Henri J. M. Nouwen - Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.

Teilhard de Chardin.

When Henri Nouwen first arrived at L'Arche Daybreak in 1986, he was asked to share a home with several people with intellectual disabilities, one of whom was John. Having lived many years in the community John is a rooted, grounded, middle- aged man in his group home of ten persons and his first question to any stranger is So, where's your home? Also wide- awake to the movements of each person around him, John daily asks assistants in his home and in the community a second, more immediate question: Are you home tonight? Henri, with his frenetic schedule, was not excused, especially from the second of these penetrating questions, and he very often had to falteringly explain to John why he would again be absent from the table that evening. Even though Henri initially came to Daybreak in search of a home, he needed more than the first year to discover the multifaceted meaning of Where's your home? and Are you home tonight? He needed this father figure, John, to firmly and consistently remind him that he was on a journeyhome.

In the midst of his second year in the community Henri suffered a breakdown that took him away from L'Arche Daybreak for a period of seven months. He lived that time mostly in solitude and with the support of two friends from the Homes for Growth team in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I had the privilege of visiting him during his time there, and while sharing about his recovery he spoke movingly of his solitude and of his reflective encounters with the people in Rembrandt's painting of the prodigal son.

His experience was raw and deeply personal.

Fresh from his time in Winnipeg prior to his return to L'Arche Daybreak and more than three years before the publication of his classic book The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri gave a three- day workshop about what had happened to him in his solitude with the Gospel story and the painting. Despite his struggle to put this experience into words, Henri took a risk and found his voice to describe what may be his best articulation of accepting himself as God's beloved son. He told this group of caregivers from L'Arche communities worldwide that his one desire in sharing as he did was to help each one of them to discover their personal connection between the parable and their own lives. Just as he had done in his solitude, he urged each one to make the prodigal son story his or her most intimate story.

The marvellous thing about learning from a story is that a story never ends, so our learning from it need not end either.

From The Active Life by Parker J. Palmer, 1990, Harper and Row, San Francisco, p. 98.

Henri believed in his listeners and trusted their ability to move beyond his experience to a personal, unique, and precious engagement with the parable on their own. That same confidence in the reader of

this manuscript is evident even from beyond the grave, as he points the way for each of us to deeply and uniquely encounter Unconditional Love through the scripture parable.

His conferences at the workshop were not taped professionally, but since his death, extracts from them have been reproduced and distributed. Henri seems to have prepared his first conference with more attention than the second or third, and for this reason the exact transcription of the tapes has not been published. John Mogabgab and Robin Pippin from Upper Room Ministries in Nashville, Lindsey Yeskoo, a friend from Toronto, Trace Murphy at Doubleday in New York, and I accepted the challenge of editing the material in a way that gives Henri his authentic voice, captures his compelling testimony, and maps a way for each of us to an encounter of deep consequence.

Henri gave a talk each morning of the three- day workshop at the end of which he directed the participants to enter into quiet time and the practice of three ancient spiritual disciplines: listening, journaling, and communing. This personal spiritual workout was designed to enable each one to personally embrace and enter into the story and the painting for themselves. Later in the day in small groups, people listened to and shared their workout experiences with one another. Optional times of personal meditation and common worship were part of the schedule.

I would like to beg you as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

From Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.

In keeping with this pattern, Home Tonight is designed to offer you the opportunity to step into the workshop experience and thus to hear the same voice that was more compelling than all of Henri's excuses, fears, and resistance.

It took a certain amount of courage for Henri to communicate his return home in spirit but somewhere he knew that his story carried the potential to bear fruit in the lives of others. What he didn't realize at the time, but what becomes more and more obvious as the talks unfold, is that Henri is gradually being transformed into the father figure he speaks aboutthe one who longs and hopes for our return as well.