The Spirit's Ministry

There is a place for emotion in spiritual experience. The Holy Spirit's... ministry is not limited to illuminating our minds and teaching us about Christ. He also pours God's love into our hearts. Similarly, He bears witness with our spirit that we are God's children, for He causes us to say "Abba, Father" and to exclaim with gratitude, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" (1 John 3:1)

- John Stott in "The Contemporary Christian"

Why We Flee

Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self.
It is a harrowing journey, a death to self—the false self—and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want.

- M. Basil Pennington

Sharing the Abundant Love

Why must we go out to the far ends of the world to preach the Gospel of Jesus when people do not have to know Jesus in order to enter the house of God? We must go out because we want to share with all people the abundant love and hope, joy and peace that Jesus brought to us. We want to "proclaim the unfathomable treasure of Christ" and "throw light on the inner workings of the mystery kept hidden through all ages in God, the creator of everything" (Ephesians 3:8-9).
What we have received is so beautiful and so rich that we cannot hold it for ourselves but feel compelled to bring it to every human being on earth.

- Henri Nouwen

Building Character

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece - by thought, choice, courage and determination.

- John Luther

"My God! What Have We Done?"

Nearly sixty-five years ago, Father George Zabelka, a chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, met with the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and gave them his blessing.
Days later he counseled a crew member who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over Nagasaki to review the results. The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock - flesh seared, melted, and falling off.
The description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka’s soul - and eventually altered the course of his life.

Jesus Comes to Us in the Poor

What finally counts is not whether we know Jesus and his words but whether we live our lives in the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Jesus is the Spirit of Love. Jesus himself makes this clear when he speaks about the last judgment. There people will ask: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?" and Jesus will answer: "In so far as you did this to one of the least ... of mine, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:37, 40).
This is our great challenge and consolation. Jesus comes to us in the poor, the sick, the dying, the prisoners, the lonely, the disabled, the rejected. There we meet him, and there the door to God's house is opened for us.

- Henri Nouwen

By The Numbers: Got Water?

$46 billion - Amount spent per year globally on bottled water
$1.7 billion - Amount needed per year beyond current spending to provide clean drinking water to everyone on earth
More than one billion - Number of people worldwide who lack reliable access to safe drinking water
80 - Percentage of world illnesses due to water-borne diseases

Source: The New York Times

Fed up

"You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean.
It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right....
The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important."

- Thomas Merton

They Are the Most Precious

You yourself are the child you must learn to know, rear, and above all enlighten. To demand that others should provide you with answers is like asking a strange woman to give birth to your baby. There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. Seek in your child the undiscovered part of yourself.

- Janusz Korczak

The Door Open to Anyone

Jesus is the door to a life in and with God. "I am the gate," he says (John 10:9). "I am the Way; I am Truth and Life. No one can come to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). Still, many people never have heard or will hear of Jesus. They are born, live their lives, and die without having been exposed to Jesus and his words. Are they lost? Is there no place in the Father's house for them?
Jesus opened the door to God's house for all people, also for those who never knew or will know that it was Jesus who opened it. The Spirit that Jesus sent "blows where it pleases" (John 3:8), and it can lead anyone through the door to God's house.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Toward Right Use of Power

My early experience of power was the fear-based, coercive power of a fundamentalist institution. My angry reaction to the abuse leaked out in a studied avoidance of any institution where I could self-righteously excoriate the powerful. I happily used Henri Nouwen's frequent comments about downward mobility (consciously choosing not to act powerfully) as justification for my power avoidance. But gradually I have come to admit that power was a shadow I was afraid to embrace.
Power is good when we find our true identity within ourselves and offer our power as a gift to the world. Power is evil when we impose our will on others because we seek our identity outside ourselves. St. Paul says Christ empowers us in our inner beings to experience the fullness of God's love. That enables us to live with gentleness, patience and forgiveness within the diversity of community. Such a centered life is powerful and empowering to others.
Henri's words about downward mobility are important for those who have access to external power and who seek their identity through competition, prestige and security. But those same words can be hurtful to people without access to power. The marginalized need to embrace power. Not external power but the power to trust their own goodness and claim their rightful place in the world.
Whether we live in the corridors of power or on the margins, the way we use power is the key. We can rely on external power to impose our will on others in order to bolster our fearful selves, or we can live out of our inner empowerment. That decision makes all the difference.

- Susan M. S. Brown

Learning A Lesson

Oh, profound wisdom! It is pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson a celebration, instead of a cause for regret, is to only ask, "How can I put this to use tomorrow?"

- Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards

The Deepest Comfort

Pain and sorrow are never wasted when given into God's hands, and their transformation is far beyond our imaginings. But in this life, we will experience a poignancy, a regret that harm was done when our actions could have been different. This poignancy is a valid, healthy part of our journey of release.
The deepest comfort in our mourning is to know that God not only has compassion but actually feels our suffering with us. Jesus tells us that not even a tiny sparrow will fall to the ground "apart from your Father" (Matthew 10:29). To me this means that God's heart so enfolds and unites with the sparrow (and with us) that the suffering of the tiny creature is shared, felt by that supreme heart. The creature's suffering resounds through God's whole being.

