The other day I read a blog that talked about someone
who preached once at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks...
The author of the blog, a good friend of mine, talked about the experience
opening him to a whole new world of reading and thinking,
listing authors like Wendell Berry, and Natalie Goldberg,
and Thich Nhat Hanh, and Richard Nelson, and Thomas Berry,
and I was thinking, this must have been before my time at UUFF,
I want to know this guy. He was working on the same stuff
I was working on, the land, spirit, community, a deep presence...
http://discontinuouspermafrost.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/where-spirituality-is-not-welcome/
Then I realized as he wove his tale, that my friend was
talking about me... It was pretty discomfiting at first.
Like Alfred Nobel reading his obituary, or something.
It happened again last night, when I was waiting
for Marin to put Annika down so we could watch
some DVD by the Coen Brothers, a pretty weird spoof
of DC culture and spy movie thrillers (“Burn After Reading”),
triggered by a woman gripped by the need to reinvent herself
through liposuction, and a breast-and-face-job
which her HMO won’t pay for, resulting in
two co-workers at “Hardbodies” exercise gym
dying absurd deaths, plus another guy in a coma –
too many casualties for Marin and me.
Plus, we don’t like graphic violence, we end up clutching each other
on the sofa and closing our eyes, even when it’s satirical,
that is, not serious... Deaths have to have some redemption.
We’re kind of old fashioned or something.
Maybe that’s the DNA I talked about
in the earlier post about Matteo’s aesthetic preferences.
Well, while I was waiting for Marin to emerge
to watch this weird movie on New Years Eve 2008,
NPR was showing something about L’Arche,
“The Ark,” a Catholic movement which cares for handicapped people,
originating in France and Toronto. I thought,
this is going to be about Henri.
It was. Henri Nouwen, a good friend and kind of saint,
vulnerable, lovely, articulate, dear.
He was a Dutch priest, a teaching “star”
at Yale Divinity School when I was there,
and I was surprised when he took notice of me,
the famous teachers down at my undergraduate Yale College
never did... He willingly came down to New York
to preach at my ordination in 1979 at St Peters,
http://www.saintpeters.org/
and we became friends. I visited him
at the Abbey of the Genesee in upstate NY
http://www.geneseeabbey.org/
and for longer periods, spiritual retreats really,
in the 80's at the International headquarters of L’Arche
in a sweet 17th Century farm north of Paris, and at Daybreak,
the L’Arche headquarters in North America in Toronto.
http://www.larche.ca/
The movie had all of the friends I knew
from his circle, Sue Mosteller, Nathan Ball,
and the residents I met and helped care for
at the various L’Arche locations.
Henri’s way of speaking about God and spirituality
is very affecting, not sure if it’s his voice,
his expressive hands, his sincerity,
or the way he is “familiar” with God’s ways,
it fills me with a sense of hope and kindness.
This was Henri, always focused
on love and transformation,
though always rooted in his sadness and longing,
trusting in the power of being connected,
finally, ultimately, to God.
He talked in the video about “first love,” that God
always was the “first love,” the love foundational to all loves,
and when you tried to transfer a human love into that position
it becomes all sadness and trouble.
The video talked about his great sadness in the final years.
I remember the last time he was in Philadelphia visiting me,
he was very sad and needy... We all hung out,
Henri, my friends Tyler and Steve, it was
maybe November of 1994.
Henri died suddenly in Holland in 1996
when I was far away at Holden Village.
The great sadness.
In some ways the last 15 years
have been my excursus on the great sadness
and beyond, the same sadness that afflicted Henri.
Leaving the New York, Philadelphia, the east coast,
taking on life as village pastor in a small town
in the Washington Cascades,
then pastoring in Wasilla Alaska and Palmer,
and Fairbanks, and getting married,
then not pastoring, and then parenting.
An expanding universe. Or shrinking?
For Henri, it seems that the great sadness
was subsumed in his vision of the “first love?”
I totally know this. I know it in my spiritual bones.
I know how to do this.
