Tag Archives: spirituality

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Henri Nouwen – Waiting on God as a Lifestyle

“Slow down, baby you’re going too fast
You got you hands in the air
With you feet on the gas”   India Arie, “Slow Down”

Waiting is unpopular, and usually considered a waste of time. “For many people, waiting is an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go.” (Henri Nouwen)  Nouwen paints a picture where some well-meaning soul is trying to quietly wait on God, and where bystanders are complaining, “Get going! Show you are able to make a difference! Don’t just sit there…!” We live in a culture whose not-so-subtle assumption is that if you’re not producing – if you’re not doing something – that you’re useless. The corelary is that those who accomplish the most are the best and most valuable among us. It seems fairly obvious.

But from a Christian point of view, it’s messed up. In fact, Simone Weil makes waiting patiently in expectation  “… the foundation of the spiritual life.” And many others agree with her.

So what would it mean to “wait patiently”, or in the words of the Psalmist, to “wait quietly before God?” In his article A Spirituality of Waiting*, Henri Nouwen answers this question by speaking about “patient waiting” as an approach to each day – waiting as a lifestyle:

Waiting means living as though the moment is full, not empty.

Nouwen challenges us “to be present fully to the moment” – the moment we’re in right now. We do this rather than dismissing it as insignificant or “empty.” It’s our nature to think God will do “the real thing” somewhere else, at some other time, or for someone else. In “active waiting” I trust that my moment is pregnant with possibility because God is ever at work. I stay where I am “… and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself….” The focus is on the present. Believing something can happen there – and looking for that – waiting for that.

This is more than “mindfulness.” It’s trusting that God is still at work creating, redeeming, sanctifying and revealing himself. It’s me learning to regularly ask myself, “What might God want to do right here, right now? The moment as I see it might be boring, frightening, confusing or just tediously routine – but what might God want to do in it anyway? Let me be open to that.

Waiting means giving up all my [necessarily futile] attempts to control my world.

In waiting we give up all our attempts to control our future. Instead of trying to manage everything so that (for instance) “This day will go as it should.”, we release everything to him, knowing that he has something better for us. (It’s not that we can control anything anyway, but that doesn’t keep us from trying, and we need to stop that.) As we wait this way, we take our rightful place as creatures, and as God’s children (loved and privileged but not his adviser). We leave what’s happening now, and what will happen later, to him – the one who loves us and works in all things for our good. Whatever he wants. We wait on him in the moment. He acts in the moment. We accept what he does and embrace it. Isn’t this what the psalmist means when he says, “This is the day that he Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.”? Suddenly instead of being the inspiration for a Vacation Bible School ditty, the verse reflects a “very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.” Our days and our moments are full with possibility, because God is in control. Rather than fighting him for control, we can “be glad” and wait to see what things he will do – things which are “infinitely more than we might ask or think.”

Waiting means practicing hope and letting go of wishes.

If “waiting” is the foundation of the spiritual life (Weil), then hope is the foundation of waiting. Waiting rests upon hope. This is evident, for example, in Psalm 62:5, “Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.” After 166 pages of a study on waiting, Ben Patterson concludes, “More basic than patience or perseverance are humility and hope.” In this regard, Nouwen warns against wishing. We wish for better weather, that our pain would stop, etc. We wish and wait because “We want the future to go in a very specific direction….”. Instead, Nouwen commends Zechariah, Elizabeth and Mary to us as examples of how we must hope and not merely wish. “Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.” Immediately after this, Nouwen says, “I have found it very important in my own life, to let go of my wishes and start hoping.” The statement almost seems comical, like an ironic Facebook post by a Christian hipster. But it’s not. It’s neither comical nor ironic. What Nouwen speaks of is very difficult, and very important.

The moment is full with possibility. We refuse to think that it’s best if we can control it. We let God do what he will do – avoiding any drama we might otherwise create, while we rest upon what is certain, true, and wonderful. In all this – in our difficult, counter intuitive, radical “waiting project”, we experience more rather than less of what God has for us as we cast aside our useless wishes, and hope in his promises.

Jesus suggested that each day we pray “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Why then, shouldn’t we expect kingdom power to enter the moments and circumstances of our “common” days “on earth?” Why wouldn’t the moments be full, when we know that God is answering this and innumerable other prayers of his people? Why wouldn’t the moments be full when his work of redeeming this planet of ours – and it’s people – continues? The Kingdom Of Promise is yet to come, but at the same time continues to arrive “in our midst” – on this day, in this place – where I am. And so I wait.

