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.”