"Broken" Midweek Reflection (Week 5)

Romans8:26-28

Hebrews 4:15-16

Throughout our study of Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved, we have been learning how to receive the gift of God naming us “beloved.”

We have reflected on two of the four words that Nouwen uses to describe the movement of the Spirit among us. We are “taken” or “chosen” by God and God calls us “blessed”.

The next word Nouwen uses is broken.

Some twenty years before writing Life of the Beloved, Nouwen wrote The Wounded Healer. In that book his premise was that one who is ministering to others must look after one’s own wounds but at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others. He recognizes that we all bear wounds and we all are broken.

In this book, he writes,

Our sufferings and pains are not simply bothersome interruptions of our lives; they touch us in our uniqueness and our most intimate individuality. (87)

He continues, writing,

The way I am broken tells you something unique about me.
The way you are broken tells me something about you. (87)

And he urges us not to be afraid of our brokenness,
but to accept our brokenness as readily
as we accept our chosen-ness and blessedness.

One of the first ways we can accept our brokenness is to name it.

“Loneliness, isolation, insecurity, frustration, confusion…all these are forms of brokenness.” (Week 5, Study Guide) And I wonder,
what kind of brokenness feels most present or challenging for you right now? (pause)

Writing this book to his friend, Nouwen says choosing to share our brokenness with each other, to share our deep struggles, is a sign of deep friendship or relationship. (86)

I think one of the beautiful parts of friendship is when we can sit with another person and listen to them share their brokenness without denying it or trying to fix it.

Once we accept our brokenness Nouwen suggests two practices for us to respond to it: befriending it
and putting it under the blessing. (92)

Ignoring or hiding pain or suffering doesn’t erase it or reduce its effects. When we are fearful, our fear magnifies the obstacles and the challenges we face seem even larger.

Nouwen suggests instead that we need to step toward our pain and live through it. (95)

There’s no way to go around it. But we do not face it alone.

[We] need someone to keep us standing in it, to assure [us] that there is peace beyond anguish, life beyond death, and love beyond fear. (95)

As siblings in Christ, we help each other transform our suffering.

And when we do that, we also bring that suffering out of the shadows and bring it to God.

The shadows or what Nouwen calls “the curse” is our temptation to understand the brokenness we experience as confirmation of our un-worthiness.

It is what happens when we forget we are God’s beloved,
when we forget we are chosen by God as God’s children,
and when we forget we are blessed by God
for the sake of the world God loves.

I think of Adam and Eve in Eden in Genesis, when they hide from God.  Genesis 3, verses 8 and 9 say:

⁸ They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” ¹⁰ He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

I wonder how often we hide among the trees, hoping to hide something about ourselves from the God who created and loves us? (pause)

Nouwen urges us instead to put our brokenness under the blessing of God, trusting God to use our experiences to strengthen us and to see the pruning or winnowing as a natural part of our growth as disciples. (98)

Like joy, sorrow “becomes [part of our] desire to grow to the fullness of the Beloved.” (99)

That reminds me of Peter after the crucifixion.

John 21 tells the story of Jesus and the disciples cooking breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, and Simon Peter and Jesus are having a conversation where three times Jesus asks Simon Peter whether he loves Jesus. And each time, Peter insists, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And Jesus does know. And he knows Peter faltered and denied him three times before his crucifixion. And he forgives him.

Truly, nothing is hidden from God and nothing, not even our brokenness, separates us from the love of God and our lives as God’s beloved.