Nouwen: Being the Beloved

Nouwen: Self-rejection and being the Beloved

“Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” Henri Nouwen (You are the Beloved Convergent Books 2017)

Smithsonian American Art

This is a basic premise of Henri Nouwen’s about the spiritual life. He believes that when God tells Jesus he is the beloved son at his baptism, God also speaks to us. Nouwen believes our primal identity is as beloved sons and daughters of God.

When we can accept God’s unconditional love, we are then called to go out into the world and share this love. Unconditional love is only sustained when it is shared. It cannot be love, only of self. When we forget or cannot believe the truth about this love, self-rejection sets in that can destroy us and others. Unconditional love is constantly being attacked by ourselves, others, and the world around us. We must be reminded about it every day, every second.

One way to keep it is to be connected to a loving community where others strive to hear the voice of unconditional love, where the voice of the God of love is magnified and transmitted. Some days, the voice that we are beloved is so soft we cannot hear it. Our ears become stopped up by the voices of the world. These days, we need friends to remind us that we are beloved. On other days, we know we are beloved and now remind others. We are constantly being healed and healing others of this self-rejection living among us, which is like an infectious disease.

However, unconditional love is always stronger, stronger than even death.

Joanna     https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

God Hole

God Hole

“There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes, I am there too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath.”—Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life, Daily Quote, Inwardoutward.org, Church of the Saviour, June 28, 2018.

Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman studying law in the Netherlands in the 1940s who lived down the street from Anne Frank. She died at 29 in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. She kept a diary of her inner life, published after her death, describing the severe persecution of the Jews in Holland during those times.

Her transformation from fear and hate to love, caring, kindness, and compassion for those suffering around her makes her an icon for us today. Through the help of her psychotherapist, she learned to see the God hole in people and situations during those unbelievably troublesome times, and fill that God hole with the love she had known.

This is indeed our ministry as spiritual friends. Each of us has a hole in our mind, our heart, and our body that only God can fill. So, instead, we try to fill it with relationships, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sports, work, power, family, writing, reading, and patriotism.
We can also fill it with hate, persecution, bigotry, self-centeredness, intimidation, cruelty, negativity, pessimism, hopelessness, despair, apathy, and indifference. As spiritual friends, God calls us to help each other find that God hole and fill it with the best unconditional love we can muster.

It begins with our presence with each other and listening.

I remember a dear friend who comes into my office at the hospital early one morning about a relationship that had recently broken up. He was depressed, sad, broken-hearted, and in tears. We talked for some time. But, mostly, I listened and tried to let him know how much I cared about him.
Late in the conversation, I mentioned the God hole. Somehow, he intuitively realized that this relationship had completely filled his God hole. I only had to say very few words. Then, a light bulb went on. I rarely mention the God hole when someone is suffering so greatly, but something moved me to bring it up that early morning.
Hopefully, the Holy Spirit was guiding both of us.

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cloud of the Unknowing

Cloud of Unknowing

“The universes which are amenable to the intellect can never satisfy the instincts of the heart.”—The Cloud of Unknowing, Anonymous.

I recall the morning some time ago, before flying back to Arkansas from Montana. I looked forward to seeing blue skies above a cloudy day. Also, the older I get, the more anxious I seem on travel days. I wake up early in the morning and look out on Whitefish Lake to see a large cloud above the water. It seems to be getting larger and closer to the water. There is no sound except for an occasional crow calling nearby and a slight breeze rustling the aspen leaves in the trees beside the beach. The quiet, the cloud now turning into the fog, which is more like a whisper as it approaches the lake, gives this spot of northern Montana a mystical countenance.

The timeless 14th-century book The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous enlightens us about Christian mysticism. We call something mystical if it is not obvious to our senses or minds. When we see such beauty as the clouds and the lake on this cool early morning, we cannot explain the experience by what we know. It calms my soul on a day when I pray for calm, patience, and flexibility. Our experience tells us we have known this presence before, when we took the time to be present with it.

I hope this trip with my family has reinforced that. I long to stay present in the moment and not miss again the many clouds of unknowing that disappear as I write about them. I will stop writing so I can experience the clouds one last time. I long to keep them in the album of my imagination of times experiencing the majestic beauty of the precious present.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/