nouwen for devotions

i have been trying really hard to read really slow. when i read henri nouwen i have found that when i go really slow i see things he writes a few places deeper than the surface of the page. i think in my experience of reading nouwen some of the best thoughts excavated are by hanging out on a section, lingering over a few pages, or even stopping and refusing to go on past a sentence.

this may be true for other writers one chooses to read, but in this case it is very intentional. i am trying to read really slow. this is a discipline for me. the book i am reading is the journal 'gracias' and it is about nouwen's own search for 'calling.' calling is what seems to drive him and this work captures his prayers, learning, relearning, and discoveries as he attempts to find his way. there is a cool detour in his life. sometimes you think that you are called to something and find out it isn't what you expected--this is the adventure with God.

today i was reading something he wrote on thursday december 17th:

"In my preparation for my language classes I had to analyze a short story by the Spanish poet and novelist Carmen Corde. In this story a mother discovers shortly after the birth of her baby boy that the child is blind. She calls her family together and says, 'I do not want my child to know that he is blind!' She insists that from that point on everyone use a language in which words such as 'light,' 'color,' and 'sight' are avoided. The child grows up believing that he is like everyone else until a strange girl jumps over the fence of the garden and uses all the forbidden words."

nouwen has some further thoughts along the lines of relationships and challenges...

"I think that this story symbolizes much or our behavior. We all seek to hide what is strange and painful and to act as if things are as usual. We say, 'Let us act as if there were no problems, no abnormalities, no pains, no wounds, no failures, no illnesses.' In my own life I have experienced the power of this urge to hide, and urge that is often more harmful than what it tries to conceal.

Every time I have had the courage or gave others the courage to face the blindness, their mental anguish, or their spiritual agony and let others become part of the struggle, new creative energies became available and the basis of community was laid. Fear, shame, and guilt often make us stay in our isolation and prevent us from realizing that our handicap, whatever it is, can always become the way to an intimate and healing fellowship in which we come to know one another as humans."

so i have spent much time thinking today about community, and i am going to think about it for awhile.

slow.

slower.

my question today and for a few days will be where i might be in the story mentioned - am i like the parent....or, am i like the blind child....or, am i the little child who jumps the fence using the forbidden words...