Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life

429 Pages·2016·2.73 MB·English

by  Brene Brown

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Foreword
A Note from the Editor
Part I
Part II
Part III
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
FOR SUE MOSTELLER
When Henri Nouwen died in 1996, he left us thirty-nine books and hundreds of
articles on the spiritual life and what he called his “adventures with God.”*1 He
also bequeathed a treasury of personal papers. The largest part of the cache was
correspondence. Over his lifetime Henri received more than 16,000 letters. He
kept every postcard, piece of paper, fax and greeting card that arrived in his
mail. And he responded to each of them. Managing his correspondence was an
integral part of his working day. The sheer volume of mail made it necessary to
employ an administrative assistant to sort, preread, and highlight what needed an
immediate response. Henri would then read them himself and reply into a
Dictaphone for transcription. Letters to close friends were usually handwritten,
often on postcards from his large collection of art cards. His penmanship was
neat and flowing. He never wrote drafts and rarely made corrections.
Shortly after I started as Henri’s archivist in the summer of 2000, I was taken
to the attic of a house at L’Arche Daybreak, the community near Toronto where
Henri had made his last home. After climbing a steep staircase into an
overheated attic, I confronted a dozen or more filing cabinets—tall, short, in a
variety of colors—lined up in the middle of the room. Along the walls and in
every corner were stacks of boxes. All were filled with letters.
For the next fifteen years, I identified, numbered and catalogued each page in
this remarkable collection. It was a daunting task, but one that evolved into a
labor of love. The letters now form part of the Henri J. M. Nouwen Archives and
Research Collection at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of
Toronto. Housed in their new acid-free folders and boxes, they extend to sixty-
five linear feet!
It has been slow work, but the time has come to share them. This first volume
is being released to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Henri’s death in
1996. It celebrates his lasting legacy both to original readers and to a new
generation of spiritual seekers. It is a testament to his deep need to connect with
others, knowing that in any genuine encounter we are reaching out to the Divine.
Though some of the letters are drawn from his personal archive, most come
from the original recipients. In the twenty years since his death, over three
thousand letters have been collected from the homes, offices, basements and
attics of his correspondents. Although the letters began as an intimate exchange
between two people, their power today speaks to Henri’s belief that what is most
personal—our brokenness, our insecurities, our jagged edges—is most universal.
For Henri, letter writing was an integral part of friendship. In 1996, just
months before his death, he recorded in his journal:
This afternoon I wrote many postcards. While writing I experienced
a deep love for all the friends I was writing to. My heart was full of
gratitude and affection, and I wish I could embrace each of my
friends and let them know how much they mean to me and how
much I miss them.*2
He attached great importance to words to reach out across solitudes of
experience. “I can’t tell you how healing and consoling your gentle and loving
words are to me,” he wrote to his friend Jim.*3 Words, he felt, had the power to
give life and when offered in friendship could be a source of grace. “Your letter
is a real oasis in my desert,” he confided.*4
Henri wrote generous and intimate letters. In response to people seeking his
advice he never condemned or judged but instead used stories from his own
experience to inspire or teach. At the same time, he could be challenging, even
demanding. He called his readers to be faithful to choices they had made and to
practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer, community and solidarity with the
poor. He cautioned against the temptations that pulled people off the “narrow
path” and emphasized the importance of making choices that took the needs of
others into account.
He had a gift for deep listening. After reading a pain-filled letter, he identified
the struggle with precision and responded with compassion. “You have been
heard. You are loved. You are not alone” was the implicit message.
After receiving a letter from Henri on how to care for her dying mother, a
woman wrote back:
I am so grateful to you for helping me to find and make meaning of
my journey on earth….My heart is bursting with gratitude for the
comfort you have provided me during my mother’s illness and
death last month….You gave me insight and courage to stay with
the pain and wait with her for God. I feel transformed by my
experience and I want to thank you for helping me to endure her
suffering, and therefore be with her, really be with her….So you see
why I feel such community with you? You have helped me to hope in
and not wish for, and I feel I have really learned to be present in
the lives of my mother and father, from who I first learned about
God.*5
Henri created a safe place for vulnerabilities because he was honest with his
own. “You probably realize,” he wrote to a woman struggling with a chronic
illness, “that I have no answers for all your questions, but I receive your
questions more as an invitation for a relationship between two searching
Christians than as a request to be taught.”*6
As I considered what letters to include in this volume, my guiding question
was: What do people need to hear right now? The times we live in have changed
—there are now email and text messages—fleeting forms of communication;
few people put pen to paper anymore—but our human challenges remain the
same: loss, sickness, injustice, finding and losing love, discerning a career path,
handling conflict, managing our emotions and coping with self-doubt. Yet Henri
believed that it is precisely in those struggles that we ultimately find God. It is in
the big questions—who is God, and what is the meaning of our life?—that we
are drawn to know ourselves better.
Henri’s responses to readers are powerful because he drew from his own lived
experience. He wrote to a friend:
Jesus’ invitation to “lay down my life for others” has always meant
more to me than physical martyrdom. I have always heard these
