Coming Home

In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), there are two sons: the younger son, who runs away from home to an alien country, and the older son, who stays home to do his duty. The younger son dissipates himself with alcohol and sex; the older son alienates himself by working hard and dutifully fulfilling all his obligations. Both are lost. Their father grieves over both, because with neither of them does he experience the intimacy he desires.
Both lust and cold obedience can prevent us from being true children of God. Whether we are like the younger son or the older son, we have to come home to the place where we can rest in the embrace of God's unconditional love.

- Henri Nouwen

Whereas the Way...

Christ's will was, and is, to unite. Think how he wept over Jerusalem! Think of his prayer, “That they all might be one.” But people did not and do not want this. Christ said. “I am the Way,” and that is what matters. Not what denomination or church group one belongs to, not social work, not reform, etc.—but the Way. Modern life is so complicated and torn, so distracting and disintegrating. Whereas the Way is simple, light and straight, and unifies the whole of life.

- Kathleen Hasenberg

Taking Up Our Crosses

Jesus says: "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him ... take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). He does not say: "Make a cross" or "Look for a cross." Each of us has a cross to carry. There is no need to make one or look for one. The cross we have is hard enough for us! But are we willing to take it up, to accept it as our cross?
Maybe we can't study, maybe we are handicapped, maybe we suffer from depression, maybe we experience conflict in our families, maybe we are victims of violence or abuse. We didn't choose any of it, but these things are our crosses. We can ignore them, reject them, refuse them or hate them. But we can also take up these crosses and follow Jesus with them.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Toward Becoming More Merciful

It was years ago now. I was eating out with an elderly friend and not being as attentive as I might have been to her low-grade unhappiness. In fact, to be frank, I was irritable and impatient. Then my eye caught an even more frail elder leaving his table and simultaneously scattering a handful of change across the floor. Clumsy, noisy, inconvenient to the rushed lunch crowd and the waiters serving them. But another diner, on her way past, simply bent down, gathered the change, offered it to the man, and departed without a word.
In a flash I saw my coldness at that moment, and how very near us mercy is. I know that I too act with such mercy, yet when I am caught in impatience or other dark emotions, my self-imposed exile from God's commonwealth of loving and knowing I am beloved puts me in a realm where I can even forget that mercy is possible.
But no act of kindness is insignificant. We can reveal God's commonwealth to one another without realizing that we are doing so. And when we are in exile, our darkness is, in reality, only a flash away from the love and mercy that we are always being called to live in. May our eyes and hearts open more and more to that call.

Susan M. S. Brown

A Major League Perspective

The thing about Christian athletes is that we care about how we look to other people, but we want the main focus to be on Jesus, not on ourselves. We're not perfect. We will screw up, but we do have perspective. We know who we are. We know we have to be responsible; we know our purpose is to serve God.

- Russ Ortiz, MLB Pitcher

What Grace Cannot Prevent

The spirit of the Gospels has not been handed down in a pure state from one Christian generation to the next. To undergo suffering and death joyfully was from the very beginning considered a sign of grace in the Christian martyrs — but grace cannot do more for a human being than it could for Christ.
Those who believe that God himself, once he became a man, could not face the harshness of destiny without a long tremor of anguish, should understand that those who give the impression of having risen to a higher plane, who seem superior to ordinary human misery, are those who resort to the aids of illusion, exaltation, and fanaticism to conceal the harshness of destiny from their own eyes.
The person who does not wear the armour of the lie cannot experience force without being touched by it to the very soul. Grace can prevent this touch from corrupting him, but it cannot spare him the wound. Having forgotten this all too well, Christian tradition only rarely recovers that simplicity that renders so poignant every sentence in the story of the Passion.

- Simone Weil

The Gospel Of Grace

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God..." (Ephesians 2:8 NRSV)

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually-abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last "trick" whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school; the deathbed convert who for decades had his cake and ate it, broke every law of God and man, wallowed in lust and raped the earth.
"But how?" we ask. Then the voice says, "They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
There they are. There we are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to the faith.
My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.

- Brennan Manning in "The Ragamuffin Gospel"

Downward Mobility

The society in which we live suggests in countless ways that the way to go is up. Making it to the top, entering the limelight, breaking the record - that's what draws attention, gets us on the front page of the newspaper, and offers us the rewards of money and fame.
The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not of upward mobility but of downward mobility. It is going to the bottom, staying behind the sets, and choosing the last place! Why is the way of Jesus worth choosing? Because it is the way to the Kingdom, the way Jesus took, and the way that brings everlasting life.

- Henri Nouwen

To Absorb Is Better

The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing - Joseph Wood Krutch

In the fields and woods more than anything else all things come to those who wait, because all things are on the move, and are sure sooner or later to come your way. To absorb a thing is better than to learn it, and we absorb what we enjoy. We learn things at school; we absorb them in the fields and woods. When we look upon Nature with fondness and appreciation, she meets us halfway and takes a deeper hold on us than when studiously conned. Hence I say the way of knowledge of Nature is the way of love and enjoyment, and is more surely found in the open air than in the school room or the laboratory.

