Robert J. Wicks - Availability

Also by Robert J. Wicks

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Prayerfulness: Awakening to the Fullness of Life

Riding the Dragon: 10 Lessons for Inner Strength in Challenging Times

Touching the Holy: Ordinariness, Self-Esteem, and Friendship

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Streams of Contentment: Lessons I Learned on My Uncles Farm

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the use of excerpts from Little Gidding in Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1943 by T. S. Eliot; renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

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1986, 2000, 2015 by Robert J. Wicks

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Sorin Books, P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556-0428, 1-800-282-1865.

www.sorinbooks.com

Paperback: ISBN-13 978-1-933495-91-0

E-book: ISBN-13 978-1-933495-92-7

Cover image David Muench.

Cover and text design by Brian C. Conley.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wicks, Robert J.

Availability : the challenge and the gift of being present / Robert J. Wicks.

pages cm

Originally published under title: Availability : the problem and the gift. New York : Paulist Press, c1986.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-933495-91-0 -- ISBN 1-933495-91-X

1. Spiritual life--Catholic Church. I. Title.

BX2350.3.W525 2015

241.4--dc23

2015020043

The authors name is always listed on the title page of a book. That page should also include: Contents rescued and improved by its editor. After more than forty years as an author and the fifty books I have written, four especially distinguished persons stand out among the many talented editors with whom I have had the good fortune to work: Joan Bossert (Oxford University Press), Bob Hamma (Sorin Books), Maria Maggi (Paulist Press), and Carole OKeefe (McGraw-Hill). In gratitude for their sensitivity, creativity, brilliance, diligence, and immense patience, I dedicate this book to them.

Contents

Preface

Serious discussion of this book first took place more than thirty years ago. I was sitting with spiritual writer Henri Nouwen in the little kitchen of his apartment in a building not far from Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The original title of the book was to be Relationships: Nurturing the Gift of Availability . However, after our hour-long meeting, Henri was able to help me appreciate more clearly that the issue of availability was more complex than I had realized.

Availability is indeed a simple but great gift. The freedom to be present when needed is something special. It is an opportunity to be spiritual to be open to relationship in the deepest, most elegant sense of the term. However, this wonderful state of living often seems hidden or distorted now. Today, availability is at a premium because it is not only a gift but also sometimes a great challenge for many of usone that we need to more fully understand and address if we are to be able to continue to be present in the full sense of the word. Availability is not only a gift; it is also a problem.

Some of us are too available. Thus, true availability becomes watered down. We become too busy to pray, too tired to reflect, and, ironically, too stimulated interpersonally to really be present to others.

Others among us pull back in anxiety. Being available to God seems to raise too many questions or doubts. Spending time alone is no longer relaxing; instead we feel lonely or preoccupied with our faults and failures. And being with others doesnt seem to help either; in some cases, we feel used, left out, or misunderstood. The end result is that our expectations for intimacy are not realized and we feel the need to pull back more than ever.

This situation is not merely a sad one; it is dangerous . Without a sense of availability to self, others, and God, life loses its spirituality. Relationships suffer, break down, and we are left with a void or sense of confusion.

We must address availability with the imperative that openness to the personal and interpersonal is essential if the Spirit is to be heard... felt . Any blocks to relationship must be removed if we are to prepare ourselves always for the continual coming of what is Good. The very vitality of living out the Gospel depends on our being involvedin an ongoing wayin this process.

Recently when I was in Ireland, I became lost while traveling the back roads near the small west coast town of Corafinne. When I stopped alongside the road to ask directions of a gentleman working there, the brief stop turned into a lovely fifteen minute encounter. I not only received directions but we also wound up talking about a myriad of things.

As I drove away, I thought, Wasnt it nice that he took out time to talk to me. As I drove a bit farther, it finally dawned on me what really had occurred. He hadnt taken out time from his day to be with me; he had made me part of his life .

This kind of attitude is at the heart of a life that reflects an appreciation of the gift of availability. This story merits being kept in mind as we look at some of the basic problems we encounter in trying to be available to ourselves, others, and God. Though the concept is simple, living a life of true availability isnt easy for most of us.

Please Note:

A question and brief selection from sacred scripture capturing a major theme of the preceding material appear at the end of each chapter. For persons wishing to use this book as part of a daily prayer/retreat experience, the following procedure is suggested. Read the chapter, and then take a few minutes to reflect on it. After this is done, read the question and the biblical quotation slowly once or twice, and then take twenty or thirty minutes in silence and (if possible) solitude to let the question and quotation nurture you. Dont analyze them; dont think about them. Just be silent and let both the question and quote become part of you.

Acknowledgments

My work owes a special debt to the pioneering efforts of Henri Nouwen. His integrated work on relationshipswith self, others, and Godis contained in all his books, especially in his classic work Reaching Out and in his simple, clearly written book on desert spirituality and contemporary ministry, The Way of the Heart . If anything, I hope Availability reflects in some small way the positive spirit of his beautiful efforts. In a similar way I would like to acknowledge the influence Thomas Merton and Anthony Bloom have had on my work. Both men saw prayer and life as two different words for the same thing. Their vision of unity in approaching God made self-awareness, compassion with others, and contemplation different turns on the same road to finding and living the Truth.

Support for my work also comes in different ways from a number of other sources. Probably the greatest impact on the final form of this book does not come from anyone quoted or listed in a bibliographic entry. Yet this invisible influence is present on almost every page. Her ideas, editorial suggestions, and spirituality made Availability become a real possibility. And so, to my wife, Michaele, I express my love and appreciation. Hopefully, I have somehow in this book brought to life the beauty and insights she shared and continues to share with me.