Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Henri speaks of entering the new country where the Lord dwells there in greater intimacy. It’s like we reach a point in our lives where we are not truly at peace in our old country any more.  He struggled, just as we do, when we leave the old country that has become so familiar. It requires the death of all that is precious to us: influence, success, affection, praise, etc.  It is where we have spent most of our days.  We are asked to trust but it is hard since we have to go to the new country naked and vulnerable. He said it seems that we cross and recross the border and for a time feel joy in the new country. But then fear comes and we long again for what we left behind. But when we go back to the old we find it has lost its charm. May we risk a few more steps in to the new country, trusting that we will feel more comfortable and be willing to stay longer.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

God’s love is permanent and we can claim that love as a gift from Him and also give that love to others. When others stop loving us, we don’t have to stop loving them. Maybe on a human level, changes might be necessary, but on the level of the divine, we can remain faithful to this love. Some day we can offer to give gratuitous love that doesn’t ask for anything in return. We can also be free to receive that gratuitous love ourselves.  Often love is offered to us, but we don’t recognize it. We may discard it if we are fixed on receiving it from the same person to whom we gave it.  The paradox of love is that just when we claim ourselves as God’s beloved child, have set boundaries to our love, and contained our needs, we begin to grow into the freedom to give this love without asking for any return.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Henri talks about setting boundaries to our love. When people show us their boundaries by saying they can’t do something for us, we may feel rejected.  We would rather they showed us  love, care, and giving without limit. But we also can’t keep giving to people when they ask for more and more of us or it will leave us feeling exhausted, used, and manipulated. We have to set our own boundaries so we can acknowledge, respect, and even be grateful for the boundaries of others. “The great task is to claim yourself for yourself, so that you can contain your needs within the boundaries of your self and hold them in the presence of those you love. True mutuality in love requires people who possess themselves and who can give to each other while holding on to their own identities.”  By setting our own boundaries to our love, we can give more effectively and be more self-contained with our own needs.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

There are many times we don’t “feel” God’s love and may instead feel very empty as Henri did. We may try to find our fulfillment in the world with pleasures, distractions, fantasies etc. but this only causes us to leave the true ROCK of our faith on which our spiritual house is built.  We have to trust that the solid place is to say yes to God’s love even when we don’t feel it. In fact we can go to this place over and over again even after every failure. God has promised we will receive the love we have been searching for and He is faithful to His promise. So let us  stop wandering around and looking elsewhere, and just start trusting and receiving!

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

We need to be attentive to the inner voice so we can experience new life in freedom and joy.  We must stop seeing ourselves through the eyes of others whom we try desperately to please.  They can not give us our identity and we must let go of all self-made props and trust that God is enough for us. Only when we stop being a pleaser and reclaim our true identity can we be free. Gradually we have to move from crying outward – crying out for people who we think can fulfill our needs – to crying inward to the place where we can let ourselves be held and carried by God. No one person can fulfill all our needs. But the community can hold us and be the human hands that show us God’s faithful love.

Devotions from Henri Nouwen’s book The Voice of Love

Devotions these next days will be taken from Henri’s book written in the darkest time of his life when he lost his self-esteem, his energy to live and work, his sense of being loved, and even his hope in God. He came face to face with his own nothingness and all that had given his life meaning. He was in a safe community at the time, L-Arche, a community of people with mental disabilities. There he hit bottom!  He felt like even God had abandoned him. But in time it became a place of purification that led to new inner freedom, new hope, and new creativity. Each of us has a deep hole in our being that we can never succeed in filling. The hole is enormous and we may be tempted to flee from it by avoiding it, or by becoming absorbed in our pain. He talks of the need to enter our own heart and the heart of God through our pain. God will send to us people with whom we can share and will lead us closer to the true source of love. God is faithful and it is He who will fill our heart and satisfy our deepest desire.

Devotions taken from Ruth Haley Barton

In our lives we all need to take time  for what is most important.
As I read an e-mail from Ruth Barton it was a good reminder.

 “It you attempt to act and do for others or for the world without deepening your own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, you will not have anything to give others.  You will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of your own obsessions, your aggressivity, your ambitions, your delusions and ends and means…” Thomas Merton

Spiriual formation is important for all of us. It is what Al teaches with the Nuns at Scholastica too.

“Spiritual transformation—the process by which Christ is formed in us for the glory of God, for the sake of others, and for the abundance of our own lives—is an organic process that goes far beyond mere behavioral tweaks. In this process the Spirit of God works deep and fundamental changes at the core of our being, moving us from behaviors motivated by fear and self-protection to trust and abandonment to God. From selfishness and self-absorption to freely offering the gifts of the authentic self. From the ego’s desperate attempts to control the outcomes of our lives to the ability to discern and do God’s will even when it is foolishness to the world around us.”

“Anglican theologian W.H. Vanstone once observed that the church is like a swimming pool in which all the noise comes from the shallow end.  But most of the wisdom is to be found in the deep end, among those who have taken the time and cultivated the habits and disciplines to learn to swim in deeper waters.  If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, then we need the kind of sustained learning that leads us into the deep end of the pool. “

Let us take time for Him in solitude and quiet so that we may swim in the deep waters!

Devotions from Margaret Silf’s book, At Sea With God

We are all on a journey that we might envision as a circular journey, like a voyage around the world of our own unique circumstances. This voyage seems to keep on returning us to its beginnings.  Our choices help determine whether

our personal spiral is leading upward towards the fullness of everything we are called to become, or downward into disintegration. This spiral journey reveals the windings of our own growth in wisdom and love and understanding.

 Our destination is the ocean of God’s love with its potential to transform us from who we are now into the fullness of all creation into which we are being called. “To live a life of faith is to trust the journey and to shape our choices in favor of the spiral that leads to life.”

We can learn from all that has been, to help us sail true into the waters that still lie ahead. Each of us is making a unique journey and we begin at our own home port and sail to the horizon that will reveal who we truly are before God.  We each have to deal with our wind patterns, the storms, and  both the best and worst in ourselves.  We must take the responsibility for our pathway through life, even though we journey alongside others. “When we are ready to voyage beyond the horizon, it won’t matter anymore that our boat falls apart,. We will have learned to trust the immensity of the ocean of God’s love.”