Introduction
My prayer life fluctuates between lament, outward anger, silence, solitude and what I call a healthy balance of mutual respect between myself and God. When I take an honest look at my prayer life I can see a little of myself in Henri Nouwen, a notable catholic priest, but probably more of myself in the fictional character Sonny the “Apostle”, from the movie the Apostle. These recognitions are helpful in aiding me in a deeper relationship with God, but they are also warning signs that I may indeed be praying in unhealthy ways or not doing enough listening, which is an equal part of prayer.
The following reflection paper will be a look at Nouwen's themes in relation to prayer in my life as a Baptist Pastor from his books The Way of the Heart and The Inner Voice of Love, including a look at his struggle and my observations and reflections about his life and ministry and his use of prayer. Furthermore, we will contrast the character “Sonny”, from the movie the Apostle to myself and Nouwen as a way to identify any unhealthy prayer practices.
Nouwen's help, as I develop as a Pastor
I love to pray, whether it is intercessory or living prayer or creative and even scriptural, that has been arranged for prayer. I love it! As a pastor, in particular, prayer is at the heart of my ministry. I pray in worship services and I pray at pastoral visits. My prayer life seems to be healthy and I am in agreement with Nouwen when he says in his book, The Way of the Heart, “The prayer of the heart is the prayer of truth. It unmasks the many illusions about ourselves and about God” (79). This is such a true statement, there are no illusions when we pray and I have experienced watching someone being changed from “glory to glory” because of prayer and have experienced that change myself. We are naked in the purest form when we pray. Our masks fall off and we are exposed lovingly. This type of heart felt prayer life is liberating. There is a place where I can go and be me and hopefully as a Pastor lead people to God. It is the type of prayer most helpful in pastoral care.
In the movie the Apostle the character Sonny is being striped naked, metaphorically speaking. He loses his wife, his church, his children and essentially his life as he runs from all of his problems. But this nakedness is ugly, it is not the liberating nakedness of removing our masks that Nouwen speaks of. Sonny's prayer life becomes nothing more then demanding and shouting about how the world has done him wrong. I had a sense while watching the scene where he drowns his car, rips up his wallet and “begins again” that everything he had was just superficial. There was no substance behind his life, otherwise I think he would have fought harder for his life. Prayer can become superficial too, when it is one way.
I love how Nouwen talks about how through the prayer of the “heart one enters into the Kingdom” (78). It is this state we need to strive for. Prayer to Nouwen is; “that active presence of God's Spirit guiding me through life” (86). This is my thought exactly, especially the part about life and what I strive for in ministry. The striking and sad thing about the Sonny character is that there are “no witnesses” in his spiritual life. He does not seem to be aware of the active presence of God. For me, the Trinity members are my witnesses, but that relationship compels me to be active with others, especially in the public declaration of baptism In the scene where he baptizes himself he declares “there are no witnesses”. The audience knows that the Black fisherman sees him, but he doesn't know that and I took the Black man to represent God. God knows when we are not praying and being in their presence, in a healthy way when this happens we cannot bring people to the Kingdom. God's guide Spirit is way for us to listen to His prodding, to see where and whom God wants us to speak.
