Urban Idealist

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O Lord Jesus, I look at you, and my eyes are fixed on your eyes. Your eyes penetrate the eternal mystery of the divine and see the glory of God. They are also the eyes that saw Simon, Andrew, Nathanael, and Levi, the eyes that saw the woman with a hemorrhage, the widow of Nain, the blind, the lame, the lepers, and the hungry crowd, the eyes that saw the sad, rich ruler, the fearful disciples on the the lake, and the sorrowful women at the tomb. Your eyes, O Lord, see in one glance the inexhaustible love of God and the seemingly endless agony of all people who have lost faith in that love and are like sheep without a shepherd.

As I look into your eyes, they frighten me because they pierce like flames of fire my innermost being, but they console me as well, becasue these flames are purifying and healing. Your eyes are so severe yet so loving, so unmasking yet so protecting, so penetrating yet so caressing, so profound yet so intimate, so distant yet so inviting.

I gradually realize that I want to be seen by you, to dwell under your caring gaze, and to grow strong and gentle in your sight. Lord, let me see what you see - the love of God and the suffering of people - so that my eyes may become more and more like yours, eyes that can heal wounded hearts.

-Henri Nouwen

“In the contemplative life every conflict, inner or outer, small or large, can be seen as the tip of an iceberg, the expressive part of something deeper and larger. It is worthwhile, even necessary, to explore that which is underneath the surface of our daily actions, thoughts, and feelings.”

It is interesting to think that God can use every little conflict, feeling, emotion, or reaction to reveal something that is going on at a deeper level in our core. These ruptures in our comfort are a God given opportunity to ’search our hearts’. God wants us to discover the root of the problems in our lives…not just change behaviors on the surface.

After two years of living in another culture and doing a new and difficult job, God has revealed many icebergs in my life. Sometimes I feel out-of-breathe from trying to swim down and see what’s underneath…some of my icebergs were a lot bigger than I thought! Looking back, I see how God has used these pursuits to teach me about trust and to reveal how little I can ‘work on’ my issues alone.

For a long time my reaction to seeing areas in my life has been to work hard on them. Try to act more humble. Try to act more patient. Try to act like I don’t need control. And I splash about in the water with great passion, but then end up losing sight of the bottom because I’ve disrupted the still water that God brought me to so that I could see the bottom.

Our icebergs are not a time to be quick to act, quick to try and fix our lives, or quick to change ourselves through effort. They are opportunities for us to come close to God through prayer, stand shoulder to shoulder with Jesus, and let him lead us into the cold and deep waters of our hearts. Only in being still and trusting God can we continue to see clearly.

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.