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

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

I suppose you will hesitate to consider yourself a mystic or a revolutionary, but when you have eyes to see and ears to hear you will recognize him in your midst. He is sometimes undeniably evident to the point of irritation, sometimes only partially visible. You will find him in the eyes of the guerrilla, the young radical or the boy with the picket sign. You will notice him in the quiet dreamer playing his guitar in the corner of a coffeehouse, in the soft voice of a friendly monk, in the melancholic smile of a student concentrating on his reading. You will see him in the mother who allows her son to go his own difficult way, in the father who reads to his child from a strange book, in the loud laughter of a young girl, in the indignation of a Young Lord, and in the determination of a Black Panther. You will find him in your own town, in your own family, and even in the strivings of your own heart, because he is in every man who draws his strength from the vision that dawns on the skyline of his life and leads him to a new world. It is this new world that fills our dreams, guides our actions and makes us go on, at great risk, with the increasing conviction that one day man will finally be free—free to love!