Spiritual Reading

Spiritual Direction - Henri Nouwen
Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith
with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird
HarperSanFransisco, 2006

Introduction
Henri Nouwen, beloved author, priest, and world-famous spiritual counselor and guide, served as spiritual director to many men and women, but his course on spiritual direction was never recorded during his lifetime. Now, in Spiritual Direction, two of Nouwen's students present his wonderful and wise advice on how to live a deep spiritual life in communion with others.

Quotations
Seeking spiritual direction, for me, means to ask the big questions, the fundamental questions, the universal ones in the context of a supportive community. Out of asking the right questions and living the questions will come right actions that present themselves in compelling ways. To live the questions and act rightly, guided by God's spirit, requires both discipline and courage: discipline to "ask, seek, knock" until the door opens (Matthew 7:7-8).
(page 5)

To receive spiritual help in time of need requires, first of all, not to deny but to affirm the search. Painful questions must be raised, faced, ad the lived. This means that we must constanly avoid the temptation of offering or accepting simple answers, to be easy defenders of God, the Church, the tradition, or whatever we feel called to defend...
Be careful when life's questions swirl around you in times of pain. Beware of easy answers of guarantees. Seek the companionship of others who will befriend you and listen as you live the questions of your life.
(page 7)

The essence of spiritual direction is the quality of witness.
To be witness means to lay down your life for your friends, to become a "martyr" in the original sense of the word.
To be witness means to offer your own faith experience and to make your doubts and hopes, failures and successes, loneliness and woundedness, available to others as a context in which they can struggle with their own humanness and quest for meaning.
(page 10)