Henri and the House of God

The writings of Henri Nouwen for me serve as anchors in what at times feels like a sea of confusion. I have a little book called "The Essential Henri Nouwen". It has small excerpts from various of his writings, so it lends itself well to being used as a daily devotional. This is part--actually most- of what I read today. It concerns prayer as the House of God.

The more deeply we enter into the house of God, the house whose language is prayer, the less dependent we are on the blame or praise of those who surround us, and the freer we are to let our whole being be filled with that first love. As long as we are still wondering what other people say or think about us and trying to act in ways will elicit a positive response, we are still victimized and imprisoned by the dark world in which we live. In that dark world we have to let our surroundings tell us what we are worth. It is the world of successes and failures, of trophies and expulsions, of praise and blame, of stars and underdogs. In this world we are easily hurt, and we easily act out of these hurts to find some satisfaction of our need to be considered worthwhile.

As long as we are in the clutches of that world, we live in darkness, since we do not know our true self. ....In prayer, however, again and again we discover that the love we are looking for has already been given to us and that we can come to the experience of that love. Prayer is entering into communion with the One who molded our being in our mother's womb with love and only love. There, in the first love, lies our true self, a self not made up of the rejections and acceptance of those with whom we live, but solidly rooted in the One who called us into existence.

--Henri Nouwen, from The Return of the Prodigal Son