Biography
Fr. Henri Nouwen  was born in the Netherlands, where he was ordained to the priesthood and earned his doctorate in psychology. After nearly two decades of teaching at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas and at the Universities of Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard, he left to share his life with mentally handicapped people at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of many books on spirituality and psychology, including The Return of the Prodigal Son, In the Name of Jesus, and The Life of the Beloved. 

"Solitude, Community & Ministry: Three Ways to Create Space for God" 
There is a very beautiful story about Jesus that tells us He went up to the mountain to pray and He spent the whole night in solitude with God. In the morning, He came down from the mountain and created a small community around him, giving each one his name and calling them apostles. In the afternoon with that community, He went to a stretch of level ground and there spoke to the crowds about the Good News of God and healed all the sick.

What I find so moving here is that Jesus went from solitude to community to ministry. I would like to talk to you about solitude, community and ministry as three ways to create space for God. Let me start talking to you about solitude.

I wonder if solitude is important for you. I think for anyone who wants to live a spiritual life, solitude is essential. Solitude is the place where we can listen to the Voice who calls us the "the beloved." That is what solitude is. It is being alone with God and hearing a Voice there that says, "You are my beloved, on you my favor rests." I think we really have to keep hearing that Voice, because there is a constant temptation to say we are no good; we are useless. If people really knew how I feel, they wouldn't like me.

I live in a community of people with severe handicaps. The problem is not so much that they have handicaps, but that they think they are not loved. That is true for every human person. We are always tempted to say that we are no good; people really don't like us. We are always filled with feelings of guilt, feelings of shame, with many worries. In that way, we really lose touch with the truths about ourselves. The truth is that God loves us, has loved us from all eternity and holds us safe. God has molded us in the depths of the earth, has knitted us together in our mother's womb, and we really belong in God's arms. In that embrace, we can hear again and again, "You are my beloved daughter. You are my beloved son. You are my beloved child."

I think that is why we have to create some solitude in our life so we don't lose touch with that Voice. Otherwise, we keep begging, going around and saying, "Do you love me? Do you care for me?" We become very restless, anxious people who are never sure that we are really safe, that we are really well loved.

Solitude is creating a little space for God in your life where God can speak to you and where in the midst of all the other voices that ask you do this, to go there, and to be involved to death, you can hear that very Gentle Person saying, "I love you. You are safe. I embrace you. You don't have to beg for love. You are mine and I am yours."

I think that is why Jesus spent the night in prayer, the night in solitude. Sometimes it is hard, because it is night. It is dark and we are not always sure if we are going to hear that Voice, but we have to trust. Once we know that we are the beloved and once we know that we are well held, we can go down from the mountain and start creating community. Every time we live solitude well, we will find ourselves called out of solitude to create community.

There are two qualities of community that I want to talk to you about. They are forgiveness and celebration. That is what makes community, whether it is a formal community, whether it is family community, whether it is a parish community, or whether it is an intentional community. These things -- forgiveness and celebration -- are essential.

Forgiveness means the willingness to always forgive people for not being able to fulfill all your needs. I feel that constantly. I expect people to fulfill all my needs. I expect people to love me unconditionally, and they can't. My father cannot, my mother cannot, my brothers and sisters, my church, the people around me cannot. In a way, I always bump into the reality that people are limited and I want them to be unlimited lovers.

Well, I'm disappointed again and again and again. That disappointment should lead me to forgive my fellow human beings for not being God, for not being able to give me all I need and all I desire. I should also ask forgiveness constantly, again and again, that I cannot offer people that unconditional love I would like to offer. People are disappointed in me, also, because I am not being for them what they hoped I could be.

Forgiveness is really essential. If you want to live in community, you have to forgive, not once in a while, but every day. I think that before breakfast you have had ten chances to forgive, just the way you think, the way you feel. You have so much anger, so much jealousy, so much resentment. We have to keep forgiving. Once we forgive, we can celebrate.

Celebration means to lift up the gifts of the people with whom we live. To lift them up and say, "Hey, brother, hey, sister, I see something beautiful in you and I want to lift it up. I want to celebrate it. I want you to recognize your goodness. You have a gift, a gift of welcome. You have a gift of hospitality; you have a gift of gentleness; you have a gift of humor. I want you to recognize it."

When we forgive people that they cannot give it all, we can celebrate what they have to give us. They can recognize that their gifts are a limited expression of God's unconditional love and a reflection of that. We can rejoice in it and say, "You and you and you all have gifts that make me think of God's unconditional love. If I see you all together, then I start seeing more and more of God right among the people I'm living with."

I discovered that in my community with mentally handicapped people. They have incredible gifts and I rejoice in these gifts more every day. Once we have a community of forgiveness and celebration, then we can go out and do ministry together. We can go out to people and announce Good News.

What is ministry? Well, ministry is very simple. It is to lay down your life for your friends, to let the way you live your life be a source of hope for others. Every human being is called to do ministry -- you and I, wherever we are. It is not actually a thing we do. It happens wherever we go, when we are living in the spirit of Christ. I want to give you two words that express ministry -- the word "compassion" and the word "gratitude."

