Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

“You should claim your deepest desire and do what you really want to do . . . time and money aren’t the real issue.” “What is?” he asked. “You are,” I answered. “You have nothing to lose. You are young, full of energy, well trained. . . . Everything is possible for you. . . . Why let the world squeeze you in? . . . Why become a victim? You are free to do what you want—if, that is, you really want it!”

“Speak from that place in your heart where you are most yourself. Speak directly, simply, lovingly, gently, and without any apologies. Tell us what you see and want us to see; tell us what you hear and want us to hear. . . . Trust your own heart. The words will come. There is nothing to fear. Those who need you most will help you most. You can be sure that I will.”

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection.

isn’t arrogance, in fact, the other side of self-rejection? Isn’t arrogance putting yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as you see yourself?

Not seldom, self-rejection is simply seen as the neurotic expression of an insecure person. But neurosis is often the psychic manifestation of a much deeper human darkness: the darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence.

Aren’t you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don’t you often hope: “May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country, or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.” But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied.

This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.

Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear at my center words that say: “I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother’s womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover, and your spouse . . . yes, even your child . . . wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one.”

You can choose to reach out now to true inner freedom and find it ever more fully.

If the spiritual life is not simply a way of being, but also a way of becoming, what then is the nature of this becoming?

Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do.

Becoming the Beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about, and doing from hour to hour.

I am thoroughly convinced that the origin and goal of our existence have everything to do with the ways we think, talk, and act in our daily lives. When our deepest truth is that we are the Beloved and when our greatest joy and peace come from fully claiming that truth, it follows that this has to become visible and tangible in the ways we eat and drink, talk and love, play and work.

When the deepest currents of our life no longer have any influence on the waves at the surface, then our vitality will eventually ebb, and we will end up listless and bored even when we are busy.

To be chosen as the Beloved of God is something radically different. Instead of excluding others, it includes others. Instead of rejecting others as less valuable, it accepts others in their own uniqueness. It is not a competitive, but a compassionate choice.

You must hold on to the truth that you are the chosen one. That truth is the bedrock on which you can build a life as the Beloved. When you lose touch with your chosenness, you expose yourself to the temptation of self-rejection, and that temptation undermines the possibility of ever growing as the Beloved.

the world persists in its efforts to pull us into the darkness of self-doubt, low self-esteem, self-rejection, and depression. And this because it is as insecure, fearful, self-deprecating people that we can most easily be used and manipulated by the powers surrounding us.

First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive.

The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.”

Second, you have to keep looking for people and places where your truth is spoken and where you are reminded of your deepest identity as the chosen one.

Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an “accident,” but a divine choice.

Where there is reason for gratitude, there can always be found a reason for bitterness. It is here that we are faced with the freedom to make a decision. We can decide to be grateful or to be bitter. We can decide to recognize our chosenness in the moment or we can decide to focus on the shadow side.

When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant.

What fascinates me so much is that every time we decide to be grateful it will be easier to see new things to be grateful for.

I now realize that I had to be in touch with my own goodness to discover the unique goodness of Helen. As long as my self-doubts and fears guided me, I couldn’t create the space for Helen to reveal to me her beauty. But once I claimed my own chosenness, I could be with Helen as a person who had much, very much, to offer me.

Without affirmation, it is hard to live well.

A blessing touches the original goodness of the other and calls forth his or her Belovedness.

When we are thrown up and down by the little waves on the surface of our existence, we become easy victims of our manipulative world, but, when we continue to hear the deep gentle voice that blesses us, we can walk through life with a stable sense of well-being and true belonging.

When I simply listen to what people talk about during dinner, in restaurants, during work breaks, I hear much—much blaming and complaining in a spirit of passive resignation. Many people, and we too at times, feel like victims of a world we cannot change, and the daily newspapers certainly don’t help much in coping with that feeling. The sense of being cursed often comes more easily than the sense of being blessed, and we can find enough arguments to feed it.

The feeling of being accursed comes easily. We easily hear an inner voice calling us evil, bad, rotten, worthless, useless, doomed to sickness and death. Isn’t it easier for us to believe that we are cursed than that we are blessed?

The curses—noisy, boisterous, loud-mouthed as they may be—do not tell the truth. They are lies; lies easy to believe, but lies nevertheless.

For me personally, prayer becomes more and more a way to listen to the blessing.

when I go to a quiet place to pray, I realize that, although I have a tendency to say many things to God, the real “work” of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.

if you develop the discipline of spending one half-hour a day listening to the voice of love, you will gradually discover that something is happening of which you were not even conscious. It might be only in retrospect that you discover the voice that blesses you. You thought that what happened during your time of listening was nothing more than a lot of confusion, but then you discover yourself looking forward to your quiet time and missing it when you can’t have it.

One good way to listen is to listen with a sacred text: a psalm or a prayer, for instance.

Often, people say good things about us, but we brush them aside with remarks such as, “Oh, don’t mention it, forget about it, it’s nothing . . .” and so on. These remarks may seem to be expressions of humility, but they are, in fact, signs that we are not truly present to receive the blessings that are given.

It is not easy for us, busy people, to truly receive a blessing. Perhaps the fact that few people offer a real blessing is the sad result of the absence of people who are willing and able to receive such a blessing. It has become extremely difficult for us to stop, listen, pay attention, and receive gracefully what is offered to us.

There is always so much that still has to be done, so many tasks to finish and jobs to work on that simple presence can easily seem useless and even a waste of our time. But still, without a conscious desire to “waste” our time, it is hard to hear the blessing.

Perhaps the simplest beginning would be to say that our brokenness reveals something about who we are. Our sufferings and pains are not simply bothersome interruptions of our lives; rather, they touch us in our uniqueness and our most intimate individuality. The way I am broken tells you something unique about me. The way you are broken tells me something unique about you.

I am deeply convinced that each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers.

in the final analysis, your pain and my pain are so deeply personal that comparing them can bring scarcely any consolation or comfort.

We human beings can suffer immense deprivations with great steadfastness, but when we sense that we no longer have anything to offer to anyone, we quickly lose our grip on life.

the joy of life comes from the ways in which we live together and that the pain of life comes from the many ways we fail to do that well.

It is where we are most needy and vulnerable that we most experience our brokenness.

my own pain in life has taught me that the first step to healing is not a step away from the pain, but a step toward it.

attempting to avoid, repress, or escape the pain is like cutting off a limb that could be healed with proper attention.

The powers of the darkness around us are strong, and our world finds it easier to manipulate self-rejecting people than self-accepting people.

the great task becomes that of allowing the blessing to touch us in our brokenness. Then our brokenness will gradually come to be seen as an opening toward the full acceptance of ourselves as the Beloved.

As I write you now about our brokenness, I recall a scene from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (a musical work written in memory of John F. Kennedy) that embodied for me the thought of brokenness put under the blessing. Toward the end of this work, the priest, richly dressed in splendid liturgical vestments, is lifted up by his people. He towers high above the adoring crowd, carrying in his hands a glass chalice. Suddenly, the human pyramid collapses, and the priest comes tumbling down. His vestments are ripped off, and his glass chalice falls to the ground and is shattered. As he walks slowly through the debris of his former glory—barefoot, wearing only blue jeans and a T-shirt—children’s voices are heard singing, “Laude, laude, laude”—“Praise, praise, praise.” Suddenly the priest notices the broken chalice. He looks at it for a long time and then, haltingly, he says, “I never realized that broken glass could shine so brightly.”

Our brokenness opened us to a deeper way of sharing our lives and offering each other hope. Just as bread needs to be broken in order to be given, so, too, do our lives.