Henri J. M. Nouwen - The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey

INTIMACY: Essays in Pastoral Psychology

CREATIVE MINISTRY

WITH OPEN HANDS

THE WOUNDED HEALER: Ministry in Contemporary Society

PRAY TO LIVE: Thomas Merton as a Contemplative Critic

AGING: The Fulfillment of Life

OUT OF SOLITUDE: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

REACHING OUT: Three Movements in the Spiritual Life

THE GENESEE DIARY: Report from a Trappist Monastery

THE LIVING REMINDER: Prayer and Service in Memory of Jesus Christ

CLOWNING IN ROME: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer and Contemplation

IN MEMORIAM

THE WAY OF THE HEART: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry

CRY FOR MERCY: Prayers from the Genesee Monastery

MAKING ALL THINGS NEW: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life

COMPASSION: Reflections on the Christian Life

LETTER OF CONSOLATION

GRACIAS: A Latin American Journal

LOVE IN A FEARFUL LAND

LIFESIGNS: Intimacy, Fecundity, Ecstasy in Christian Perspective

BEHOLD THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD: Praying with Icons

A N I MAGE B OOK

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036

I MAGE and D OUBLEDAY are trademarks of Doubleday,

a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

This book was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1988. First Image Books edition published October 1990 by special arrangement with Doubleday.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nouwen, Henri J. M.

The road to daybreak.

1. Nouwen, Henry J. M.Diaries.

2. Communaut de lArche. I. Title.

BX4705.N87A3 1988 282.0924 [B] 88-3543

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-5211-2

Copyright1988 by Henri J. M. Nouwen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

v3.1

This journal could make it to publication only with the help of many friends. With much gratitude I mention their names.

During the time of writing, Peter Weiskel, who worked for me in Cambridge, Massachusetts, did the first editing on the handwritten text. Margaret Studier spent many hours typing, and Phil Zaeder gave much attention to the use of good English.

When I moved to Canada in August 1986 and decided to condense the long text into a readable book, Richard White offered his assistance in deciding which entries could form the core of a book and which could be deleted. He worked several months to discern the main direction of the seven-hundred-page manuscript by carefully evaluating the various entries.

During the last phase of the work, Michael Plante helped me to put the already condensed text into final form. During that period, Sue Mosteller and Michael Harank offered many suggestions for deletions, additions, and revisions. Connie Ellis, my secretary at Daybreak, was of invaluable help in retyping the whole text, asking permission of different people to publish entries in which their story was told and encouraging me to keep believing in the significance of this journal.

To all these friends I am deeply grateful. Their skillful assistance, their generosity in giving me their time and attention, and their personal interest made it possible to move from a seemingly unmanageable stack of papers to a text that could be presented to Bob Heller, my editor at Doubleday. If ever a personal journal was the result of many peoples work, it is The Road to Daybreak. I would like the reader of this book to know this and thus share in my gratitude.

In the late seventies, when I was on the faculty of Yale Divinity School, someone paid me a visit that would radically change my life. At the time it seemed like an uneventful and even inconsequential visit. But as the years went by I started to see it as a response to my prayer: Lord, show me where you want me to go, and I will follow you.

And so it is that I begin this book with the story of this seemingly unimportant visit. One afternoon the bell of my New Haven apartment rang and a young woman stood at my door. She said, I am Jan Risse and come to bring you greetings from Jean Vanier. I had heard about Jean Vanier and the LArche community for mentally handicapped people, but I had never met him, spoken to him, written him, or been in touch with his work. So I was quite surprised by these greetings and said, Well, thank you what can I do for you? She said, Oh nothing. I just came to bring you the greetings of Jean Vanier. Yes, I understand, I said, but I guess you have another reason for your visit. But she insisted, No, no. I just came to bring you greetings from Jean. It was hard for me to hear her. I kept thinking that her greetings were but the introduction to a request to give a lecture, a retreat, or a sermon or to write an article or a book. Convinced that her bringing greetings wasnt all she came for, I tried once more: I appreciate hearing from Jean Vanier, but is there anything I can do for you?

She smiled and said, Well, can I come in? I realized then that I hadnt shown much hospitality and said hastily, Sure, sure, come in but I have to leave soon because I have many appointments at the school. Oh, you just go ahead, she replied, and I will spend some quiet time here until you return.

When I returned that evening, I found my table set with a beautiful linen cloth, nice plates and silverware, flowers, a burning candle, and a bottle of wine. I asked, What is this? Jan laughed. Oh, I thought Id make you a nice meal. But where did you find all these things? I asked. She looked at me with a funny expression and said, In your own kitchen and cupboards you obviously dont use them too often! It then dawned on me that something unique was happening. A stranger had walked into my home and, without asking me for anything, was showing me my own house.

Jan stayed for a few days and did many more things for me. Then, when she left, she said, Just remember, Jean Vanier sends his greetings to you. A few years went by. I had completely forgotten about Jans visit. Then one morning Jean Vanier called and said, I am making a short silent retreat in Chicago. Would you like to join me? Again, for a moment, I thought he wanted me to give a talk there. But he insisted. Henri, it is a silent retreat. We can just be together and pray.

Thus Jean and I met. In silence. We spoke a bit, but very little. In the years that followed, I made two visits to his community in France. During my second visit I made a thirty-day retreat and gradually came to the realization that Jan Risses visit had been the first of a series of events in which Jesus was responding to my prayer to follow him more fully.

But the years between Jan Risses visit and my decision to become part of LArche were tumultuous and full of anxious searching. After ten years at Yale, I felt a deep desire to return to a more basic ministry. My trips to Latin America had set in motion the thought that I might be called to spend the rest of my life among the poor of Bolivia or Peru. So in 1981 I resigned from my teaching position at Yale and went to Bolivia to learn Spanish and to Peru to experience the life of a priest among the poor. My months there were so intense that I decided to keep a journal, which was later published under the title Gracias! I sincerely tried to discern whether living among the poor in Latin America was the direction to go. Slowly and painfully, I discovered that my spiritual ambitions were different from Gods will for me. I had to face the fact that I wasnt capable of doing the work of a missioner in a Spanish-speaking country, that I needed more emotional support than my fellow missioners could offer, that the hard struggle for justice often left me discouraged and dispirited, and that the great variety of tasks and obligations took away my inner composure. It was hard to hear my friends say that I could do more for the South in the North than in the South and that my ability to speak and write was more useful among university students than among the poor. It became quite clear to me that idealism, good intentions, and a desire to serve the poor do not make up a vocation. One needs to be called and sent. The poor of Latin America had not called me; the Christian community had not sent me. My experience in Bolivia and Peru had been very fruitful, but its fruits were not the ones I had expected.