Henri J. M. Nouwen - Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

Contents

This third volume completes the spiritual trilogy presenting Henri Nouwens distinctive approach to contemplation, community, and compassion in the world through spiritual direction, formation, and discernment . All three volumes were developed from original materials found in the Henri J. M. Nouwen Archives in the Kelly Library, Saint Michaels College, University of Toronto, with the support and cooperation of the Henri J. M. Nouwen Estate and Nouwen Legacy Trust.

We especially want to thank Kathy Smith and Maureen Wright with the Nouwen Legacy Trust, and Jessica Barr, assistant archivist at the Nouwen Archives, for their generous time and support in locating materials for us in the library. We also gratefully acknowledge the publishing team at HarperOne, especially our relentless editor, Roger Freet, without whose persistence this final volume would not have been completed. Also, we thank our excellent production editor, Alison Petersen, publicist Julie Baker, and Janelle Agius in marketing.

Sue Mosteller, literary executrix, who took an active role in the previous two volumes, worked especially hard on this final volume, which we all agree was the hardest to compile and develop from the Nouwen journals and available resources. For Sues multiple reviews, constructive critiques, compassionate style, and generous support, we are deeply grateful.

John Mogabgab, Henris teaching assistant at Yale and current editor of Weavings, gave us the lead that started us on developing this work. John, Henris editor for The Genesee Diary, revealed that only about one-third of what Henri wrote in his diary was eventually published and suggested that the original three volumes of The Genesee Diary would be a good place to start in looking for his spiritual discernment process and unpublished reflections. This proved right and led to many such unpublished reflections on discernment in other Nouwen journals. Thank you, John, for the lead and your encouragement in this three-year process.

We appreciate Robert A. Jonas for agreeing to write the foreword (and an appendix) to this volume. A former Harvard student and close friend of Henri Nouwens, and now our good friend and colleague, Jonas (as he likes to be called) helped us process the structure and approach to this book. He offers his own unique vision of discernment by employing the marvelous metaphor of sailing the seas true north determined by the wind, sea, and sails, as well as the company on board the ship. We hope the reflection he prepared for this work will find its way into his own writing on spiritual practice.

Finally, we want to thank our youngest daughter, Megan, for typing many excerpts into a text that was finally woven into this book. Now in college, Megan, at three and a half years of age, once sat on Henris lap at our home, two months before he died in 1996, and asked him an important question: How big is God? Henri responded with a mystics insight: God is as big as your heart; and your heart is as big and wide as the universe. A good answer, repeated often in our household.

And so to the memory of Henri Nouwen and the image of him holding a little child on his lap and leading us to the unfathomable love of God, we dedicate this labor of love entitled simply Discernment.

The premise of this book is that God is always speaking to usindividually and as the people of Godat different times and in many ways: through dreams and visions, prophets and messengers, scripture and tradition, experience and reason, nature and events. And that discernment is the spiritual practice that accesses and seeks to understand what God is trying to say.

When we are rooted in prayer and solitude and form part of a community of faith, certain signs are given to us in daily life as we struggle for answers to spiritual questions. The books we read, the nature we enjoy, the people we meet, and the events we experience contain within themselves signs of Gods presence and guidance day by day. When certain poems or scripture verses speak to us in a special way, when nature sings and creation reveals its glory, when particular people seem to be placed in our path, when a critical or current event seems full of meaning, its time to pay attention to the divine purposes to which they point. Discernment is a way to read the signs and recognize divine messages. Henri Nouwen is a trustworthy guide in this ancient spiritual practice.

Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life, the third and final volume of Nouwens posthumous spiritual trilogy, builds on the previous volumes as it moves the reader from questions to movements to signs . The first volume, Spiritual Direction (HarperOne, 2006), is about living the questions of the spiritual life (Who am I? What am I called to do? Who is God for me?). The second volume, Spiritual Formation (HarperOne, 2010), is about following the movements of the Spirit (from resentment to gratitude, fear to love, denying to befriending death). This third volume, Discernment, is about reading the signs of daily life (primarily seen in books, nature, people, and events).

Discernment follows Nouwens journals and other writings, focusing on what he has to say about discernment and vocation for today. Characteristically informed by biblical insights and patterns of the church year, the book is divided into three parts: 1) the nature of discernment, including the spiritual gift and scriptural practice of distinguishing spirits of truth from falsehood; 2) the process of seeking Gods guidance in books, nature, people, and events; and 3) ways of discerning vocation, presence, identity, and time for divine purpose.

For Henri Nouwen, spiritual discernment is hearing a deeper sound beneath the noise of ordinary life and seeing through appearances to the interconnectedness of all things, to gain a vision of how things hang together ( theoria physike ) in our lives and in the world. Biblically, discernment is spiritual understanding and experiential knowledge, acquired through disciplined spiritual practice, of how God is active in our lives, which leads to a life worthy of our calling (Col. 1:9). It is a spiritual gift and practice that ascertains and affirms the unique way Gods love and direction are manifested in our lives, so that we can know Gods will and fulfill our calling and mission within the mysterious interworkings of Gods love.

But, as all who attempt to live the questions and follow the movements of the Spirit know, discernment is not a step-by-step program or a systematic pattern. Rather, it is a regular discipline of listening to the still, small voice beneath the rush of the whirlwind, a prayerful practice of reading the subtle signs in daily life. Discernment is not once-and-for-all decision making at critical points in ones life (Should I take this job? Whom should I marry? Where should I live and work? ), but a lifelong commitment to remember God ( memoria Dei ), know who you are, and pay close attention to what the Spirit is saying today.

Because Nouwen situates discernment in both a personal and a community context, we have organized his approach in three parts according to common themes of the journey of faith. Rather than offering a systematic presentation of the process, the themes presented are condensed and adapted from the whole of Nouwens corpus, published and unpublished, culled mostly from his journals and previously unpublished reflections but supplemented by excerpts from published writings.

In part 1, Nouwen defines the gift and practice of discernment as rooted in the core disciplines of the Christian life: prayer, community, worship, and ministry. He shares his firsthand experience of what he calls fighting the demon as part of the ancient biblical practice of discernment of spirits. He invites his readersand shows us howto embrace the struggle and trust in the power of God, to resist the spirit of darkness and live in the light of God, who reminds us that we are beloved.