Lenten Reflection VI on Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out: Three Things You Need For Prayer

In the prior Lenten post on Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out, we finally reached what is both most fundamental and also most elusive in the movement of spirit traced by Nouwen: the movement from illusion to prayer. And the post ended with a conundrum: the God we worship is beyond manipulation, so it is not as if prayer is a matter of conjuring him as a magician might; but on the other hand, we cannot receive Him without disciplines that make space for Him in our hearts. Though God is not manipulable, it is also the case that various saints have trail-blazed a number of approaches – what the Church calls charisms – that can help us in our way toward Him. And Nouwen offers for our consideration three practices common among such charisms, “a contemplative reading of the word of God, a silent listening to the voice of God, and a trusting obedience to a spiritual guide” (Reaching Out, Chap. 8).

Of course, with each of these practices, we will experience difficulties and impediments. For instance, the temptation when reading Scripture will be to intellectualize and abstract ourselves from the text rather than to let our hearts bathe in the rich and nourishing springs of Scripture:

To take the holy scriptures and read them is the first thing we have to do to open ourselves to God’s call. Reading the scriptures is not as easy as it seems since in our academic world we tend to make anything and everything we read subject to analysis and discussion. But the word of God should lead us first of all to contemplation and meditation. Instead of taking the words apart, we should bring them together in our innermost being: instead of wondering if we agree or disagree, we should wonder which words are directly spoken to us and connect directly with our most personal story. Instead of thinking about the words as potential subjects for an interesting dialogue or paper, we should be willing to let them penetrate into the most hidden corners of our heart, even to those places where no other word has yet found entrance. Then and only then can the word bear fruit as seed sown in ich soil. Only then can we really “hear and understand” (Matthew 13:23). (Reaching Out, Chapter 8)

As Nouwen notes here, the difficulty we face when encountering Scripture is the difficulty of unsettled hearts and minds which have trouble resting in the words of Scripture; similarly, the challenges faced when practicing silence are also caused by a restless heart that fears and avoids it. On the practice of silence, Nouwen notes that:

This asks for much discipline and risk taking because we always seem to have something more urgent to do and “just sitting there” and “doing nothing” often disturbs us more than it helps. But there is no way around this. Being useless and silent in the presence of our God belongs to the core of all prayer. In the beginning we often hear our own unruly inner noises more loudly than God’s voice. This is at times very hard to tolerate. But slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God. Then, very soon, we start missing these moments when we are deprived of them, and before we are fully aware of it an inner momentum has developed that draws us more and more into silence and closer to that still point where God speaks to us. (Reaching Out, Chapter 8)

But whereas these first two areas, silence and scripture, discover difficulty primarily in the habitual unsettledness of our hearts, the third discovers difficulty with regard to a more social dynamic. Spiritual direction is indeed necessary if we are to go anywhere other than circles in our spiritual lives:

But word and silence both need guidance. How do we know that we are not deluding ourselves, that we are not selecting those words that best fit our passions, that we are not just listening to the voice of our own imaginations? Many have quoted the scriptures and many have heard voices and seen visions in silence, but only few have found their way to God. Who can be the judge in his own case? Who can determine if his feelings and insights are leading him in the right direction? Our God is greater than our own heart and mind, and too easily we are tempted to make our heart’s desires and our mind’s speculations into the will of God. Therefore, we need a guide, a director, a counselor who helps us to distinguish between the voice of God and all the other voices coming fom our own confusion o from dark powers far beyond our control. (Reaching Out, Chapter 8)

But the primary difficulty is practicality: where and how does one find someone suited for this task? From my own experience looking for directors, finding a director is indeed a very large difficulty – it took me a year of searching before I finally found a director with a local Ignatian parish that offers the “retreat in daily life” (the Spiritual Exercises for lay people who need to do them over time rather than in an intensive forty day retreat context), and I do not know what I will do after this is finished. The process may of course be easier for extroverts or those with deep connections in Catholic or other Christian communities – however, being an introvert and a convert, that is not me.

Nouwen of course can’t really answer this difficulty – it is a thing that must be dealt with particularly on a case-by-case basis – but he does offer an interesting exhortation to the Christian community; as Nouwen notes of the difficulty of finding directors:

This might be true, but at least part of the reason for this lack of spiritual guides is that we ourselves do not appeal to our fellow human beings in such a way as to invite them to become our spiritual leaders. If there were no students constantly asking for good teachers, there would be no good teachers. The same is true for spiritual guides. There are many men and women with great spiritual sensitivity whose talents remain dormant because we do not make an appeal to them. Many would, in fact, become wise and holy for our sake if we would invite them to assist us in our search for the prayer of our heart. A spiritual director does not necessarily have to be more intelligent or more experienced than we are. It is important that he or she accepts our invitation to lead us closer to God and enters with us into the scriptures and the silence where God speaks to both of us. When we really want to live a life of prayer and seriously ask ourselves what the prayer of our heart may be, we also will be able to express the type of guidance we need and find that someone is waiting to be asked. Often we will discover that those whom we ask for help will indeed receive the gift to help us and grow with us toward prayer. (Reaching Out, Chapter 8)

Intriguingly, Nouwen’s response to the difficulty of finding a director is an appeal to Christian communities to fan into flame gifts already latent gifts that often go unnoticed and unpracticed – and I think he’s right, though I tremble at the messiness of it. As a teacher, I know just how terrifying it can be to be given the opportunity to dialogue with students’ hearts on matters of great importance – though it is a vocation I wouldn’t give up for the world, it is also one I do not take lightly, and the stakes are high. How much more so when one is not merely teaching hearts, but helping guide souls? I trust that God gives graces to those he calls to this – indeed, if everyone shared my terror, there would be no directors for anyone. But Nouwen’s appeal is to me and you and all of us. In myself I would be wary of any excessive eagerness to be a director – but contra my fears, I would also pray very seriously about it if someone approached me; the potential for abusing any kind of power over another person in such situations is strong, but I have to believe it is not stronger than God’s grace, and that that can make even the most worried of directors functional if He wills it. I know I am writing to some of you who could be excellent directors; do pray about it and keep it in the back of your mind in case someone asks.

And with these words, we come to the conclusion of these Lenten Tuesday posts on Nouwen. There is to be sure more in the book, largely involving a deepening and enriching of material covered in these posts, and these posts should indeed be considered an appetizer rather than a main course; I do hope some of you will find a copy of the book and delve into it further, and we at the Inner Room would love to hear your thoughts in the comment boxes.

In the meantime, though, thank you for joining us in this Lenten journey from loneliness to solitude; hostility to hospitality; and illusion to prayer as we travel together toward Jerusalem. It is a journey deep with joy and pain, and the journey can be long and erratic, and there are illusions and traps though also oases along the way. But it is a journey we make alongside one another – and Christ – and that I think is a sufficient reason for making it. We are in this together.