"The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope.
The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness.
To work for community is to work for humanity."
|
|
We appreciate your loyal readership and kind words of gratitude for the Soul Windows - Reflection newsletter. We are glad to send it free of charge. However, if you would like to support our ministry financially, you may make a contribution online through PayPal. May God bless you a thousandfold.
|
Soul Windows Greeting Cards
Fill someone's heart with inspiration.
|
Please share Reflection freely by forwarding any issue (click "Forward email" below), but remember to respect copyright laws by not altering, copying, or reproducing Reflection, whole or in part, without written permission.
Copyright (c) 2012 Soul Windows Ministries
|
|
|
|
|
Anguish
"I want to say something about anguish," said Jean Vanier in his eulogy at Henri Nouwen's funeral.[1] A new book about Nouwen is entitled, Genius Born of Anguish.[2]
I know only a little about Henri Nouwen, even less about Jean Vanier. But after hearing Michael Higgins, Nouwen's official biographer, speak about the two last month, I want to learn more.
Skimming through Vanier's work, I was struck by his repeated references to anguish. "We are all frightened by anguish," Vanier says. Indeed. I am uncomfortable even using the word. "Tribulation" is far less disturbing. Even "despair" is not so visceral as anguish. The very sounds are echoes of a cry - from the piercing sharpness of "ang" to the faltering strength of "ish."
Vanier tells of joining the Royal Navy in 1942, while still a young teen. His father asked why he wanted to join. Vanier no longer remembers his answer, but he remembers his father's answer to him: "I trust you. If that is what you want, you must do it. I trust you." Vanier reflects, "Trust that you are important, that you are precious, that you have something important to give to the world, to give to me. If we don't believe we are precious, what happens? We have anguish."
We have anguish - that heart-rending cry of faltering strength. Vanier continues: "For me, the message of the Gospel is that each one of us has a gift to give; each one of us is precious; each one needs to be loved and to belong."[3]
But it is another passage that speaks to me most powerfully, shaking my comfortable certainties: "God is not a secure God up there telling everybody what to do, but a God in anguish, yearning for love, a God who is not understood."[4]
- Bill
[1] Jean Vanier, Essential Writings, Orbis Books, 2008, p. 130.
[2] Michael W. Higgins and Kevin Burns, Genius Born of Anguish: The Life and Legacy of Henri Nouwen, Paulist Press, 2012.
[3] Essential Writings, pp. 59-60.
[4] Essential Writings, p. 130. | | |
|
|
Becoming Fully Human
--by Jan
I once had a thought, what would it be like to have lunch with Jean Vanier and Henri Nouwen. Where would the conversation go? To loneliness, to community, or to the joys to being truly human, maybe? Most likely we would not talk about the brilliance of these two men: Vanier's distinguished Canadian family background, his service in the Navy, his Ph.D. dissertation on Aristotelian Ethics of Happiness, nor even his establishment of 140 L'Arche communities in 36 countries. There would probably be no mention of Nouwen's teaching careers at the Menninger Foundation, Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard, not even of his years as Chaplain of L'Arche in Toronto. In all likelihood there would not be a nearby stack of the over 70 books they have published, translated into 30 languages, nor plaques on the wall celebrating being renowned contemporary Christian writers, nor even notice of Vanier's Nobel Peace Prize nomination
Both men, I believe, would talk about what it really means to be human. They would both tell of the joys of being 'assistants' to people with disabilities at L'Arche, to help people with handicaps to own their own worth and beauty. Most of all, they would talk about what it truly means to love, even through the struggles of "loneliness, fear, depression, sexuality, and waiting. These complex experiences are...the raw material of our common humanity and resources of our yearnings for transformation."[1]
After attending the recent lecture by Professor Higgins, I was moved to reread the works of Henri Nouwen and Jean Vanier, particularly their later writings and spiritual journals. This week, in total four-book* immersion, I noticed that a rare alchemic transformation opened the souls of both Vanier and Nouwen to freedom and the forces of love which are hidden in each person. From the depths of their own beings, from pain and anguish, there arose the truth and beauty of being fully human.
Being truly human radically changes our understandings, our communities, and our relationships with God. In the 1996 eulogy for Henri Nouwen, Vanier remarked: "Henri came here to L'Arche; he chose L'Arche. He found a home in L'Arche. He found not only a home but also wholeness. Things came together: the psychologist, the professor, and the priest all came together because he was living with wounded healers, people that no one wanted; people who had been taken out of big institutions, people who have been looked down upon and rejected; they were his wounded healers. There was a beautiful link between the brokenness of people with disabilities and the brokenness of Henri, between the wounded heart of people with disabilities and the wounded heart of Henri and the wounded heart of Christ. So he found a home and there he became whole."[2]
*This week's read:
Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons. Doubleday, 1992.
Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom. Doubleday. 1996.
Jean Vanier, Becoming Human. Paulist, 1998.
Jean Vanier: Essential Writings. Orbis, 2010.
[1] Jean Vanier, Essential Writings, Orbis Books, 2008, p. 121.
[2] Essential Writings, pp. 131-32. |
|
|
|
|
