encouragement, intimacy and freedom from fear.  I always want my home to be that, wherever it is located.

True Intimacy

Nouwen quote for today.  "It is very hard for love not to become possessive because our hearts look for perfect love and no human being is capable of that.  Only God can offer perfect love.  Therefore, the art of loving includes the art of giving one another space.  When we invade one another's space and do not allow the other to be his or her own free person, we cause great suffering in our relationships.  But when we give another space to move and share our gifts, true intimacy becomes possible."   from Bread for the Journey.

The Spiritual Work of Gratitude

Nouwen quote of the day: "To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives--the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections--that requires hard spiritual work.  Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment.  As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.  Let's  not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God."  It's a good principle by which to live.

Living the Moment to the Fullest

"Patience is a hard discipline.  It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control; the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. (or the opening up of a job, Lisa & Ron).  Patience is not a waiting passivly until someone else does something.  Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are.  When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are.  We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later and somehwere else.  Let's be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand."

Fruits that grow in vulnerability

"There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities.  Success brings many rewards and often fame.  Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability.  And fruits are unique.  A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grown through touching one another's wounds.  Let's remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness."
Henri Nouwen in "Bread for the Journey"

From Worrying to Prayer

  "One of the least helpful ways to stop worrying is to try hard not to think about the things we are worrying about.  We cannot push away our worries with our minds..., Jesus' advice to set our hearts on God's kingdom is somewhat paradoxical.  You might give it the following interpretation: ; 'If you want to worry, worry about that which is worth the effort.  Worry about larger things than your family, your friends, or tomorrow's meeting.  Worry about the things of God: truth, life, and light!'
   As soon, however, as we set our hearts on these things our minds stop spinning because we enter into communion with the One who is present to us here and now and is there to give us what we most need.  And so worrying becomes prayer, and our feelings of powerlessness are transofrmed into a consciousness of being empowered by God's Spirit....
   Does that put an end to our worrying?  Probably not.  As long as we are in our world, full of tensions and pressures, our minds will never be free from worries, but when we keep returning with our hearts and minds to God's embracing love, we will be able to keep smiling at our own worrisome selves and keep our eyes and ears open for the sights and sounds of the kingdom.
  Henri Nouwen in "Here and Now"

From unceasing thinking to unceasing prayer

"Our minds are always active.  We analyze, reflect, daydream, or dream.  There is not a moment during the day or night when we are not thinking.  You might say our thinking is "unceasing."  Sometimes we wish that we could stop thinking for a while; that would save us from many worries, guilt feelings, and fears.  Our ability to think is our greatest gift, but it is also the source of our greatest pain.  Do we have to become victims of our unceasing thoughts?  No, we can convert our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer by making our  inner monologue into a continuing dialogue with our God, who is the source of all love.  Let's break out of our isolation and realize that Someone who dwells in the center of our beings wants to listen with love to all that occupies and preoccuies our minds."
Nouwen in "Bread for the Journey."

Spiritual Dryness

"Sometimes we experience a terrible dryness in our spiritual lives.  We feel no desire to pray, don't experience God's presence, get bored with worship services, and even think that everything we ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is little more than a childhood fairy tale.
  Then it is important to realize that most of these feelings and thoughts are just feelings and thoughts, and that the Spirit of God dwells beyond our feelings and thoughts.  It is a great grace to be able to experience God's presence in our feelings and thoughts, but when we don't, it does not mean that God is absent.  It often means that God is calling us to a greater faithfulness.  It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God."
---Nouwen in "Bread for the Journey"

Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is made possible by the knowledge that human beings cannot offer us what only God can give.  Once we have heard the voice calling us the Beloved, accepted the gift of full communion, and claimed the first unconditional love, we can see easily -- with the eyes of a repentant heart -- how we have demanded of people a love that only God can give.  It is the knowledge of that first love that allows us to forgive those who have only a "second" love to offer. ... Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. ...  The voice that calls us the Beloved is the voice of freedom because it sets us free to love without wanting anyting in return.  This has nothing to do with self-sacrifice, self=denial, or self-deprecation.  But it has everything to do with the abundance of love that has been freely given to me nd from which I freely want to give."      from Nouwen's "Forgiveness: The Name of Love in a Wounded World"

Actions that bring joy and peace

"When we are committed to do God's will and not our own we soon discover that much of what we do doesn't need to be done by us.  What we are called to do are actions that bring us true joy and peace...  Actions that lead to overwork, exhaustion, and burnout can't praise and glorify God.  What God calls us to do we can do and do well.  When we listen in silence to God's voice and speak with our friends in trust, we will know what we are called to do, and we will do it with a grateful heart."   Henri Nouwen in "Can You Drink the Cup?"

