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| Our friends and neighbors Cathie and CJ's hearts. |
Like
last week’s post, this entry from my book reflecting on the spiritual writings
of Henri J. M. Nouwen might help us cope with the worldwide pandemic.
It makes no sense to preach the Gospel when I have
allowed no time for my own conversion. –Henri Nouwen, The Primacy of the
Heart, p 4.
Recently,
during a retreat, someone described himself as a “square peg trying to fit into
a round hole,” a metaphor with which many participants identified. But one
retreatant who worked at a nineteenth-century historical site pointed out
something new to us. In constructing a wooden building of that time, he
explained, you wouldn’t want a round peg in a round hole because it could
expand or contract, depending on temperature and moisture. It was actually
better to have a square peg in a round hole to maintain the grip between the
pieces.
In
trying to fit into monastic life, Henri was a square peg trying to fit into a
round hole. He was an extrovert with an introvert’s calling. But the monastic
life had a grip on him even if it wasn’t a complete or comfortable fit. This
might also be your experience. Not all of us fit a monastic life, but maybe
that’s all the better for its firm grip upon us. We are all called to monastic
reflection, that is, moments we set aside for contemplation. If we can do this
daily, we are all the more blessed.
Retreats
are how we are most likely to fit the monastic way of life into our busy lives.
It is there we may listen to sacred texts and to one another in new ways, as
well as listen to our own hearts, our own centers, and to the God of our
hearts. Unprovidentially, many of us want our retreats as full and busy as our
everyday lives, and we anticipate a schedule of uplifting, stimulating talks,
or we bring many books to read or plan many tasks to accomplish. But we need to
find idle time lest we be distracted by time-bound idols.
In
a previous book, Reformation of the Heart, I described two insights offered by
participants in two different Henri Nouwen retreats I led the year following
his death, one at Kirkridge in Pennsylvania and the other at Ghost Ranch in New
Mexico. At Kirkridge, a physical therapist explained that a wound has to heal
from the inside out. At Ghost Ranch, a ceramic artist told us that, in spinning
a pot, the shape of the inside determines the shape of the outside. So it is
with the human heart. Our wounded hearts must heal from the inside out. And the
gospel we proclaim is shaped by how we allow the good news of God’s love to
shape our own hearts.
The
truth is, however, that healing and love occur in the everyday events of our
lives as well as on retreat or in what I call in my workshops “monastic
moments,” brief opportunities to look inward. Healing and love may come to us
in conversations with our friends, in caring for others, in serving a just
cause, in catastrophic personal or public events, in life’s many interruptions,
irritations, distractions, sorrows, and joys. Yet to have ears to hear, eyes to
see, and hearts to feel, we need moments of quiet reflection to allow those
many ways in which we experience healing and love to consciously convert our
hearts so that we may be healers and lovers, better proclaiming the gospel.
+Heal my heart, so I may offer healing. Love my
heart, so I may love.
I invite you to register and attend an
online course/retreat I will be leading in September as part of the
Spirituality Program of Columbia Theological Seminary entitled, “An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality.”
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© 2002 and 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with
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