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*All quotes are from Henri Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting” unless otherwise noted.

Postscript: I’ve tried to develop a “next steps” approach to supplement Nouwen’s more conceptual (and brilliant) approach. My goal is to create an action plan where circumstances of the day function as “triggers” to bring me back to a place of waiting when I begin to drift. Here is a link to that.

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“Go Ahead. Shake Your Fist At God”

“For they shake their fists at God, defying the Almighty.”   Eliphaz in Job 15:25

By the end of the book that bears his name, Job has repented, apologized to God, and quieted himself before God. It’s instructive to ask “Why?” Why the big switch from his questions and criticisms of God that fill up most of the rest of the book? Here’s why: (1) Not because God answers his question, “Why me?” He doesn’t.  (2) Not because God explains to him why the righteous suffer. He doesn’t.  (3) And not because God reveals himself in awesome majesty and power, which he does (Job 38-40), because Job knew this already as some of his monologues make plain. The reason that Job repents is (4) that God appears to him – He sees God “with his own eyes”, and that was enough.

I would have expected a different ending. I would have expected God to let Job know about the contest with Satan, and about why he was suffering (pretty much the same thing). I would have expected Job to be rebuked for his disrespectful, seemingly arrogant, bitter attitude towards God, and that his misguided friends would be more or less let off the hook. (They were just saying what everybody then believed – including Job, until recently that is.)

Instead, God vindicates Job and condemns his friends – in each case for what they “said about him.” This is important.

God has no problem with Job except that he has spoken beyond his knowledge. He rewards Job. The fist in the air that must have accompanied so much of what Job had to say was no problem. The fist in the air was a good thing. In fact, God condemnation of Job’s friends is really because they didn’t raise their fists with Job. Job himself warns them that they will be judged, and that’s exactly what happens. (I know you may be beginning to fume, but please stay with me.)

Let’s examine then, what both Job and his friends had to say about God (explicitly and implicitly):  Job’s friends agreed that (1) God rewards the just, (2) that he punishes the unjust, (3) that since Job is suffering at God’s hand, he is obviously unjust, and (4) that therefore everything made sense. There was no reason for protest. No reason for a fist in the air.

As for Job, he agreed on the first two points, but when it came to the charges against him, (3) Job insisted he was innocent and still being punished by God. He also said (4) that this made no sense, and that it was indeed reason for protest – and thus the fist in the air.

The theology of Job’s friends was untempered by compassion or empathy towards Job, nor did they seemingly even entertain the possibility that Job could be speaking the truth (even though they knew the kind of life he had always lived). Their worldview wouldn’t let them go there. They had no self-doubt, no sense of their own limitations, and that is how their speaking about God was not right. They looked at what seemed an obviously horrific travesty of justice, attributed it to God, and were content to leave it at that. No questions. No problem. No protest.

Like his friends, Job attributed all his problems to God. Unlike his friends though, he wasn’t content to just accept that the God of justice would torture a righteous man for no reason. (Job was completely unaware of the cosmic test that was transpiring.) Job wouldn’t be quiet or let it go. Nor would he agree to a world where God arbitrarily torments those whose hope is in him. Job had no explanation for his experience, but he repudiates the explanation that his friend’s worldview and theology implies – about God!

In a way, this brings us full circle to the beginning of the book. Satan says to God “Anyone can believe and hope in you when he has sufficient evidence to lean on.” God replies, “Then take away his evidence.” And he does! And in the end, Job passes the test! He loses his hope (at times), he rails against God, he accuses God of being a bad God, he reaches the point where nothing makes sense any more, and where he desperately wants to die. Even so, he refuses to believe in an ultimate way, that God is not the righteous ruler of the world.

When intuition and instinct lead us to struggle with something that God does or says, we’re not just to fold our arms smugly and say to ourselves or others, “If God did it/said it, it can’t be wrong.” No. That’s just the opposite of the message of Job. That’s just what Job’s friends did. What we must do is refuse to explain away the apparent injustice and cry out for answers. That’s what Job did. What Job did is a better thing. In the story, it’s the only acceptable thing. And why? Because instead of assuming that we always have the answer, it assumes we don’t. And instead of diminishing God’s glory and righteousness (as is implicit in the argument of Job’s friends), it insists upon it – even though at the moment it makes no sense.