- Flora Slosson Wuellner in "Forgiveness, the Passionate Journey"

Jesus Takes Away Fatality

The great mystery of the incarnation is that God became human in Jesus so that all human flesh could be clothed with divine life. Our lives are fragile and destined to death. But since God, through Jesus, shared in our fragile and mortal lives, death no longer has the final word. Life has become victorious. Paul writes: "And after this perishable nature has put on imperishability and this mortal nature has put on immortality, then will the words of scripture come true: "Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:54). Jesus has taken away the fatality of our existence and given our lives eternal value.

- Henri Nouwen

Let the Whole World Fall In

True evangelism, based on the example of Jesus, does not suggest the "missionary zeal" of self-righteous proselytizers. It implies, on the contrary, the kind of all-embracing universality evident in Mother Teresa's prayer: "May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in." Not just fellow nuns, Catholics, Calcuttans, Indians. The whole world. It gives me pause to realize that, were such a prayer said by me and answered by God, I would afterward possess a heart so open that even hate-driven zealots would fall inside.

- David James Duncan

Fear And Trust

"Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid, The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation."
(Isaiah 12:2 NIV)

You've heard Lord Acton's famous phrase, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I can name a four-letter word that corrupts more than power. The word is FEAR. Fear corrupts the world, fear corrupts the church, more than power does. Granted, it is not easy to make sense of the "moronific inferno" of contemporary North American culture, to quote Saul Bellow; but whatever tack one takes, we are living in a culture of fear. Our faith communities are especially suffering from fear fever, and are desperately looking for health insurance protection rather than prevention and cure. The two most important words for every one of us to confront are these words: FEAR and TRUST.

- Leonard Sweet in "A Cup of Coffee at the SoulCafe"

What's Wrong with Wealth?

The penalty of affluence is that it cuts one off from the common lot, common experience, and common fellowship. In a sense it outlaws one automatically from one’s birthright of membership in the great human family.

- Arnold Toynbee

All People Lifted Up with Jesus

The death and resurrection of Jesus are God's way to open for all people the door to eternal life. Jesus said: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). Indeed, all people, from all times and places, are lifted up with Jesus on the cross and into the new life of the resurrection. Thus, Jesus' death is a death for all humanity, and Jesus' resurrection is a resurrection for all humanity.
Not one person from the past, present, or future is excluded from the great passage of Jesus from slavery to freedom, from the land of captivity to the promised land, from death to eternal life.

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus' Loneliness

When Jesus came close to his death, he no longer could experience God's presence. He cried out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:47). Still in love he held on to the truth that God was with him and said: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46).
The loneliness of the cross led Jesus to the resurrection. As we grow older we are often invited by Jesus to follow him into this loneliness, the loneliness in which God is too close to be experienced by our limited hearts and minds. When this happens, let us pray for the grace to surrender our spirits to God as Jesus did.

- Henri Nouwen

Two Kinds of Loneliness

In the spiritual life we have to make a distinction between two kinds of loneliness. In the first loneliness, we are out of touch with God and experience ourselves as anxiously looking for someone or something that can give us a sense of belonging, intimacy, and home. The second loneliness comes from an intimacy with God that is deeper and greater than our feelings and thoughts can capture.
We might think of these two kinds of loneliness as two forms of blindness. The first blindness comes from the absence of light, the second from too much light. The first loneliness we must try to outgrow with faith and hope. The second we must be willing to embrace in love.

- Henri Nouwen

Prayer And Action

Prayer and action... can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows in powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation. If prayer leads us into a deeper unity with the compassionate Christ, it will always give rise to concrete acts of service. And if concrete acts of service do indeed lead us to a deeper solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying, and the oppressed, they will always give rise to prayer. In prayer we meet Christ, and in Him all human suffering. In service we meet people, and in them the suffering Christ.

- Henri J. M. Nouwen in "Compassion"

What Then?

That cause can never be lost nor stayed
which takes the course of what God has made;
and is not trusting in walls and towers,
but slowly growing from seeds to flowers.

Each noble service that has been wrought
was first conceived as a fruitful thought;
each worthy cause with a future glorious
by quietly growing becomes victorious.

Thereby itself like a tree it shows:
that high it reaches, as deep it grows;
and when the storms are its branches shaking,
it deeper root in the soil is taking.

Be then no more by a storm dismayed,
for by it the full grown seeds are laid;
and though the tree by its might it shatters,
what then, if thousands of seeds it scatters?