words as an invitation to make my own life struggles, my doubt, my
hopes, my fear and my joys, my pains and my moments of ecstasy
available to others as source of consolation and healing. To witness
for Christ means to me to witness for Him what I have seen with my
own eyes, heard with my own ears and touched with my own
hands.*7
Whereas others hid their vulnerabilities and weakness, Henri drew on them to
form a community of solidarity with his friends and readers.
The letters in this volume trace twenty-two years in Henri’s life journey—
from his time as a teacher to an interlude as a visiting Trappist monk to his time
as a Latin American missionary and finally to pastor of a community with
people with disabilities. We see that in spite of outward success and popularity,
he suffered from what he called “his demons”—loneliness, restlessness, falls
into depression and feelings of rejection. Yet it is how he lived those lifelong
struggles that makes him an inspiring guide for our own lives. He lived with
courage and self-awareness, gradually learning to befriend his pain and
ultimately being redeemed by it. He knew that the only way out of suffering is
through it.
Where did his “demons” come from? His early life was filled with opportunity
and privilege. Even the German wartime occupation of Holland left his family
relatively unscathed. He received his academic education—in theology,
philosophy and psychology—from some of the most eminent teachers in his
home country and the United States. He had a curious mind and an artist’s eye.
What troubled him was an inner contradiction on how he was meant to live his
life. As a young man he heard two voices in his head:
One voice said, “Henri, be sure you make it on your own, be sure
you can do it yourself, be sure you become an independent person.
Be sure that I can be proud of you.” And another voice said,
“Henri, whatever you are going to do, even if you don’t do
anything very interesting in the eyes of the world, be sure you stay
close to the heart of Jesus, be sure you stay close to the love of
God.”*8
He was torn between the two imperatives of upward and downward mobility.
As a Catholic, he experienced it as a struggle between the priorities of his earthly
father and his heavenly father. Could he please both? Did he deserve to be
loved? His feelings of inadequacy were exacerbated by an unusual degree of
emotional sensitivity that left him with little insulation from the abrasions of life.
A close friend, Sue Mosteller, CSJ, observed:
He is truly a man whose heart is so open and so vulnerable, so
receptive and so giving that our own little hearts feel solidarity and
safety when he speaks to us and calls us to grow in like manner. It
is the authenticity of his own heart which we recognize, identify
with, and hope to imitate.*9
He also struggled with intimacy and conflicting feelings about his sexuality.
The vocation of celibate priest exacted a heavy price. His desire for a “unique
friendship”*10 conflicted with his vow to give his heart only to Jesus. He never
publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, deciding that coming out in public
would eclipse his larger mission of connecting people with God.*11 Nor did he
leave the Church, as many of his generation of Catholic clergy did. His letters
document the painful effort to live out this choice. Toward the end of his life he
wrote:
My sexuality will remain a great source of suffering to me until I
die. I don’t think there is any “solution.” The pain is truly “mine”
and I have to own it. Any “relational solution” will be a disaster. I
feel deeply called by God to live my vows well even when it means a
lot of pain. But I trust that the pain will be fruitful.*12
He never entirely transcended his struggles. In spite of his insights into
solitude and silence, busyness dogged him throughout his life. Though often
fatigued, he rarely took proper care of himself. For all his ability to listen deeply
to people in crisis, he could be impatient with those around him. His longing for
human affection and frequent slides into self-rejection made him a needy and
demanding friend. However, by the end of his life, he had grown to accept his
“unresolvable struggle”:*13
I know that I do not need to be ashamed of my needs, that my
demons are not really demons but angels in disguise, allowing me
to love generously, to be faithful to my friends, to be sensitive to the
many forms of human suffering and to live my priesthood with
courage and confidence.*14
In his final years, his letters became shorter and lighter. We sense his
increasing capacity for “childlike” wonder. To a friend struggling with aging, he
wrote:
Personally I believe that being an elder can be a real grace. After
having seen so much of life and having “made it” in so many ways
there is still that possibility of growing into a second childhood, a
second naiveté. I think that is quite an exciting possibility and I
pray that God will allow you to be reborn in such a new way of
being.*15
Each letter in this volume tells a story. Together they serve as an inspiration
that peace and inner freedom are attainable. Henri saw our struggles not as
“problems” to be overcome but as gateways through which we can learn
generosity and tenderness. By living our struggles well, we move beyond a life
of constriction to a life that is expansive and generative.
Our goal, Henri felt, is to move from the house of fear to the house of love:
Hardly a day passes in our lives without our experience of inner
and outer fear, anxieties, apprehensions and preoccupations. These
dark powers have pervaded every part of our world to such a
degree that we can never fully escape them. Still it is possible not to
belong to these powers, not to build our dwelling place among
them, but to choose the house of love as our home. This choice is
made not just once and for all but by living a spiritual life, praying
at all times and thus breathing God’s breath. Through the spiritual
life we gradually move from the house of fear to the house of
love.*16
As a trained psychologist in the complexities of the human psyche, Henri
unmasks our hidden motives. As a pastor, he calls us to reach for a higher level
that acknowledges the spiritual dimension of life. As a fellow pilgrim, he honors
our flawed lives and allows space for our failures and bad choices. His letters
have transformed the way I live my own struggles. My hope is that they will do
the same for you.