Prayer and acts of service

Can you stand another Nouwen quote?  I read this one this morning from "Compassion."   " Prayer and actiion... can never be seen as contradictory, or mutually exclusive.  Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation.  If prayer leads us into  deeper unity with the compassionate Christ, it will always give rise to concrete acts of service.  And if concrete acts of service do indeed lead us into a deeper solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying, and the oppressed, they will always give rise to prayer.  In prayer we meet Christ, and in him all human suffering.  In service we meet people, and in them the suffering Christ."

Nouwen

Sometimes in reading Henri Nouwen, I find myself convicted.  From this morning's reading of "The Only Necessary Thing" on living a prayerful life, I read:    "In a society that seems to be filled with urgencies and emergencies, prayer appears to be an unnatural form of behavior.  Without fully realizing it, we have accepted the idea that 'doing things' is more important than prayer and have come to think of prayer as something for times when there is nothing urgent to do." ...  and ... "Prayer requires that we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and fulnerable, proclaiming to ourselaves and to others that without God we can do nothing."     Lord, teach me to let go of my 'to do' list and just bask in your affirming presence.

With Burning Hearts

I started this Henri Nouwen book this morning and it was so good I didn't put it down until I finished it.  It was sooooo good.  I probably underlined HALF the book.  Jesus is talking to the two on the road to Emnaus and they are describing their grief and sense of loss in the death of Jesus.  Here's a brief quote: "Yes, we must mourn our losses.  We cannot talk or act them away, but we can shed tears ocver them and allow ourselves to grieve deeply.  To greive is to allow our losses to tear apart feelings of security and safety and lead us to the painful truth fo our brokenness.  Our grief makes us experience the abyss of our own life in which nothing is settled, clear, or obvious, but everything constantly shifting and changing....  But in the midst of all this pain, there is a strange shocking, yet very surprising voice.  It is the voice of the one who says: 'Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted.'  That's the unexpected news:  there is a blessing hidden in our grief.  Not those who comfort are blessed, but those who mourn!  Somehow, in the midst of our mourning, the first steps of the dance take place.  Somehow, the cries that well up from our losses belong to our songs of gratitude."  I highly recommend the book.  It would preach.

Maundy Thursday

It's a service that is never well-attended except by the faithful few, but I really enjoy the footwashing symbolism and, of course, the time of communion.  We joined with the Tulare group tonight and it was a good service.  The celebration of Easter would not be complete for me without commemorating that special night when Jesus instituted the "New Covenant."

Just thinking -
There are two miracles to celebrate at Easter.  The biggie, of course, is Jesus rising from the dead.  The other miracle is that he wanted to come back to the very people who had betrayed, abandoned, denied and turned on him.  Now that's love.

Gethsemane experience

I just finished yesterday a book called Jesus the Fool, The Mission of the Unconventional Christ, by Michael Frost.  While I reacted negatively not only to the title but to the constant reference to Jesus as a fool (meaning, unique and whimsical by intention, not lack of intelligence), Frost had several very good parable and incident interpretations.  I want to quote one from the last chapter, "Jesus the Fool Who Won't Give Up."
    "If Jesus was always completely certain of the otucome of his life - if he knew everything that was to happen before it happened and if he had no doubt about his final vindication - then where is there room for faith?  How can we talk about the faith of Jesus if he was always aware of the events of every next moment?  If he was completely and thoroughly sure, without the shadow of any doubt, that after his trial, humiliation, torture, and death, he would be resurrected to the right hand of God and all power both in heaven and on earth was to be given to him, there would be no need for him to exercise faith.  And Gethsemane would not make sense.  The events in that garden can only be sensible if there was an element of risk involved.  Faith is risk.  And at Gethsemane, Jesus showed he was faced with a terrible risk - the offering of his own life.
   The fact that he was prepared to, in spite of his fears, go thourgh with his commitment to be sacrificed for our inadequacy makes the cross the supreme symbol of fith.  Not only do we place our faith in it, but we celebrate Jesus' faith that drove him to it. ... His dogged, relentless loyalty was shaken in that small garden, but he didn't fall."
   It's a good reminder for this week, especially.