The Return of the Prodigal Son Anniversary Edition: A Special Two-in-One Volume, including Home Tonight

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

LISTENING Take some time to breathe deeply and to calm yourself. Bring yourself back to your identification with the resentful one. Listen and acknowledge that you try to be dutiful. Invite your heart to speak to you about your feeling inadequate before others. Listen and identify who you’ve given the power to upset you and hold you hostage in angry feelings. Stay, listen, and give time to hear all that your heart wants to say. Try to see if there isn’t also a cry in your heart to believe “I am a sister. I am a brother. I’m not better or worse than anyone else.” Hear that cry as a true call to claim yourself as a full member of the human family. Listen to your true heart telling you that you are a precious and cherished person, among so many other wonderful people, who search and struggle like you, and who one day will die, like you. Listen and try to plumb the depths of your truth. JOURNALING Try to put into words the inner dialogue that took place during your listening time. Perhaps zero in on some of the people or events that destroyed your image of yourself as enough. Give yourself freedom to express the burden that you carry. Move slowly to write your insights into the truth about you and about your amazing life. In this sacred space, question how you can reclaim the truth and move away from feeling inadequate. Write your gratitude for those beautiful gifts that have been showered upon you in the course of your years. Finally, express your desire to stand fully in the...