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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
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