To be very honest I have been in a bit of a pruning time and I have found my own prayer life, right now, a little empty. I pride myself on being someone who can hold the hand of another, who has been hurt and just sit while they weep. I was an professional actor for 17 years and I know the importance of words, but as someone who longs to preach I also know the need as Nouwen states it, to have “words that create the boundaries within which we can listen to the loving, caring, gentle presence of God” (61). I had forgotten this personally, lately, through all my complaining. I forgot to listen to the gentle, caring words of my Father, which has caused me to be empty and unsure. I am not sure what has led me to this place except that I am very overwhelmed right now and I have found myself acting more like “Sonny” from the movie the Apostle. I too have lamented, shouted, called out to God, been demanding and doing things my way, just like Sonny does in the movie. And just like Sonny I too have spoken too much and not listened. I think it is very fitting at the end of the film when he says, “I have the right to remain silent, guess I do an awful lot of talking”. This comment struck a cord in me. I too do more talking than listening and it is a mistake not listening to our Father. As Nouwen puts it, “speaking gets us involved in the affairs of the world and it is very hard to be involved without becoming entangled in and polluted by the world” (51). He is right. I have become a grumbler, a murmurer of all the things wrong with this semester. I am too busy, too many sick people at church, not enough time with my husband, worried about all the work to do for my ordination and so forth and so forth. I have become tied up in my world affairs and have not spent enough time listening to God. However, our God is good and actually provided someone to call me up on all my complaining by asking was I doubting my call to stay in ministry. No I am not, but as Nouwen explained “our words are more an expression of our doubt than of our faith” (54). This hit home! I have been convicted. I had stopped talking to God in the past few weeks or perhaps I should say I have stopped waiting for answers. My devotional time has been reading and studying, not, just being, not hanging out with my Lord. It is in these times I realize how much I miss out on the relationship part with our Father. I must guard myself from the idea that God is just facts and figures. He is alive and welcoming and willing and wanting to be with me. Nouwen, offers, “concerning our ministry of silence is not whether we say much or little, but whether our words call forth the caring silence of God himself” (66). This helped me realize I still need work in this area. Watching Sonny deal with his problems has also helped me to see why silence is so much more important then unhealthy lament and that my impatience causes me to do unhelpful things. A good example of longing to serve God, but being unhelpful because of the lack of listening is found again with Sonny. In the beginning of the film, there is a car accident and Sonny gets out and goes and speaks to this young man who is injured. Instead of loving the boy and being gentle with him, he just walks him through “believers prayer” and asks him questions about where he is going, if he were to die right there and then. I was horrified at this and thought about the times I saw it happen in real life with my family members who lay on deaths bed. We are all so focused on the next life that we forget about mercy and compassion in this life, right now in the present. This type of ministry is unhealthy as it reduced God to a system. This type of ministry is not the calling of the Kingdom Nouwen speaks about. Perhaps, a car crash is a good time for practical help and very few words.
Honest Friends
I am glad to have read the Inner Voice of Love, although, it has come to me during a time of pruning and I have more than once wanted to throw the book across the room because it made me so angry. Nouwen has such a way of getting to the point, quickly. In this book, which is a collection of passages from Henri's journals, written during a period when his self-esteem evaporated, his energy to work disappeared, and God seemed entirely unreal (x111) I have found an honest friend. The first chapter spoke deeply to my heart, as he expressed his feelings of homelessness even though he had found home and of his anguish over a friendship that could not continue. I feel these things right now. Though, I also feel grateful that he took the time to write this book because it to has helped me to be a better pastor or at least not feel so alone. I found reading the book while going through this pruning time was an answer to some anxiety I was having. On page 17 he says, “stay close very close to Jesus”. This is something I have tried doing in these last few weeks, but it can be hard too. I feel anguish right now and that means my prayer life has been empty or filled with me talking more rather than listening. I found reading the book helped me to slow down to a point where I could truly reflect and see where I am in ministry. This was helpful and it also allowed me to reflect on the honesty of the Sonny character whom I believe was in “service of the Lord”. Sonny knows he is serving the Lord. He walks back over to his own car, where his mother is waiting after stopping at the car accident scene and says, “Mama, we made news in heaven this morning, we made news in heaven”. I still think I wold have done things differently, but he was truly assured that the boy would be “saved”. Perhaps, the point here is that you can only go so far on your own and then you find yourself away from God which is what happens to Sonny. So Nouwen is right, when he encourages us to stay close to Jesus.
Nouwen on page 99 says, “your vocation is to speak from the place in you where God dwells”. I believe this is the heart of the book. The inner voice for me is God speaking in and through me so I can be in God's presence and lead other there too. Sonny on the other hand, seems to be coming to his faith by works, and good deeds. The Apostle, seems to be a movie about personal penance. Redemption with God cannot be bought with our good works, passion and love of people. Salvation is in the appropriated work of Christ alone and it is this theme that is entirely absent from the movie. Nouwen, I think would agree.
