Henri J. M. Nouwen - With Open Hands

foreword

by Sue Monk Kidd

I t is not surprising to me that I still recall my first encounter with this book, even though it occurred in 1978. I stumbled upon it in a small bookstore, where it was tucked among the photography books along with Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz. As I flipped through the black and white photos inside, I didn't realize With Open Hands was actually a book on prayer. At that point, I'd never heard of Henri Nouwen; I assumed he was a renowned photographer.

It turned out, of course, that Nouwen was a writer. In fact, he was one of those rare writers whose words surfaced from the depths of his own spiritual life in much the same way photographic images floated up from the developing solution of those old masters, Adams and Stieglitz. With Open Hands is filled with wisdom from a soul deeply engaged in the experience of prayer.

I took the book home that day and read it. I was twenty-nine year-old, struggling to keep up with the demands of being a young wife, mother, and writer, dashing about at times like a circus performer spinning plates. There seemed little, if any, time for prayer.

To be perfectly honest, I'd come to think of prayer as a fairly boring mental activity, the recitation of predictable words, an external and somewhat fruitless act. I'd had a solid Protestant upbringing, but I was clueless about the passionate landscape of the interior life, about the deep and forgotten art of tending the soul and transforming the mind and heartthe very stuff of prayer.

I found unexpected sentences in Nouwen's book: When you want to pray, the first question is: How do I open my closed hands? Was he suggesting that prayer was about opening something clenched and frightened in the human spirit?

He wrote that prayer created an openness in which God is given to us. This struck me as a remarkable assertion. If such a portal for the Divine could be created, then shouldn't we humans do everything possible to enter it? Would such a space lead to the root of the soul where one might tap the very life and presence of God? Would we find a vast and hidden wholeness? Would we begin finally to harness for God the energies of love, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had put it?

In the years that followed, I began to travel into that gracious openness, often with less resoluteness and constancy than I would have liked, but still, I managed to discover for myself the richness of prayer and the contemplative, spiritual life. I went on to read other books by Nouwen, as well as books by writers like Thomas Merton, Meister Eckhart, and Teresa of Avila, but I often returned to With Open Hands because of its pure and simple evocations on the meaning and practice of prayer.

Amazingly, the book is possibly more relevant now than when it was first published. It speaks clearly, amid a growing profusion of anxiety, busyness, and noise, about returning to the quiet core of ourselves. It compels us to accept life's goodness at the precise moment life seems most hazardous and un-embraceable. It offers the mystery of hope in a world gouged by terrorism and given to despair. And as the great divides and differences between people seem to widen and harden, the book draws us into the fiery place in the soul where compassion and true engagement with the world are born and reborn.

Twenty-seven years ago, With Open Hands helped to wake me to the immense openness in which God is given, and it goes on waking readers today. That is its timeless gift.

preface

T he ideas gathered together in this book were slow in coming. They originated in an attempt to speak personally about a number of experiences with prayer. I felt that I should not write about prayer without having asked the question: What is it that I myself find in prayer? I came to see that praying had something to do with silence, with acceptance, with hope, with compassion, and even with criticism. Then, I carefully sought out concepts and images that expressed what I had experienced or would have liked to experience.

But aren't my own experiences so personal that they might just as well remain hidden? Or could it be that what is most personal for me, what rings true in the depths of my own being, also has meaning for others? Ultimately, I believe that what is most personal is most universal. To arrive at this point, however, friends are necessary to help distinguish superficial, private sensations from deep, personal experiences.

This conviction led me to invite twenty-five theology students to form a group which would start with my own hesitant formulations and help develop a common understanding of what is truly involved in prayer. We held seven meetings, during which there was little discussion or argumentation, but much sharing of lived experiences. Gradually, the elusive phenomenon we call prayer became a tangible reality.

The following reflections, therefore, are not the work of a single author. They were born during many hours of intimate and prayerful conversation. I hope that they will bear fruit not only in the lives of those who took part in these conversations, but also in the lives of the readers who will spend a few quiet moments with this book.

Utrecht, 1971

N early twenty-five years after writing this preface, I can say that my hope that the words on prayer written in this book would bear fruit in people's lives has been fulfilled in ways that I never could have predicted. Countless men and women from the most different ages, cultures, and religions have told me in spoken or written words that the movement from clenched fists to open hands, described in this book, has helped them to understand the meaning of prayer and has, in fact, helped them to pray. I am deeply grateful for these responses, especially since they affirm the mysterious truth that something universal can be found in the most intimate center of our hearts. When wetwenty-five students and myselfsat around a classroom table in 1970 in a small town in the Netherlands, none of us could have foreseen the fruits of our spiritual conversations. I have no idea where these students are today, but I know now what I didn't know then, that the Spirit of God was among us and allowed us to be an instrument of grace.