Esther de Waal - 2 - The Only Question Worth Asking

photo of Esther de Waal from 'Spirituality and Practice'

Notes from Esther de Waal's 2nd talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 11, 2016.
Her comments were based on Nouwen's 'The Genesee Diary', the diary of his 7 month sabbatical at a Trappist Monastery in upstate New York in 1974.

• Henri's Spiritual journey - familiar with the rule of St. Benedict
• An entry point for knowing God
• Celtic spirituality - a fruitful resource cultivating unity in the midst of division
• Henri Nouwen's writings combined art and spirituality
• Helps us to pause in the threshold
• Locked in time as we are, desiring the timeless
• To live with the door of transcendence left open
• Weaving a tapestry
• Listening, beauty, the role of the visual
• Seeking and searching all our lives
• Where are you rooted?
• The search for home, how do we come home, how are we centred?
• How can we live in the forgiving love of God?
• I live with fear - God speaks through Henri
• What a complex man he was
• I don't mind if it doesn't all add up
• Mystery - Henri wrote as though he was holding something back
• Being part of a group for a short time and then returning to a place of solitude
• Shared experiences of homecoming - Genesee - the Trappists
• The Benedictines by the 12th Century had become influential
• Some of them went back to its origins, reclaiming the roots of the monastic life
• How have I become at the end of the day any more loving? The only question worth asking regardless of one's vocation
• To read is one thing, but to create an experience makes it living
• Carrying a rhythm throughout life
• The Genesee Diary a great introduction to the Benedictine monastic life is all about
• Struggling with a divided heart - Henri found solace in the uncluttered - the cloisters - the spring of living water, the fountain, the living stream of God's word
• At first Henri is resistant, resents that while there no one sends him letters
• Resents the work, totally inept with technology, breaks the bread machine, dragging stones from the river from which a chapel is built
• I came to love those stones, he wrote at the end of his diary, where he worked
• Stirring the soup and memorizing the psalms
• Learns the rhythms
• 'I was very impressed with the discerning ear of Father John'
• Go and try and be more alone
• Confessions grow out of his meditations 
• the deeper you go into God, the deeper you enter into loving others
• The road ahead isn't going to get any easier, but my love for God is going to run deeper which changes everything
• Reaching out - the book written in Genesee - he had learned the Psalms
• 3 extracts from his Trappist time 
• listen to your struggles, the answer to your question is hidden in your heart
• protecting each other's uniqueness
• silence opens up in us a space where the word can be heard