“If there is anywhere
on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it
was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we
are always kept in that same precious love.”
~Julian of Norwich
Last year I began a practice of writing out all of my
reflections from the previous year at the end of December. This year in the
midst of reflecting on the previous year I had purchased Henri Nouwen’s book The Return of The Prodigal Son and the
title and the painting by Rembrandt on the cover both conspired to speak to me the
reality that I am the prodigal son and now I am returning -making my way back
home, as T.S. Eliot has written “…and to know it for the first time.”
All this before even reading a page of the book – the last
three years of my life have been lived in liminal space and there has been a great
deal of vertigo of the soul that has wearied me and made me desire to rest. In
2011 I travelled a great deal around the world trying in many respects to out
run my anxiety and depression and for a limited time and in small ways they
both were alleviated but not extinguished. These words of Nouwen’s became my
thoughts, “The world around me becomes dark. My heart grows heavy. My body is
filled with sorrows. My life loses meaning. I have become a lost soul.”
Yet, in this place of liminal space, of wandering, of
searching for what it is that will give my life meaning and significance God in
his mysterious loving way has remained in the midst of my darkness. I am
reminded of something Richard Rohr wrote in his book Falling Up, “People who fail to do it right, by even their own definition of right,
are those who often break through to enlightenment & compassion.” As well
as these lines from the Rich Mullins song Hard To Get, “I can’t see how
you’re leading me unless you’ve led me here. Where I’m lost enough to let
myself be led and so you’ve been here all along I guess. It’s just your ways
and you are just plain hard to get.”
The sentence, “…the
younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country…” (Luke 15:
13a TNIV) seemed very familiar to me and what Nouwen wrote, “I was dead tired,
so much so that I could barely walk. I was anxious, lonely, restless, and very
needy….I felt like a vulnerable little child who wanted to crawl onto its
mother’s lap and cry” resonated with my soul. Also, what Nouwen sought is also
what I have been feeling, “…the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous
sense of safety, a lasting home.”
However, “Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home and
must look far and wide to find one.” As such there is a, “…denial of the
spiritual reality that I belong to God with every part of my being, that God
holds me safe in an eternal embrace…” and I deny my belonging to God and the
home he has made for me.
Further, Nouwen comments and I believe this to be all to
true for me as well, “I have fled the hands of blessing and run off to faraway
places searching for love! This is the great tragedy of my life and of the
lives of so many I meet on my journey.” When I did this and even when mistakes were
made as they invariable are and choices made that did not lead to the best
places in life there is still this that Simon Chan notes that, “What it does
not mean is that even when we make mistakes, we cannot ultimately go wrong
because love will redirect us to the right path” (Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life).
Yet while away from home I believe the concept of the marring
of our divine image does occur, marring as Richard Foster describes in this
way, ‘Theologically speaking, Orthodox belief would remind us that we are
created “in the image of God,” so that we carry the “icon” of God within us.
Sin, then, is the marring of the divine likeness. When we sin we inflict a
wound in the original image of God. Salvation therefore consists in God
restoring the full image of God. Christ came to restore the icon of God within
us. This “restoring” involves rebirth, re-creation, and transfiguration into
the image of Christ’ (Streams of Living
Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christ).
The restoration begins when we turn for home.
What does all this mean in general and more specifically for
me and my seemingly sporadic spiritual journey? Fundamentally this – God loves
and waits for me and allows me in his love to leave home and in this freedom to
be and to become what it is I choose to be and in the end we all do get what it
is we want.
As Nouwen writes, “…the Father couldn’t compel his son to
stay home. He couldn’t force his love on the Beloved. He had to let him go in
freedom, even though he knew the pain it would cause both his son and
himself….It was love that allowed him to let his son find his own life, even
with the risk of losing it.”
At some point I, like Nouwen, like the prodigal son realize
I have to turn and go home, my divine image had been marred enough and I need
restoring, healing, and rest and then an ending becomes a beginning as,
“…leaving the foreign country is only the beginning. The way home is arduous”
(Nouwen). And the most difficult part of the journey home is to believe that,
“…where my failings are great, ‘grace is always greater’” (Nouwen). To accept
grace and forgiveness is the gravest and most daunting part of my journey even
now, as Nouwen writes, “One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is
to receive God’s forgiveness….Receiving forgiveness requires a total
willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing.”
As I sit here and write this I still find myself struggling
with the thought that God’s position is always one of being for me, loving me,
desiring me, searching for and wanting to run and embrace me. I read about it,
listen to songs about it – look at Rembrandt’s painting and the loving hands
(both male and female) of the father/mother God on the shoulders of the prodigal
son and the image moves and consoles me but the truth of the reality seems far
off?
It is indeed so very hard for me to live and trust and have
faith in this story – to be able to have faith as Paul Tillich defined it,
“…accepting my own acceptance….” as I perceive myself to be so unacceptable.
I was reminded of something I wrote:
Where the Imago Dei is, the Father is…
Where the Imago Dei is, the Father is…
Where the Truth is,
the Son is…
Where Life is, the
Spirit is…
And where pain and suffering and loss are
All three are
As there can be no
experiencing of the Trinity
Except through pain,
grieve and loss as it is through these
That grace gives way
to joy and then to love.