- Kristian Ostergaard

Spiritual Dryness

Sometimes we experience a terrible dryness in our spiritual life. We feel no desire to pray, don't experience God's presence, get bored with worship services, and even think that everything we ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is little more than a childhood fairy tale.
Then it is important to realise that most of these feelings and thoughts are just feelings and thoughts, and that the Spirit of God dwells beyond our feelings and thoughts. It is a great grace to be able to experience God's presence in our feelings and thoughts, but when we don't, it does not mean that God is absent. It often means that God is calling us to a greater faithfulness. It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

- Henri Nouwen

Walking With Christ

God will use your life now.
Following Christ, participating in the purpose of God, being used by God begins now. You need not become better; you need not develop perfect skills; you do not have to know all the answers to life's hard questions, not even all of your own answers. God accepts you as you are and begins to use you where you are - "warts and all." The will of God for your life is here and now.
Walk into your future with the confidence that God has claimed you. The pathway into active partnership lies beneath your next step.

- Ben Campbell Johnson in "Calming the Restless Spirit"

Joy Unspeakable

There is a life, though the world comprehends it not. It has a body without defect, want, misery, anger, or death. The Holy Spirit is its air and spirit, and it is filled with love and joy. This life has been from eternity, rising up and blossoming. It is not of this earth, but of another substance—eternal life.
To all you who are in the process of birth: may each of you be strengthened and bud in the life of God, and grow, and bear fruit on the Tree of Paradise—may each branch and twig shelter all the others, that this tree may become a great tree. Then shall we all be filled with joy unspeakable, and glory.

- Jakob Boehme (1575-1624)

Putting Our Temperaments in the Service of God

Our temperaments - whether flamboyant, phlegmatic, introverted, or extroverted - are quite permanent fixtures of our personalities. Still, the way we "use" our temperaments on a daily basis can vary greatly. When we are attentive to the Spirit of God within us, we will gradually learn to put our temperaments in the service of a virtuous life. Then flamboyancy gives great zeal for the Kingdom, phlegmatism helps to keep an even keel in times of crisis, introversion deepens the contemplative side, and extroversion encourages creative ministry.
Let's live with our temperaments as with gifts that help us deepen our spiritual lives.

- Henri Nouwen

They Whose Souls Burn

I look not only at tongue and speech;
I look at the spirit and the inward feeling.
I look into the heart to see whether it be lowly...

Enough of phrases and conceits and metaphors!
I want burning, burning...

Light up a fire of love in thy soul,
Burn all thought and expression away!

Moses, they that know the conventions are of one sort;
They whose souls burn are of another.

- Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273)

A Window on Our Spiritual Lives

Even though our emotional and spiritual lives are distinct, they do influence one another profoundly. Our feelings often give us a window on our spiritual journeys. When we cannot let go of jealousy, we may wonder if we are in touch with the Spirit in us that cries out "Abba." When we feel very peaceful and "centered," we may come to realise that this is a sign of our deep awareness of our belovedness.
Likewise our prayer lives, lived as faithful response to the presence of the Spirit within us, may open a window on our emotions, feelings, and passions and give us some indication of how to put them into the service of our long journey into the heart of God.

- Henri Nouwen

On The Journey Toward Right Use of Power

Our leader said she had never seen it before. A small group of friends who gather weekly to dance as prayer were doing exercises to deepen our sense of connection. Facing each other in silent pairs, we were to make our way together to both ends of the room. And I assumed, though the assumption did not make me comfortable or happy, that it would be like a game of soccer or football, each of us trying to move our pair in the opposite direction, physical strength or cunning prevailing.
But instead of pushing or pulling me, my partner backed up and, with spontaneous but exquisitely beautiful movement, beckoned me to follow. We touched the sofa against the wall (her "goal"), then made our way in tandem to the other end of the room.
Most of us have the privilege of living in enough safety to have glimpsed in our own lives, to have seen in news and history about nonviolent peacemakers, to believe as a tenet of faith, that power-with, as opposed to power-over, is always a possibility. Certainly among my prayerful dancing friends, gentle persuasion was more easily accessible than it would have been to many of us in a harsher setting. Still, I simply took for granted that we would be in competition. The invitation to cooperate instead was a gracious epiphany to body, mind, and spirit.

Susan M. S. Brown

What If...

What if God couldn't take the time to bless us today
because we couldn't take the time to thank Him yesterday?

What if God decided to stop leading us tomorrow
because we didn't follow His Son today?

What if we never saw another flower bloom
because we grumbled when God sent the rain?

What if God didn't walk with us today
because we failed to recognize it as His day?

What if God took away the Bible tomorrow
because we would not read it today?

What if God took away His message
because we failed to listen to the Messenger?

What if God didn't send His only begotten Son
because He wanted us to be prepared to pay the price for sin.

What if the door of the church was closed
because we did not open the door of our heart?

What if God stopped loving and caring for us
because we failed to love and care for others?

What if God would not hear us today
because we would not listen to Him?

What if God answered our prayers
the way we answer His call to service?

What if God met our needs
the way we give Him our lives???

- Unknown

Living in the Shadow

To live with the conscious knowledge of the shadow of uncertainty, with the knowledge that disaster or tragedy could strike at any time; to be afraid and to know and acknowledge your fear, and still to live creatively and with unstinting love: that is to live with grace.

- Peter Abrahams