Henri J. M. Nouwen - You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living

Dedicated to Robert Durback

A Note to the Reader: Generally, the meditations have been drawn from first editions. However, when available, meditations come from revised editions that employ more inclusive language. Some meditations and scriptural passages remain with the language of the Father, based on Henris understanding of the intimate familiar relationship. All editions used are listed in Works Cited. Other minor changes to the text have been made for clarity.

Copyright 2017 by The Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Convergent Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Published in association with Alive Literary Agency, 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80920, www.aliveliterary.com.

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CONVERGENT BOOKS is a registered trademark and its C colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information about Henri Nouwen, his work, and the work of the Henri Nouwen Society, visit www.HenriNouwen.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN9781101906378

Ebook ISBN9781101906385

Cover design: Jessie Bright

Cover image: courtesy of Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community

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T his is a book of daily meditations, selected from the writings, talks, and letters of Henri Nouwen, some of which have never been published before. Taking time for daily meditation was crucial for Henri. It was his time to be present to God, to hear God speak to him.

Reading was an integral part of Henris daily practice. He had a unique perspective on spiritual reading. In his book Here and Now, he wrote:

Spiritual reading is not only reading about spiritual people or spiritual things. It is also reading spiritually, that is, in a spiritual way! Reading in a spiritual way is reading with a desire to let God come closer to us.

The purpose of spiritual readingis not to master knowledge or information but to let Gods Spirit master us. Strange as it may sound, spiritual reading means to let ourselves be read by God!

Spiritual reading is reading with an inner attentiveness to the movement of Gods Spirit in our outer and inner lives. With that attentiveness we will allow God to read us and to explain to us what we are truly about.

Henri Nouwen had a lifelong struggle with loneliness and anxiety, which at one point led to a downward spiral of self-rejection and despair. In the depths of his anguish, Henri made a conscious choice to spend a good part of every day in solitude, seeking God. The result was an epiphany: You are the Beloved of God. At first, he could barely hear these words, but gradually he learned to claim them, allowing this primal identity as a child of God to form roots in the soil of his heart. When he recovered, his talks and retreats began to focus more on the immensity of Gods compassion and love. In his book Life of the Beloved, he wrote:

All I want to say to you is You are the Beloved, and all I hope is that you can hear these words as spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your beingYou are the Beloved.

While growing up, Henri heard two contradictory voices in his head about how to live. The first said, Stay close to the heart of Jesus, and the other cautioned, Be sure you are successful. Henri was not immune to the call of the secular world, which tells us through subtle and overt ways that we dont quite measure up. We are judged by the amount of money we earn, the number of friends we have, and how productive we are. What Henri heard in the depth of his struggle, however, was counterintuitive and radicalto reject a worldly identity and claim his place as Gods Beloved.

In this book, Henri invites us to consider that we, too, are precious in Gods sight. So much changes when we do. We become more interested in being than in doing; we bind our wounds rather than run from what causes us pain; we befriend death rather than deny it.

Henri found a new capacity for joy. By claiming his belovedness, he had more compassion for people who hurt him, more courage to live his struggles as gateways to inner freedom. He became more loving, and felt more at peace with himself and the world.

This book of daily meditations is an invitation to walk with Henri Nouwen to the center of your own heart where the soft, gentle voice of God can be heard, You, too, are the Beloved.

W e must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to the voice saying to us: I have a gift for you and cant wait for you to see it! Imagine.

Is it possible that our imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives? Yes, it can! The problem is that we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us: You know it all; you have seen it all, be realistic; the future will just be a repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best you can. There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: There is nothing new under the sundont let yourself be fooled.

When we listen to these foxes, they eventually prove themselves right: our new year, our new day, our new hour become flat, boring, dull, and without anything new.

So what are we to do? First, we must send the foxes back to where they belong: in their foxholes. And then we must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is God-with-you. I will wipe all the tears from your eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone (Revelation 21:25).

Here and Now

W hen Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, he heard a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17). These words revealed the true identity of Jesus as the beloved. Jesus truly heard that voice, and all of his thoughts, words, and actions came forth from his deep knowledge that he was infinitely loved by God. Jesus lived his life from that inner place of love. Although human rejections, jealousies, resentments, and hatred did hurt him deeply, he remained anchored in the love of the Father. At the end of his life, he said to his disciples, Listen: the time will comeindeed has come alreadywhen you are going to be scattered, each going his own way and leaving me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me (John 16:32).

I know now that the words spoken to Jesus when he was baptized are words spoken also to me and to all who are brothers and sisters of Jesus. My tendencies toward self-rejection and self-deprecation make it hard to hear these words truly and let them descend into the center of my heart. But once I have received these words fully, I am set free from my compulsion to prove myself to the world and can live in it without belonging to it. Once I have accepted the truth that I am Gods beloved child, unconditionally loved, I can be sent into the world to speak and to act as Jesus did.