Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Being the Beloved

the words “You are my Beloved” revealed the most intimate truth about all human beings, whether they belong to any particular tradition or not.

These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That’s the great trap. It is the trap of self-rejection.

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

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.”

Beneath all my seemingly strong self-confidence there remained the question: “If all those who shower me with so much attention could see me and know me in my innermost self, would they still love me?” That agonizing question, rooted in my inner shadow, kept persecuting me and made me run away from the very place where that quiet voice calling me the Beloved could be heard.

Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you the Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply. It is like discovering a well in the desert. Once you have touched wet ground, you want to dig deeper.

being the Beloved is the origin and the fulfillment of the life of the Spirit.

Becoming the Beloved is the great spiritual journey we have to make.

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

As long as “being the Beloved” is little more than a beautiful thought or a lofty idea that hangs above my life to keep me from becoming depressed, nothing really changes.

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.

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 identify the movements of the Spirit in our lives, I have found it helpful to use four words: “taken,” “blessed,” “broken,” and “given.”

as a Christian, I am called to become bread for the world: bread that is taken, blessed, broken, and given.

I do believe deeply that, in order to live a spiritual life, we have to claim for ourselves that we are “taken” or “chosen.”

When I know that I am chosen, I know that I have been seen as a special person.

To be chosen does not mean that others are rejected. It is very hard to conceive of this in a competitive world such as ours.

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.

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.

Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us. Long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love. Our preciousness, uniqueness, and individuality are not given to us by those who meet us in clock-time—our brief chronological existence—but by the One who has chosen us with an everlasting love, a love that existed from all eternity and will last through all eternity.

How do we get in touch with our chosenness when we are surrounded by rejections?

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.

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.

Third, you have to celebrate your chosenness constantly. This means saying “thank you” to God for having chosen you, and “thank you” to all who remind you of your chosenness.

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

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. Gratitude begets gratitude, just as love begets love.

It is impossible to compete for God’s love. God’s love is a love that includes all people—each one in his or her uniqueness. It is only when we have claimed our own place in God’s love that we can experience this all-embracing, noncomparing love and feel safe, not only with God, but also with all our brothers and sisters.

Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence—priceless and irreplaceable.

BLESSED

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

The blessings that we give to each other are expressions of the blessing that rests on us from all eternity. It is the deepest affirmation of our true self. It is not enough to be chosen. We also need an ongoing blessing that allows us to hear in an ever-new way that we belong to a loving God who will never leave us alone, but will remind us always that we are guided by love on every step of our lives.

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.

the real “work” of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.

The problem of modern living is that we are too busy—looking for affirmation in the wrong places?—to notice that we are being blessed.

chasing affirmation is a significant problem

Not claiming your blessedness will lead you quickly to the land of the cursed. There is little or no neutral territory between the land of the blessed and the land of the cursed. You have to choose where it is that you want to live, and that choice is one that you have to keep making from moment to moment.

BROKEN

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.

It is obvious that our brokenness is often most painfully experienced with respect to our sexuality.

Our sexuality reveals to us our enormous yearning for communion. The desires of our body—to be touched, embraced, and safely held—belong to the deepest longings of the heart and are very concrete signs of our search for oneness.

When everything about us overstimulates and overextends our senses and when what is offered to us for the fulfillment of our deeper needs generally has about it a slightly seductive character, it is no wonder that we are plagued by crazy fantasies, wild dreams, and disturbing feelings and thoughts.

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

How can we respond to this brokenness? I’d like to suggest two ways: first, befriending it and, second, putting it under the blessing.

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. When brokenness is, in fact, just as intimate a part of our being as our chosenness and our blessedness, we have to dare to overcome our fear and become familiar with it.

The great secret of the spiritual life, the life of the Beloved Sons and Daughters of God, is that everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward the full realization of our humanity.

real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to joy.

The second response to our brokenness is to put it under the blessing.

The great spiritual call of the Beloved Children of God is to pull their brokenness away from the shadow of the curse and put it under the light of the blessing.

All addictions make us slaves, but each time we confess openly our dependencies and express our trust that God can truly set us free, the source of our suffering becomes the source of our hope.

Befriending it and putting it under the blessing do not necessarily make our pain less painful. In fact, it often makes us more aware of how deep the wounds are and how unrealistic it is to expect them to vanish.