book review: "Reaching Out" by Henri JM Nouwen

I have not been having much success in figuring out what I want to say about solitude so far. Even amongst the three solitude interns, the experience of solitude has been varied, because it is such an individual thing.

In fact, I don't think I can put it better than I did in a skype chat with my friend Tim, when he asked how it was going: "This is going to get hackneyed, but I don't know how to talk about it. It's so subtle. Also, hard. Also, I don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time. I am now certain that everyone will have a completely different experience of solitude, so giving the particulars doesn't help give the real sense of it."

So having (mostly) finished the two books that we intended to read through (which means we get to do another one – GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy, huzzah!), I thought I could review each of them, and perhaps doing so will give some feel for what it has all been like.

Therefore, the first one we read: Reaching Out by Henri JM Nouwen. It's not a large book, but is a rich one in its shades of mysticism and simple truth, worth spending time to savour. Nouwen himself is a Dutch, Catholic priest and very successful theological academic, who left that career in order to work in a community of adults with mental disabilities in Canada.

The basic idea of the book is very simple: it concerns "The three movements of the spiritual life." Each of the three sections of the book deal with one; concerning oneself, moving from loneliness to solitude; concerning others, moving from hostility to hospitality; and concerning God, moving from illusion to prayer. What is quite striking, for such deep and often painful subjects, is how calm the discourse is, how gentle yet unflinching and honest in its treatment.

In the introduction, Nouwen explains,

This book is a response to the question: 'What does it mean to live a life in the Spirit of Jesus Christ?' Therefore, it is a personal book, a book born out of struggles which in the first place were and still and are my own. But during the years it became more and more clear that by deepening these struggles, by following them to their roots, I was touching a level where they could be shared. This book does not offer answers or solutions but is written in the conviction that the quest for an authentic Christian spirituality is worth the effort and the pain, since in the midst of this quest we can find signs offering hope, courage and confidence.

Amongst the mostly Christian circles I currently have available for discussion, the last two movements don't prove too difficult, because we already have some kind of concept of what "hostility", "hospitality", "illusion" and "prayer" are, as well as a value judgement of them, whether or not we have examined them very deeply. But with the first movement, loneliness to solitude, most people laugh (nervously), and say that they're not really lonely, or called to solitude for that matter (unlike us weirdo interns, clearly). So that's a good place to start.

Nouwen makes a very convincing case that loneliness is the basic state of every human soul – not that he's actually arguing anything; he's just examining it. He notes:

in a period of history in which we have become so acutely aware of our alienation in its different manifestations, it has become difficult to unmask the illusion that the final solution for our experience of loneliness is to be found in human togetherness.

One illustration I found quite striking was an experience he recalls of the New York subway, looking from huge ads on the wall depicting people connected and joyous, to the crowds of people on the platform, each in their own severe bubble of isolation. If need for human connection and belonging (ie, loneliness) weren't real and compelling, advertising campaigns wouldn't use it to sell their product. Millions of songs and thousands of movies would hold very little appeal, because apart from their refrain of achieving some kind of intimacy, they don't have much to recommend them.

But he makes the point strongly that this essential aloneness of the human experience is something to be entered into, not fled into addiction of all kinds. If we will only be still in it – something that requires both courage and faith – we discover we can be still in it. That everything we ran from or tried to numb does not destroy us, however painful, but helps deepen our person and our journey.

[It] is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.

One of his students wrote:

When loneliness is hauting me with its possibility of being a threshold instead of a dead end, a new creation instead of a grave, a meeting place instead of an abyss, then time loses its desperate clutch on me. Then I no longer have to live in a frenzy of activity, overwhelmed and afraid for the missed opportunity.

It is this loneliness which is a universal human condition; the state of solitude it enables us to enter, a universal humal calling. In this solitude, at rest instead of always grasping, we finally find space for true intimacy, not demanding others to meet needs they cannot meet, and knowing when and why to gently refuse their demands of us. I can be I, and you can be you.

Hostility to hospitality is essentially this: where we can create and maintain a space into which someone can enter and be received as themselves, without cruel expectations. It is in this safe space they can also be confronted as needed, maintaining careful balance.

Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody.

And it may be quickly deduced that illusion to prayer is also connected to these two, but toward God. He explains:

Although loneliness and hostility are more easily understandable in light of our day-to-day experiences than the awareness of the illusiory quality of many of our strivings, it is only in the lasting effort to unmask the illusions of our existence that a real spiritual life is possible. In order to convert our crying loneliness into a silent solitude and to create a fearless place where strangers can feel at home, we need the willingness and courage to reach out far beyond the limitations of our fragile and finite existence toward our loving God in whom all life is anchored.... Solitude and hospitality can only bear lasting fruits when they are embedded in a broader, deeper and higher reality from which they receive their vitality.

I wish I could simply quote the whole book, but enough for now. If the quotes intrigue you, I can't recommend reading the book highly enough. It put language to so much that I've been grappling with, it was like having a conversation with an old and beloved friend who I hadn't seen in too long. It is a work of both courage and faith, of honesty and vulnerability; it creates the hospitable space and invites the reader to enter, to be both received and confronted in safety.