- John Burroughs

Forever The Evangelist

My mind tells me I ought to get out there and go, but I just can't do it. But I'll preach until there is no breath left in my body. I was called by God, and until God tells me to retire, I cannot. Whatever strength I have, whatever time God lets me have, is going to be dedicated to doing the work of an evangelist, as long as I live.

- Billy Graham

Spiritual Courage

Courage is connected with taking risks. Jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorbike, coming over Niagara Falls in a barrel, walking on a tightrope between the towers of New York's World Trade Centre, or crossing the ocean in a rowboat are called courageous acts because people risk their lives by doing these things. But none of these daredevil acts comes from the centre of our being. They all come from the desire to test our physical limits and to become famous and popular.
Spiritual courage is something completely different. It is following the deepest desires of our hearts at the risk of losing fame and popularity. It asks of us the willingness to lose our temporal lives in order to gain eternal life.

- Henri Nouwen

The Earth As It Is

Is it possible to live in peace and happiness when you know that two-thirds of human beings are suffering, hungry and poor? To be human we have to have compassion. This solidarity is really the defining factor of our humanity and is gradually being lost in a culture of material values. It’s not only the cry of the poor we must listen to but also the cry of the earth. The earth and human beings are both threatened. We must do something to change the situation...
There won’t be a Noah’s Ark to save only some of us. To meet people’s fundamental concerns change is needed. The world as it is does not offer the majority of humanity life but rather hell. I believe that change is possible, because I cannot accept a God who could remain indifferent to this world, but only one who cares about the poor and the suffering.

- Leonardo Boff

A Courageous Life

"Have courage," we often say to one another. Courage is a spiritual virtue. The word courage comes from the Latin word cor, which means "heart". A courageous act is an act coming from the heart. A courageous word is a word arising from the heart. The heart, however, is not just the place where our emotions are located. The heart is the centre of our being, the centre of all thoughts, feelings, passions, and decisions.
When the flesh - the lived human experience - becomes word, community can develop. When we say, "Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us. Wait until you hear whom we met," we call people together and make our lives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls us into community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of a body of people.

- Henri Nouwen

Words That Create Community

The word is always a word for others. Words need to be heard. When we give words to what we are living, these words need to be received and responded to. A speaker needs a listener. A writer needs a reader.
When the flesh - the lived human experience - becomes word, community can develop. When we say, "Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us. Wait until you hear whom we met," we call people together and make our lives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls us into community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of a body of people.

- Henri Nouwen

Intelligent Design

Why is there something rather than nothing? When you think about it, there's nothing that says that it has to be. If you start with that question, then I think the very next question becomes, Is this kind of world more likely to have happened by accident or by design?... It's amazing that we wouldn't for a minute look at objects of everyday life, the television in our room or a vase on the table and say, how did that come about? We know it came about because of some kind of intelligence and some kind of design by a person or a committee of persons. But when it comes to this unbelievable universe, we can be talked into thinking that it could have happened by chance.
The creation of the universe is absolutely amazing, from my point of view, and that's a bias probably because I'm a physician. I find that the human body is even in some ways more amazing. And when you get down to the structure of DNA and the brain, in particular, it turns out to be the most amazing structure that we could ever possibly imagine.
To give you one little example - the compacting ability of DNA. All the information needed to run each of us weighs less than a few trillionths of a gram. And here's another little factoid that just blows my mind. If we were to collect all of the information in DNA for all the organisms that have ever existed on this planet, it could fit into the size of a grain of salt.

- Dr. Timothy Johnson, ABC News Medical Editor, in an interview in Christianity Today, May 24, 2004

Flesh Become Word

The word must become flesh, but the flesh also must become word. It is not enough for us, as human beings, just to live. We also must give words to what we are living. If we do not speak what we are living, our lives lose their vitality and creativity. When we see a beautiful view, we search for words to express what we are seeing. When we meet a caring person, we want to speak about that meeting. When we are sorrowful or in great pain, we need to talk about it. When we are surprised by joy, we want to announce it!
Through the word, we appropriate and internalize what we are living. The word makes our experience truly human.

- Henri Nouwen

Rooting Out Bitterness

When I was a kid, we lived in a rural community that specialized in growing tobacco. My first summer job was weeding the crop, and most of the time we would walk the seemingly endless rows with a hoe, scuffing out weeds in relative comfort. But inevitably when we got close to the fence, we ran into thistles - hundreds and hundreds of little thistles. They looked harmless enough, but you couldn't scuff them out with a hoe; you had to get down on your knees and pull those prickly little things out by the roots. We often thought it would be far easier to just let them stay there. After all, they weren't very big. But the farmer knew if we left them until harvest time, when we reached down to get a handful of tobacco, we would come away with a palm full of thorns.
I have found that in life, bitterness is a lot like those little thistles. We can push away hurts and pains, but the only way to get rid of bitterness is to fall to our knees and root it out through prayer. It is hard work, but if we leave a little bitterness in our hearts, it grows until it does real damage to someone.

