Nouwen as Mystic

I recently read Michael Ford’s “Lonely Mystic – A New Portrait of Henri J M Nouwen”. This is Ford’s second Nouwen biography. I read “Wounded Prophet” some time ago. I am fascinated by Nouwen and his writing. There is much to be said about – and by – him, and this particularly biography, as the title indicates, focusses on his ministry as a mystic, which reflects much of who he was – “Gustavo Gutiérrez called him “an exceptional human being”—and so he was. Yet despite his phenomenal gifts, he was also an enigma and a paradox, a man tortured by deep personal anguish, uncertainty, and self doubt. He shouldered a cumbersome insecurity, which took the form of a chronic need for admiration and a desperate fear of rejection.” As Ford says Nouwen “was was a deeply holy priest and a highly astute psychologist who tried to get to the roots of his own complexities by writing about them, turning his thoughts into paperbacks that, in turn, brought people closer to God and even helped transform their lives.” He adds “In his book In the Name of Jesus, he states simply and unambiguously, “A mystic is a person whose identity is deeply rooted in God’s first love.”” There is much in Ford’s writing to help us consider Nouwen in all his complexity and the way in which he draws things together. “In The Wounded Healer, published a few years before, Henri had explained that it was his growing conviction that in Jesus the mystical and the revolutionary ways were not opposites, but two sides of the same human mode of experiential transcendence: “Every real revolutionary is challenged to be a mystic at heart, and he who walks the mystical way is called to unmask the illusory quality of human society. Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring about radical change.” There were many points of interest for me in the book, but perhaps not least, especially since I have just visited Amsterdam, his recognising the impact of Van Gogh. “Few people influenced him more than van Gogh, whose deep wounds and immense gifts brought him in touch with his own brokenness and talents in a unique manner. He was restored and renewed by the endless hours he spent looking at paintings in a museum in the Netherlands and carefully studying Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo. In times of solitude, he heard a voice he felt he could listen to and make connections between van Gogh’s struggle and his own. The mystic in van Gogh guided the mystic in Henri, who claimed the former as his own wounded healer.”

Prepared for Easter

I have been reading “Preparing for Easter” through Lent. It’s a compilation of fifty extracts from the writings of C S Lewis, put together as fifty readings to take one through Lent. It is a fascinating and mixed selection, some I really enjoyed, though I found less in others to speak to me, and some, certainly, is of Lewis’s time. But it was a good way of having a reading discipline through Lent. Here’s just a few brief extracts. “How should we know what He means us to be like?” “We must all pin our hopes on the mercy of God and the work of Christ, not on our own goodness.” “Jesus asks those at the well who are sinless to cast the first stone. Paul says we have all fallen short and missed the mark. Let’s not gloss over our corruption but rather recognize it and confess it. Remember that he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” “Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man (sic) who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it.” “Idealism can be talked, and even felt; it cannot be lived.” “When Christ stills the storm He does what God has often done before. God made Nature such that there would be both storms and calms: in that way all storms (except those that are still going on at this moment) have been stilled by God.” “The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs’, all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men (sic) that you and I were intended to be.” “And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Transgressing Race

I have just finished reading “Transgressing Race: Readings, Theologies, Belongings” edited by Jione Havea, a very interesting, if at times challenging, read. The book offers Biblical and theological readings from that challenge the segregation caused by racism. “Racism—including racism inspired by Christian faith and by religious elitism—is bloody.” “Racism is the manifestation of a shitstem (to use reggae speak) that segregates, and discriminates against, some people—because of their race. This manifestation comes in many forms, but they share the common drive to deny resources and opportunities from people who are minoritized—because of their race.” The book challenges us to properly address issues, notably issues of race, that damage people, though, in so doing, makes some useful points that have a more general application. There are lots of footnotes and quoted scholars, and I struggled a little, but worth reading – and there were certainly some strong passages that spoke to me powerfully. For example, “Preaching is not so much about telling what we ought to do or what we ought not to do as about witnessing (seeing and acting) how God is at work in the world in front of our eyes and beyond our seeing. A homily becomes even more instructive when it shows how the Reign of God is already being practiced, even if the practice is only partial and far from being perfect. In that sense, preaching is an invitation to join the divine drama, a rehearsal.” “Mary sang her song as a lullaby to Jesus who is to be born 9 months later. The Magnificat defies despair. The Magnificat impregnates hopes. The Magnificat sings of the new world; it beholds a renewed future. The Song echoes in many voices today as many of us continue to sing and praise God who has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; who has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; and who has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”