Do you know Henri Nouwen's writings?
He has been very important in my spiritual journey and I was actually blessed to be able to meet him briefly once. He was Dutch and a Roman Catholic priest who somehow found his way to the US. He taught at Yale and Harvard and then felt led to live in a L'Arche community in Canada -- homes for mentally and physically handicapped adults.
I first encountered his writings in a book called "For Ministers and Other Servants," by Reuben Job, a United Methodist bishop who is a mystic, and Norman Shawchuk, who was an editor of the Methodist daily devotional, "The Upper Room."
The first book I read by Fr Nouwen was "The Wounded Healer." But he also wrote a wonderful book called "The Life of the Beloved." The Healing Prayer Ministry group I belonged to at my home church in DC, Foundry UMC, was given the opportunity to use the book for one of our annual retreats before it was published.
Nouwen had many friends who were not professing Christians and he also had some who were "secular Jews," who were offended and turned off by "God-talk" and the American Christian way of talking about faith. So he tried to talk about God's love and being in relationship with God-Who-Is-Love without the jargon they found so distasteful.
Unfortunately, as far as Fr Nouwen knew during his lifetime, they appreciated his efforts, but still could not come to believe in a God who would have a personal relationship with people (and other objections.
The L'Arche community of the Washington, DC area had a Christmas dinner using the Refectory (Dining Hall) at my seminary -- Wesley Theological Seminary on the edge of the campus of American University in NW DC, not far from the National Cathedral. In the early years of the break-up of the Soviet Union, two women were consulting with the United Methodist Board of Global Ministry folks on how to help the people of the former Soviet Union.
One woman was the wife of the man who had been the CNN Bureau Chief in Moscow for nine years. She lived next door to the Norweigian Embassy, which is right across the street from the main gate of the Naval Observatory grounds, where the Vice President's House is. The other woman's mom knew the gen Sec'y of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), since they were all originally from North Carolina (and the mother of the woman still lived there). The woman had a degree in Finance and had also taken Russian in college.
In the early 70s when US companies started to have business relationships with the Soviet Union, this woman was working for Bank of America and was one of the people who helped the US gov't figure out how to deal with the value of the Soviet ruble vis-a-vis the US dollar.
Anyway, the Gen Secy of the GBGM asked this woman's mother if she might talk her daughter into consulting with the GBGM. When US companies were first allow to trade with the former Soviets, there had to be a Russian organization or company that played host to the US entity. So at first when the United Methodist Church was trying to offer aid, the Russian government required the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to sponsor them.
It was very touchy and eventually the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy refused to deal with the UMC (lots of reasons, but primarily because they believe that if you are ethnically Russian you won't go to heaven unless you are baptized and communing with the ROC, and once the UMC appointed a bishop for the former Soviet Methodists, the ROc leadership rejected them). Anyway, before that, the woman originally from NC wanted to get a Christmas present for the ROC priest who had been appointed by the Patriarch (like the Pope for ROC folks) to work with the UMC folks.
Somehow she asked me to help her find a present and we looked all over. Nothing seemed right to her. However, one of the other books by Fr Nouwen that means a lot to me is a meditation he wrote when contemplating Rembrandt's painting, "The Return of the Prodigal." When it was still the Soviet era, Fr Nouwen had been allowed to sit in front of the painting for two weeks, right were it is displayed at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (which at the time was still Leningrad).
Rembrandt's "Return of the Prodigal Son" Painting
The book he wrote was lovely and I happened to have a copy -- and then I remembered seeing a flyer about Fr Nouwen speaking at the L'Arche Christmas Dinner in our Refectory. The WTS students were invited to come to the reception after the dinner.
So I offered the woman who was working with the GBGM the book and we went to see if Fr Nouwen would sign it with a dedication to the ROC priest.
He did that, and I felt so blessed to meet him.
There is only one other person I have ever met who had as much peace in his eyes as Fr Nouwen had.
That was an ROC monk in his 90s who was one of four monks still living at a monastery near Spass Za Goriye, (The Savior of the Hills) when I was in Russia for the first time (during the last three days of 1993 and the first three weeks of 1994).
Here is a link to the book:
Henri Nouwen's Book -- Return of the Prodigal Son
The Father is always waiting for the son who is missing. He also always understands where the son who has stayed home is coming from, and they both break the Father's heart.
At the same time, there is a third son -- the one who tells the story, the one who is and always was faithful, the one who takes our place when we have been lost in sin and convicted of our offenses -- Jesus, our Savior.
He is also the one who is willing to accompany us even when we "make our beds in Sheol," and are lost.
The story we call "The Return of the Prodigal," (Luke 15:11-32) is the third story about loss. Jesus is describing the Kingdom of Heaven and how our Father in Heaven yearns for each one of us when we stray, and when we don't understand what forgiveness and reconciliation really is.
The first story is about the lost sheep, the second about how precious a lost coin is to a woman living in poverty. And the third is about the lost son.
Luke 15 -- The Parables of the Lost
But the story is really more about the Father. If you read it again with that in mind, does anything look different to you?
May the Lord continue to bless you and keep you as He draws closer to you in response to your ability and willingness to open your heart to Him.
Kathleen Ware Harris © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com
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