Henri Nouwen on Prayer

I have just finished re-reading Henri Nouwen’s ‘With Open Hands’, a great reflection on the challenges and opportunities of prayer. In the book Nouwen explores what prayer is and how we go about it. “Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched. Why would you really want to do that?” The book’s title comes from his use of the helpful image of an open hand as against a closed fist. So often we are taking the closed fist approach, but what we need is to open to hands, an image of our being receptive to God. We need to receive what God wants to give us. “Those who live prayerfully are constantly ready to receive the breath of God and to let their lives be renewed and expanded. Those who never pray, on the contrary, are like children with asthma: because they are short of breath, the whole world shrivels up before them. They creep into a corner gasping for air and are virtually in agony. But those who do pray open themselves to God and can breathe freely again. They stand upright, stretch out their hands, and come out of their corner, free to move about without fear.” Praying is about looking to and for God’s Kingdom. “Praying, therefore, is the most critical activity we are capable of, for when we pray, we are never satisfied with the world of here and now and are constantly striving to realize the new world, the first glimmers of which we have already seen.” “Praying, therefore, means being constantly ready to let go of your certainty and to move beyond where you now are.”