It really does seem as though the chief character in the movie is God. God, works, through the foolishness and sin of man, to build his church. Henri Nouwen and Sonny are two similar men but with two different approaches to their relationship with God and two different approaches to building God's church. They both began their ministries as children. Nouwen, in his parents house with his pretend church and Sonny as a child preacher within the Pentecostal tradition. They both are extremely passionate men whom were convinced of their callings to pastoral ministry. They are similar and we find they share a dependency issue, on others due to their loneliness which I attribute to their relationship with God. It is however, important to note how they differently dealt with loneliness. Nouwen sought out a life of solitude, silence and pray in order to minister out of his own suffering of loneliness. In The Inner Voice of Love, he writes:
When you love someone, or miss someone, you experience an inner pain... You need the other to experience wholeness…you have become emotionally dependent…this reveals a certain lack of trust in God’s love…the more you are stripped of the support of people the more you are called to love God (63-4).
With solitude, silence, reflection and prayer Nouwen was able to come face to face with God and share his insights of God, lovingly, with others. My prayer is that I will always seek God's ways so that my foolishness and loneliness does not hurt anyone. Sonny has not followed the same path. His faith is not reflective nor contemplative, but the belief of a determined and stubborn man to do things his way. Sonny is convinced that God wants him to be a Pastor for a church, at all costs. He does not listen to what God’s will is, but plans his own future because he is afraid of being alone. Sonny speaks of his gospel mission as, “You do it your way, and I do it mine, but boy do we get things done.” This points out that he is not concerned about God's will, only the success of his mission. He lies to the retired pastor to gain his trust and support. He tells the feuding women on the bus to love and forgive each other, yet he does not do that himself. Because of this he does not cultivate real friendships with others or God.
In the documentary about Henry, Journey of the Heart (2005), it is said “Henry's books seemed to speak to the souls of readers” as if they were written directly to everyone who was reading his work. Nouwen seemed to believe that “entering into your own suffering, was the source for your ministry”, and living with Jesus as the one who welcomes you into the warm embrace of the Father” (Journey of the Heart). This is the only way one can reach others and it is why his books “speak to the readers”. It is Nouwen’s example of being a friend and pastor with others that I want to follow. His challenge to me as a pastor is for me to understand we must “die to our neighbor, stop judging and evaluating them, thus we become free to be compassionate…and forgiving” (36, 37). This is the honest work of a Pastor, moving “in love toward their congregation (46).
Conclusion
I have discovered when my prayer life is out of whack, it is probably because my solitude and silence time is also failing. I must heed Nouwen's words to “pray always (15)”, and to practice with diligence both Solitude and Silence, as together, they are the context within which prayer is practiced (69)”. It is where Christ remodels in us His image (32) These three disciplines go hand in hand. These three disciplines, maybe more then the rest of Christian disciplines, are the true way for us to become truly human. As Nouwen phrased it; “solitude, silence and prayer allow us to save ourselves and others from the shipwreck of our self destructive society” (92). Prayer is not an event, which separates the heart and mind, but an event of the entire being. In prayer we are my completely vulnerable to the presence of God, his works, words and movements towards us, we cannot hide (79). Prayer is a continual yearning of the human spirit toward God where the heart prayers by itself (83), and where we find rest in the midst of the painful reality of the fallen world. This is not always easy, but with God's grace, it is possible and as Nouwen says; solitude shows us the way to let our behavior be not shaped by the compulsions of the world but by our new mind, the mind of Christ. Silence prevents us from being suffocated by our wordy word and teaches us to speak the Word of God and finally, unceasing prayer gives solitude and silence their real meaning.
I pray I will continue to develop these disciplines, they are crucial for people in ministry. My inner sense of belonging to Father God can only lead me to draw people to Him and we can only do this through healthy prayer. We can only do this if our heart is centered on Jesus.
Nouwen concludes in The Way of the Heart, with words from King Jesus and I will do the same, but with a different choice. “Jesus said, My nourishment comes from doing the will of God”... ( John 4:34). May we all seek God's will and be nourished, may we remember to discern his will through Solitude, Silence and Prayer.
Works Cited
Nouwen, Henri. The Way of the Heart. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1981.
Nouwen, Henri. The Inner Voice of Love. New York: Random House, 1996.
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