A Letter to Henri
These are excerpts from a journal where I wrote letters to Henri Nouwen in response to his words and writing. These writings have been sitting for almost a year. I offer these words with no intention of how you, oh Reader, will receive them. Rather, I welcome you to pick up anything that resonates, and release all that does not.
11/2./2020
Dear Henri,
I am re-reading your collection of writings on Spiritual Direction, and I am realizing I am ambivalent in my relationship with the Divine; that is I am ambivalent in finding a functional metaphor for God that helps me feel rooted.
I hope in journaling my journey through your words, I might be able to help myself tap into the aspect of myself that I see in You. Is that not what veneration of Saints is? I pray for your intercession Henri, that I might further tend the garden of my soul alongside your hands, by way of your words.
“Our lives are not problems to be solved but journeys to be taken…” I ask you Henri, how do I know that I am journeying the right way? How do I know that I am on the right path?
Take a deep breath. Do you hear the echo within you? The one that rings like the faintest bell in a Catholic mass. Let the bell reverberate within. Let the sound resonate in your bones. When you reach those moments on the path unfolding before you. Pause. Ask yourself “Do I hear the bell?” If the answer is yes, then you know.
I hear that bell Henri. I know it well. When I close my eyes and imagine that bell, I imagine all the multipurpose room at Western Washington University, a mass where we did not have the bells that marked the transubstantiation. Rather, I felt the bells within. Then you know when you are on the path then.
Keep reading.
“God speaks through a question that reveals the unspeakable mystery of creative, eternal love.” I know how it feels to touch an unspeakable mystery. So much of my life is unspeakable. Not for any particular reason or another for the particularity is lost in the unspeakable elements of my experience. Rather, it is the return to breath, to silence, to contemplation, to the movements of my spirit that root me and ground me in an understanding that i believe in a purpose for this world, a purpose beyond the confines of of a particular economic regime or imperialist nation-state, or even the boundaries established by an institution of philosophy or organized religion.
Again the bell rings,
A quiet thing. A sharp reverberation.
And I wonder.
O silly thing. That rings
a sharp beckoning
the children home for supper.
Am I too invited to this house?
The one on the bluff where the ocean spray meets the blackberry bramble?
I hear your voice there, in that bell,
welcoming me home to the mystery of terracotta arches and whole cream alfredo.
Again the bell rings.
Again the chain wobbles like a tether connecting me to that sound,
so faint, it feels like it rings from within.
“The best guides are willing to be silent yet present, and are comfortable with the unknowing.” I read this sentence Henri, and I am overcome with gratitude for the unknowing. To unknow means to offer something back to the Mystery. It's the kaleidoscopic shifts that God twists into our experience. The moment of revelation, the awe inspiring pause of absorption of being in the midst of God, is so often felt. And then—
The twist.
The turn.
The tiles shift and slide.
That which was known is now unknown.
Only to invite meditation once again to silently be present to the possibility of the known. That is, how often do we treat knowledge like a problem to be solved rather than a journey? Academic theology often finds itself a series of logical proofs rather than observations of the unknowable known collapse of the exterior with the interior. I am not in the work of proving my own biases correct, but rather resting in the truth that the unknown within me is a journey towards the Divine.
I will leave this reflection here Henri. Unsure of how often I will write but grateful to be journeying with your spirit through this next season of life.
With Love,
Nathan.