- Alan Beck

Words That Come From the Heart

Words that do not become flesh in us remain "just words." They have no power to affect our lives. If someone says, "I love you," without any deep emotion, the words do more harm than good. But if these same words are spoken from the heart, they can create new life.
It is important that we keep in touch with the source of our words. Our great temptation is to become "pleasers," people who say the right words to please others but whose words have no roots in their interior lives. We have to keep making sure our words are rooted in our hearts. The best way to do that is in prayerful silence.

- Henri Nouwen

Real Love

Let everyone understand that the real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which we often long, just because they console us, but in serving God by serving those around us, in justice, fortitude of soul, and humility.

- Teresa of Avila

The Meaning Of Life

"What is the meaning of life?" asked the student of the rabbi.
The rabbi replied, "That's such a wonderful question, why would you want to exchange it for an answer?"

- Philip Yancey in "The Bible Jesus Read"

Words That Become Flesh

Words are important. Without them our actions lose meaning. And without meaning we cannot live. Words can offer perspective, insight, understanding, and vision. Words can bring consolation, comfort, encouragement and hope. Words can take away fear, isolation, shame, and guilt. Words can reconcile, unite, forgive, and heal. Words can bring peace and joy, inner freedom and deep gratitude. Words, in short, can carry love on their wings. A word of love can be the greatest act of love. That is because when our words become flesh in our own lives and the lives of others, we can change the world.
Jesus is the word made flesh. In him speaking and acting were one.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Towards Intimacy

The journey toward intimacy is perhaps the longest, most difficult journey we take as human beings. While the dictionary defines intimacy as "close familiarity or association and nearness in friendship," intimacy also requires us to stand naked in front of another human being with all of our warts and flaws. We are the too large belly hiding a waistline that used to measure eighteen inches around, declaring, "This is me. This is who I am. I am worried about you rejecting me. I am worried I have shown you too much of me. This is me. This is who I am."
Even further, intimacy is the ability to share our heart and soul with another; it is truly taking down our defenses just as we "take off our clothes." Intimacy is a tremendous risk for some, less so for others, but never inconsequential. It is intertwined with trust, though sometimes we trust the wrong people, who hand our trust back to us battered and broken. Nevertheless, intimacy is definitely resilient, and we stay on the journey, looking for intimacy in our soul mates, our families and our dearest friends. This journey requires us to look deeply and examine our thoughts and feelings from the inside out. This is the toughest part, but the results can lead us to accept and be our best friends and to love and embrace our families. It is on this journey that God tells us to stay, hard as it is, and listen to our heart and those of others. God speaks. Hearts speak. Our journey toward intimacy helps us to hear them clearly.

- Shirley K. Lewis

Liberty Worth Having

How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well that we were made, clear! - that it not be made turbid by our contact with the world, so that it will not reflect objects. What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds - if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool? If you would avoid uncleanness and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.

- Henry David Thoreau

The Unique Role Of The Church

The world can do almost anything as well or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.

- Gordon MacDonald

Growing into the Truth We Speak

Can we only speak when we are fully living what we are saying? If all our words had to cover all our actions, we would be doomed to permanent silence! Sometimes we are called to proclaim God's love even when we are not yet fully able to live it. Does that mean we are hypocrites? Only when our own words no longer call us to conversion. Nobody completely lives up to his or her own ideals and visions. But by proclaiming our ideals and visions with great conviction and great humility, we may gradually grow into the truth we speak. As long as we know that our lives always will speak louder than our words, we can trust that our words will remain humble.

- Henri Nouwen

The Cause of Unhappiness

If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.

- Anthony de Mello

Encounter With Christ

As we shared together our feelings about the study groups, we realized that we were not meeting together each week for an intellectual exercise: something very real and significant was taking place. We were coming to know that the Christian faith is not primarily an ethic; it is not the struggle to do good or be good, but an encounter with Christ, of which morality and ethical living are by-products.

- Harold R. Fray, Jr. in "The Spirit Making New"

Right Living and Right Speaking

To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God's presence in the world. What we live is more important than what we say, because the right way of living always leads to the right way of speaking. When we forgive our neighbours from our hearts, our hearts will speak forgiving words. When we are grateful, we will speak grateful words, and when we are hopeful and joyful, we will speak hopeful and joyful words.
When our words come too soon and we are not yet living what we are saying, we easily give double messages. Giving double messages - one with our words and another with our actions - makes us hypocrites. May our lives give us the right words and may our words lead us to the right life.

- Henri Nouwen