However, I don’t think I know how to do this now.
who preached once at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks...
The author of the blog, a good friend of mine, talked about the experience
opening him to a whole new world of reading and thinking,
listing authors like Wendell Berry, and Natalie Goldberg,
and Thich Nhat Hanh, and Richard Nelson, and Thomas Berry,
and I was thinking, this must have been before my time at UUFF,
I want to know this guy. He was working on the same stuff
I was working on, the land, spirit, community, a deep presence...
http://discontinuouspermafrost.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/where-spirituality-is-not-welcome/
Then I realized as he wove his tale, that my friend was
talking about me... It was pretty discomfiting at first.
Like Alfred Nobel reading his obituary, or something.
It happened again last night, when I was waiting
for Marin to put Annika down so we could watch
some DVD by the Coen Brothers, a pretty weird spoof
of DC culture and spy movie thrillers (“Burn After Reading”),
triggered by a woman gripped by the need to reinvent herself
through liposuction, and a breast-and-face-job
which her HMO won’t pay for, resulting in
two co-workers at “Hardbodies” exercise gym
dying absurd deaths, plus another guy in a coma –
too many casualties for Marin and me.
Plus, we don’t like graphic violence, we end up clutching each other
on the sofa and closing our eyes, even when it’s satirical,
that is, not serious... Deaths have to have some redemption.
We’re kind of old fashioned or something.
Maybe that’s the DNA I talked about
in the earlier post about Matteo’s aesthetic preferences.
Well, while I was waiting for Marin to emerge
to watch this weird movie on New Years Eve 2008,
NPR was showing something about L’Arche,
“The Ark,” a Catholic movement which cares for handicapped people,
originating in France and Toronto. I thought,
this is going to be about Henri.
It was. Henri Nouwen, a good friend and kind of saint,
vulnerable, lovely, articulate, dear.
He was a Dutch priest, a teaching “star”
at Yale Divinity School when I was there,
and I was surprised when he took notice of me,
the famous teachers down at my undergraduate Yale College
never did... He willingly came down to New York
to preach at my ordination in 1979 at St Peters,
http://www.saintpeters.org/
and we became friends. I visited him
at the Abbey of the Genesee in upstate NY
http://www.geneseeabbey.org/
and for longer periods, spiritual retreats really,
in the 80's at the International headquarters of L’Arche
in a sweet 17th Century farm north of Paris, and at Daybreak,
the L’Arche headquarters in North America in Toronto.
http://www.larche.ca/
The movie had all of the friends I knew
from his circle, Sue Mosteller, Nathan Ball,
and the residents I met and helped care for
at the various L’Arche locations.
Henri’s way of speaking about God and spirituality
is very affecting, not sure if it’s his voice,
his expressive hands, his sincerity,
or the way he is “familiar” with God’s ways,
it fills me with a sense of hope and kindness.
This was Henri, always focused
on love and transformation,
though always rooted in his sadness and longing,
trusting in the power of being connected,
finally, ultimately, to God.
He talked in the video about “first love,” that God
always was the “first love,” the love foundational to all loves,
and when you tried to transfer a human love into that position
it becomes all sadness and trouble.
The video talked about his great sadness in the final years.
I remember the last time he was in Philadelphia visiting me,
he was very sad and needy... We all hung out,
Henri, my friends Tyler and Steve, it was
maybe November of 1994.
Henri died suddenly in Holland in 1996
when I was far away at Holden Village.
The great sadness.
In some ways the last 15 years
have been my excursus on the great sadness
and beyond, the same sadness that afflicted Henri.
Leaving the New York, Philadelphia, the east coast,
taking on life as village pastor in a small town
in the Washington Cascades,
then pastoring in Wasilla Alaska and Palmer,
and Fairbanks, and getting married,
then not pastoring, and then parenting.
An expanding universe. Or shrinking?
For Henri, it seems that the great sadness
was subsumed in his vision of the “first love?”
I totally know this. I know it in my spiritual bones.
I know how to do this.
However, I don’t think I know how to do this now.
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