Ministry is to be compassionate. In the midst of a very competitive world where we are always comparing ourself with others and are always fighting -- there is so much rivalry -- we are called to be compassionate. True ministry means, "I am with you. Even though I can't solve your problems, I am with you. Even though I can't fix all the problems, I am with you. I love you." Compassion means to be with people where they are hurting; be with people where they are suffering; be with people who don't know what to do. Just be there and say, "I am your brother. I am your sister. I am not going to let you alone. I am going to enter in the place of pain with you and that is where you will find healing."

The second quality of ministry is gratitude. We live in a world that is filled with resentment, cold anger. There is so much resentment in this world and we have to move from resentment to gratitude. Real ministry is to say, "I am grateful for you. There is something beautiful in you and I am going to say thank you to you."

Ministry is not just giving but, first of all, it is receiving the gifts of others and being joyful about it. We can do that every moment of our life. We can say, "There is something beautiful in you and I thank you. I thank you for your goodness, for your gentleness, for your smile, for inviting me, but I thank you for just being you and it is good." When you are grateful, then gradually people can let go of their resentment, their anger and discover their own beauty. Through compassion and through gratitude, we can really be people who are a gift to the world and be people of joy.

Let me conclude. I want to ask you very simply to give a little time in your life for solitude, a few moments a day to be alone with God and hear the Voice that calls you "the beloved" that says, "You are my beloved daughter. You are my beloved son." Can you develop a little community in your family, among your friends, in your parish, with people who love you and who care for you in a limited way and live a life of forgiveness and live a life of celebration together? Can you keep going out to the places of hurt, where there are people who are in pain? Sometimes they are right around you. You don't have to go far. You can just look around in your family, among your friends. Go to people and say, "How are you doing? I see there is some pain there. Can I be with you for a moment?" As you do that, you will discover you will enter into a life of compassion and a life of gratitude. That is the life that Jesus calls us to. That is the life that Jesus lived and He asks us to live with Him, compassionate and always grateful.

Interview with Henri Nouwen
Interviewed by Dave Hardin

Hardin: Henri, we were talking before the program that you are involved in building a retreat center which will hold retreats for all of God's people, including the mentally handicapped that you are so involved with. Tell us about that idea.

Nouwen: Well, Dave, I've been living at the Daybreak Community now for seven years. What I have discovered there is that our people, the weakest among us, have incredible gifts. Maybe not talents, you know, like playing the piano or writing, but gifts, spiritual gifts, like the gift of welcome, the gift of friendship, the gift of a smile. They are really beautiful gifts.

Hardin: Harder gifts to see, maybe.

Nouwen: Yes and I discovered that. Then I started to give retreats, small retreats, to groups of people in our community. I invited some of our most handicapped people to be with me and, in a way, to give the retreat with me. What I discovered is that when the people went home, they may have forgotten most of what I said, but they have never forgotten the handicapped people who were there. Quite often, they were the ones who moved them most deeply and, in a way, created a renewal in their hearts. Then I discovered that if it is true that mentally handicapped people have spiritual gifts to offer, I should build a little center where they can do that more and more.

Hardin: When you talk about handicapped people being part of retreats, would they just act as normal participants? What do they do?

Nouwen: Some talk; some cannot speak at all; some cannot walk and they lay on a cushion right there with me in a circle of people. Their incredible vulnerability is amazing. They are so vulnerable; they are so weak. In a way, you know, their weakness makes people aware who God really is. God is a God who became weak, who became vulnerable, who was born in a manger, who died on the cross.

It is not so much what they say -- most of them cannot speak at all -- but their presence is like the presence of God in their midst. They have a very concrete experience of the way of God's vulnerability just by these people who are with us.

Hardin: We don't see these people as fitting in, do we? We have a misconception about them that is very sad.

Nouwen: It is very true. Quite often people with handicaps, whatever their handicaps, are considered marginal in our society. They don't make money; they are not productive and all of that, but they are the real poor. Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor." Jesus doesn't say, "Blessed are those who care for the poor." Jesus doesn't say, "Blessed are those who help the poor." He says, "Blessed are the poor." That means the blessing of God is right there in their vulnerability, in their weakness, and that is what I experience. God gives enormous gifts to people who come to our community through those who are most weak and handicapped.

Hardin: These people who come and are, let's say, more average people, what happens to them? How do they benefit from these handicapped people? What is the process?

Nouwen: They live with us for a week and sometimes they are also invited to help the people themselves a little bit. They have a meal with them, but when they go home, they write us and say, "What I lived with you has opened my heart in a way that it would have never been opened unless these very big people were there. In a way, they changed my heart. They have encouraged me to become vulnerable myself. I am always trying to be so together. I am always trying to perform well and now I have discovered that God loves me in my brokenness."

Hardin: It is sort of magic, isn't it? We have got to end, but thank you. That's a marvelous process. We should try more of it. Thank you for being with us.