Monday, July 11, 2005
On Home and Intimacy
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God has divinely united my growing interest in blogging with my seemingly random dive into the works of Henri Nouwen. I do not have the inspiration to review his books, for I feel the need to soak them in rather than analyze, but I wanted to share a few of the more challenging, healing and refreshing passages I have found.
From Lifesigns -
Fearful questions never lead to love-filled answers . . . fear engenders fear. Fear never gives birth to love. If this is the case, the nature of the questions we raise is as important as the answers to our questions. Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Finding the right questions is as crucial as finding the right answers.
Once fearful survival questions become the guiding questions of our lives, we tend to dismiss words spoken from the house of love as unrealistic, romantic, pious or just useless.
When Jesus says: "Make your home in me as I make mine in you," he offers us an intimate place that we can truly call 'home'. Home is that place or space where we do not have to be afraid but can let go of our defenses and be free . . . where we can laugh or cry . . . where we can rest and be healed. The word 'home' gathers a wide range of feelings and emotions up into one image, the image of a house where it is good to be: the house of love.
Fear prevents the space where true intimacy can exist. It forces us to live alone or in a protective shelter but does not allow us to build an intimate home.
This intimate space is not a fine line between distance and closeness, but a wide field of movement in which the question of whether we are close or distant is no longer the guiding question. The home, the intimate place, the place of true belonging is therefore not a place made by human hands. It is fashioned for us by God, who came to pitch his tent among us, invite us to his place and prepare a room for us in his own house. God decided to build a home in us. Thus we can remain fully human and still have our home in God.
[Spiritual discipline] means a gradual process of coming home to where we belong and listening there to the voice which desires our attention. It is the voice of the "first love" (1 John 4:19).
[Prayer] is described as a descending with the mind into the heart, in order to stand in the presence of God.
In the house of God we are consecrated to the truth, that is, part of God's betrothal with God's people. The word betrothal - which includes the word troth (truth) - beautifully ecpresses the personal quality of truth. We truthfully belong together in God.
From Lifesigns -
Fearful questions never lead to love-filled answers . . . fear engenders fear. Fear never gives birth to love. If this is the case, the nature of the questions we raise is as important as the answers to our questions. Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Finding the right questions is as crucial as finding the right answers.
Once fearful survival questions become the guiding questions of our lives, we tend to dismiss words spoken from the house of love as unrealistic, romantic, pious or just useless.
When Jesus says: "Make your home in me as I make mine in you," he offers us an intimate place that we can truly call 'home'. Home is that place or space where we do not have to be afraid but can let go of our defenses and be free . . . where we can laugh or cry . . . where we can rest and be healed. The word 'home' gathers a wide range of feelings and emotions up into one image, the image of a house where it is good to be: the house of love.
Fear prevents the space where true intimacy can exist. It forces us to live alone or in a protective shelter but does not allow us to build an intimate home.
This intimate space is not a fine line between distance and closeness, but a wide field of movement in which the question of whether we are close or distant is no longer the guiding question. The home, the intimate place, the place of true belonging is therefore not a place made by human hands. It is fashioned for us by God, who came to pitch his tent among us, invite us to his place and prepare a room for us in his own house. God decided to build a home in us. Thus we can remain fully human and still have our home in God.
[Spiritual discipline] means a gradual process of coming home to where we belong and listening there to the voice which desires our attention. It is the voice of the "first love" (1 John 4:19).
[Prayer] is described as a descending with the mind into the heart, in order to stand in the presence of God.
In the house of God we are consecrated to the truth, that is, part of God's betrothal with God's people. The word betrothal - which includes the word troth (truth) - beautifully ecpresses the personal quality of truth. We truthfully belong together in God.
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