Who had more faith, Job or his friends? You know the answer to that. And that’s what we’re called to – faith based on evidence (and Job’s faith was based on evidence – evidence left over from “the good old days”, but not forgotten), but also faith that persists when there is no contemporary evidence, no evidence that makes sense any more.

So, remember Job the next time your world is turned upside down and inside out. The next time it seems that God is your enemy for no good reason. The next time you cry out to him in desperation and receive only silence in reply. The next time a natural disaster wipes out a nearby community, or a murderous rampage takes out a whole classroom of children. Those of you who trust and hope in God, remember Job, and don’t be afraid to raise your fist.* You’ll be in good company.

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*I realize that nowhere in the text does it say that Job actually raised his fist in the air in protest, but Job certainly protests, and it’s not in an academic, emotionally detached manner. He calls down curses, he speaks rashly, he says that God is “beating him” and “grounding him down“, – even his friends could see that his suffering was “too great for words.” I believe that in a theatrical performance, anyone who played Job would be raising his fist in anger. How could it be otherwise? The words of Eliphaz express his idea of what “wicked people” do – “they shake their fists at God.” It’s clear that in his speech, he is talking about Job and to Job (cf. Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, p. 57), but indirectly, as is common in the monologues of the three friends.

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“Downward Mobility at Home”

In his fifties Henri Nouwen moved into a community of physically and mentally disabled men and women in Toronto, Canada. At “Daybreak” he wanted to learn “what seminary and theology didn’t teach me; how to love God and how to discover the presence of God in my own heart.” The irony of this is that Nouwen had taught at Yale and Harvard Divinity schools, worked among the poor in Peru, and knew people all over the world who considered him their spiritual guide. In the end, Nouwen (who was a Dutch Catholic priest) served as a pastor in residence at Daybreak for ten years.

After lots of theological study and years of ministry, I also desire to know how to love God and discover his presence in my life. I also feel the need to learn what “seminary and theology” didn’t teach me. The question is, “How can this happen?”

For Nouwen, it happened when Daybreak assigned him to care for one person in particular, a young man named Adam. Adam was Daybreak’s most physically needy resident. He could neither speak, dress or undress himself, walk alone, or eat without help. (The full story is too long to tell here, but you can read an excellent account in Philip Yancey’s book Soul Survivor.)

In his years at Daybreak, by caring for Adam day after day, Nouwen followed Jesus in living a life for the marginalized, the overlooked, the excluded, and the unwanted. In the process, he found joy, peace and meaning that had previously eluded him. Later, Nouwen coined the phrase “downward mobility” to refer to what he was learning, which at its heart was a repudiation of life as we often live it – striving for power, prestige, pleasure and popularity (“We all wanna be big, big stars …“) – … and the embracing of a “downward way” like Jesus taught when he said that a person must lose his life to save it, or that the first would be last, or that a leader must be the servant of all.

When I read his story, I’m tempted to think if only I could change my life like Nouwen did, if only I could find a place to serve in obscurity, a challenging place where others don’t want to go – that then I could more seriously experience the presence of God in my life. This morning I realized that I’m already in such a place – and it’s also a family. It’s my family. I realized that people in my family have unique and sometimes profound needs (like I do) and sometimes really need me to be their servant, just like Henri was to Adam. I realized God has already placed me in the school of downward mobility.

The thing is, to be completely honest, this version of the “school” doesn’t appeal to me in the same way. It doesn’t sound impressive, exhilarating or noble like what Nouwen did. It doesn’t sound like a path to recognition or acclaim (which he didn’t seek but found.) It just sounds like a lot of hard work, and something that could be unpleasant and exhausting, or frustrating and unappreciated. And I could do it for years, and it’s possible that no one would ever notice! Some might even conclude that it was the least that I could do.

I want to resist my natural instincts though, and embrace my assignment as an attempt at  “down not up.”  I suspect it will almost certainly help me to discover the presence of God in a new way, to love him better, and to be his presence to others who need it – and not just at home.

And so I thought that writing about non-intuitive living would help me think about it more clearly, more deeply, and more often, and that it would help me do it better. In Nouwen’s case, he wrote as a “reminder to himself of how he ought to be.”  I need reminders too. Lots of reminders.

I think downward mobility is at the heart of true spirituality, and I was thinking that maybe if I’m writing persuasively and cleverly about something so important, my blog would be widely read and admired, my reputation would grow, and maybe some group somewhere would want me to come and speak on it, and ….  😉

_______Postscript 11/2013

“… living in community is the only asceticism you need.” (attributed to St. Benedict by Kathleen Norris)