Urban Idealist

The Genesee Diary is a collection of Henri Nouwen’s journal entries when he went and lived at the Genesee Trappist Monastery. I’ve been reading through this so my Nouwen thoughts will be coming from this book for now.

In one of the entries he begins to talk about ‘differentness’. I wish I could just paste the whole entry here, but I’ll give you the highlights.

Thinking about this desire and how it has functioned in my life, I am more and more aware of the way my life-style became part of our contemporary desire for “stardom.” I wanted to say, write or do something “different” or “special” that would be noticed and talked about. For a person with a rich fantasy life, this is not too difficult and easily leads to the desired “success.” You can teach in such a way that it differs enough from the traditional way to be noticed; you can write sentences, pages, and even books that are considered original and new; you can even preach the Gospel in such a way that people are made to believe that nobody had thought of that before. In all these situations you end up with applause because you did something sensational, because you were “different.”

Being different or unique has always been a goal of mine. Whether it was in the clothes I wore, the music I listened to, or the things I created…I wanted to be different. At the core of wanting to be different I would say that there was a part of me that needed to be known as special and unique. The quest for ‘being different’ became an idol…a way to give myself worth.

Henri (first name basis now) goes on to say:

When we have given up the desire to be different and experienced ourselves as sinners without any right to special attention, only then is there space to encounter our God who calls us by our own name and invites us into His intimacy.

Jesus, the only son of the Father, emptied himself “being as we are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names (Phil 2:7-9). Only through ultimate sameness was Jesus given his unique name. When St. Paul calls us to have the mind of Jesus Christ, he invites us to that same humility through which we can become brothers of the Lord and sons of the heavenly Father.

The irony is that in my quest to be different I got less and less the feeling of being valuable. But more and more the feeling that no matter how hard I worshipped the idol of being unique…I was never going to be that unique…and this was just depressing. When other people did or had things that were similar to me I couldn’t rejoice for them or me…because it was all about me being different.

I love how Henri brings it back to Jesus…Who had the unique distinction of being the ONLY son of God yet gave up all of that and became like one of us. And it was in His surrender to God that Jesus was given the name above all other names. It will only be in giving up my pursuit of differentness that I will find who I really am in Christ…and it will only be through Jesus that I will be able to hear the name that God has given me…not the one that I want to give myself. Creating our own name leads us to having more work of maintaining the reputation of the name we have created. In God alone do we find our true name and He has already done all the work to give it to us.