The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (Doubleday Image Book. an Image Book)

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Today, seeing that the whole adult, fatherly world stands helpless before the threat of atomic war, eroding poverty, and starvation of millions, the men and women of tomorrow see that no father has anything to tell them simply because he has lived longer.

For one man needs another to live, and the deeper he is willing to enter into the painful condition which he and others know, the more likely it is that he can be a leader, leading his people out of the desert into the promised land.

The emptiness of the past and the future can never be filled with words but only by the presence of a man. Because only then can the hope be born, that there might be at least one exception to the “nobody and nothing” of his complaint—a hope that will make him whisper, “Maybe, after all, someone is waiting for me.”

Nobody can offer leadership to anyone unless he makes his presence known—that is, unless he steps forward out of the anonymity and apathy of his milieu and makes the possibility of fellowship visible.

John’s task was therefore to strengthen his patient’s desire to recover and to reinforce what little strength he had in the struggle for life.

A man can keep his sanity and stay alive as long as there is at least one person who is waiting for him.

One eye movement or one handshake can replace years of friendship when man is in agony. Love not only lasts forever, it needs only a second to come about.

because when two people have become present to each other, the waiting of one must be able to cross the narrow line between the living or dying of the other.

It is indeed possible for man to be faithful in death, to express a solidarity based not just on a return to everyday life, but also on a participation in the death experience which belongs in the center of the human heart.

There will be no “ifs.” “I will wait for you” goes beyond death and is the deepest expression of the fact that faith and hope may pass but that love will remain forever.

rather they are two men who reawaken in each other the deepest human intuition, that life is eternal and cannot be made futile by a biological process.

Only by this personal participation could he have freed Mr. Harrison of his paralysis and made him responsible again for his own history.

it seems necessary to re-establish the basic principle that no one can help anyone without becoming involved, without entering with his whole person into the painful situation, without taking the risk of becoming hurt, wounded or even destroyed in the process.

Personal concern means making Mr. Harrison the only one who counts, the one for whom I am willing to forget my many other obligations, my scheduled appointments and long-prepared meetings, not because they are not important but because they lose their urgency in the face of Mr. Harrison’s agony.

The remark “He really cares for us” is often illustrated by stories which show that forgetting the many for the one is a sign of true leadership.

It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.

because he faces the world with eyes full of expectation, with the expertise to take away the veil that covers its hidden potential.

For a real minister he incarnates the truth that it belongs to the dignity of man to die a human death, to surrender life instead of allowing it to be taken away from him in a state of unconsciousness.

and above all the cry for someone who will be with him in life and in death.

life is not a static given but a mystery which reveals itself in the ongoing encounter between man and his world.

For hope makes it possible to look beyond the fulfillment of urgent wishes and pressing desires and offers a vision beyond human suffering and even death.

This service requires the willingness to enter into a situation, with all the human vulnerabilities a man has to share with his fellow man.

Indeed, the paradox of Christian leadership is that the way out is the way in, that only by entering into communion with human suffering can relief be found.

When we are impatient, when we want to give up our loneliness and try to overcome the separation and incompleteness we feel, too soon, we easily relate to our human world with devastating expectations. We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated, intuitive knowledge—that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. This truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence.

The painful irony is that the minister, who wants to touch the center of men’s lives, finds himself on the periphery, often pleading in vain for admission. He never seems to be where the action is, where the plans are made and the strategies discussed.

It is this wound which he is called to bind with more care and attention than others usually do. For a deep understanding of his own pain makes it possible for him to convert his weakness into strength and to offer his own experience as a source of healing to those who are often lost in the darkness of their own misunderstood sufferings.

It requires first of all that the host feel at home in his own house, and secondly that he create a free and fearless place for the unexpected

1. Hospitality and concentration Hospitality is the ability to pay attention to the guest. This is very difficult, since we are preoccupied with our own needs, worries and tensions, which prevent us from taking distance from ourselves in order to pay attention to others.

Anyone who wants to pay attention without intention has to be at home in his own house—that is, he has to discover the center of his life in his own heart. Concentration, which leads to meditation and contemplation, is therefore the necessary precondition for true hospitality.

When we are not afraid to enter into our own center and to concentrate on the stirrings of our own soul, we come to know that being alive means being loved. This experience tells us that we can only love because we are born out of love, that we can only give because our life

is a gift, and that we can only make others free because we are set free by Him whose heart is greater than ours. When we have found the anchor places for our lives in our own center, we can be free to let others enter into the space created for them and allow them to dance their own dance, sing their own song and speak their own language without fear. Then our presence is no longer threatening and demanding but inviting and liberating.

It is healing because it takes away the false illusion that wholeness can be given by one to another. It is healing because it does not take away the loneliness and the pain of another, but invites him to recognize his loneliness on a level where it can be shared.

Rather, he deepens the pain to a level where it can be shared. When someone comes with his loneliness to the minister, he can only expect that his loneliness will be understood and felt, so that he no longer has to run away from it but can accept it as an expression of his basic human condition.

No minister can save anyone. He can only offer himself as a guide to fearful people.

This is so because a shared pain is no longer paralyzing but mobilizing, when understood as a way to liberation.

To announce, however, that the Liberator is sitting among the poor and that the wounds are signs of hope and that today is the day of liberation, is a step very few can take. But this is exactly the announcement of the wounded healer: “The master is coming—not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.”

Nobody can predict where this will lead us, because every time a host allows himself to be influenced by his guest he takes a risk not knowing how they will affect his life. But it is exactly in common searches and shared risks that new ideas are born, that new visions reveal themselves and that new roads become visible. We do not know where we will be two, ten or twenty years from now. What we can know, however, is that man suffers and that a sharing of suffering can make us move forward. The minister is called to make this forward thrust credible to his many guests, so that they do not stay but have a growing desire to move on, in the conviction that the full liberation of man and his world is still to come.