In Reaching Out, author and theologian Henri Nouwen describes three "movements"--movements in the sense of psychological growth: the first movement is from loneliness to solitude, the second is from hostility to hospitality, and the third is from illusion (the illusion that we are masters of our fate) to prayer.
The author uses this movement paradigm to illustrate certain paradoxes that happen in our social life, our communal life and our spiritual life (all of which of course overlap): in order to be open you first have to be closed, in order to genuinely share yourself you have to have enough solitude--even loneliness--to know yourself. And in order to navigate modernity, you have to set aside any illusions, delusions or arrogances you might have about it, or yourself.
There are interesting parallels here between this work and the Life of Saint Columba, who had to make his own rather difficult journey from "hostility to hospitality" over the course of his life. We also see in St. John of the Cross's work The Dark Night of the Soul, that many of our "journeys" start out lonely, but if we stay ready, if we stay open, we end up anything but.
There is a bit of word salad here and there in Reaching Out, but also good nuggets to chew on. The book is also elegantly structured in groups of three, where each of the three "movements" of the book involve dualities: paradoxical, oppositional ideas that the author unifies. Finally, the author tends to think and write using the rule of three. It's an interesting intellectual architecture, and quite fitting for a book on applying practical Christian ideas to modern life.
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[Readers, what follows are my notes and quotes from the text: I include them to help me better remember what I read. Feel free to skim the bolded parts, or skip it altogether.]
Notes:
Foreword
8ff Comments here on reading books, going to lectures and visiting religious communities vs discovering your own "lonely way." [Perhaps one could think of this paradigm as being led vs leading yourself.] "Maybe my own deep-rooted fear to be on my own and alone kept me going from person to person, book to book and school to school, anxiously avoiding the pain of accepting the responsibility for my own life." The author quotes Dante here: "In the middle of the way of our life I find myself in a dark wood."
9 Note the quote here from John of the Ladder (John Climacus) and his work The Ladder of Divine Ascent: "If some are still dominated by their former bad habits, and yet can teach by mere words, let them teach... For perhaps, being put to shame by their own words, they will eventually begin to practice what they teach." The author cites him as well as other Christian ascetics who helped him find consolation and encouragement.
Introduction
10 Thoughts here on how we live in a society that gives value to development, progress, achievement; on how the spiritual life gets sucked into this as well, where we ask "How advanced am I?" and "What level am I on?" On the dangers of such questions, even though it's helpful to think of these domains in terms of progress or levels or stages (as presented by certain saints for example). The author asks himself if some of the psychological changes he's made in the past years have made him a more or less spiritual man. [As usual the Simpsons nailed this problem perfectly with the "I'm a Level 5 Vegan, I don't eat anything that casts a shadow" episode.]
11 The author presents three polarities:
1) between loneliness and solitude
2) between hostility and hospitality, and
3) between illusion and prayer.
The first polarity deals with our relationship to ourselves, the second polarity deals with our relationship to others, and the third polarity deals with our relationship to God. "Thus, the spiritual life is that constant movement between the poles of loneliness and solitude, hostility and hospitality, illusion and prayer."
11-12 On the spiritual life not allowing shortcuts: you can't bypass loneliness, hostility or illusion, bypassing these things doesn't lead you to solitude, hospitality and prayer.
12 Comments on the structure of the book: each of the three parts describes a different movement of the spiritual life. First, the movement from loneliness to solitude, dealing with our own experience of our selves; the second movement, from hostility to hospitality, "deals with our spiritual life as a life for others"; the third movement, from illusion to prayer, talks about our relationship with the source of all spiritual life, our relationship to God. Last, some brief comments on the overlap and lack of clear separation across these three "movements."
Reaching Out to Our Innermost Self
The First Movement: From Loneliness to Solitude
Chapter 1: A Suffocating Loneliness
14ff The author is in New York City, commenting about being surrounded by silent people on the subway, in an environment of psychological loneliness, and then he looks at the ads in the subway car showing all sorts of togetherness and happiness in complete contrast with the reality of the people in the environment. Comments also on "intimacy for sale" like in pornography; on alcoholism, drug use, different psychosomatic symptoms, even suicide statistics, indicating the spread of loneliness in our world; he also wonders why friendly get-togethers and parties "leave us so empty and sad?"
16ff On "the avoidance of the painful void": how we do anything to avoid the experience of being alone; on how our culture has become very sophisticated in the avoidance of pain and discomfort--physical, emotional and mental; how "we will do anything to get busy again" to avoid these feelings. The author cites a TV show about an average family in California and the sheer amount of atomization that occurs with his family in their day to day life: painful issues went unmentioned, embarrassing situations were denied... this "average" family is basically a group of lonely people. The author writes: "By running away from our loneliness and by trying to distract ourselves with people and special experiences, we do not realistically deal with our human predicament."
19 On "final solutions" as the author phrases it, examples he gives here are how we dive into excruciating relationships or tiring friendships to escape loneliness. Also on how we burden the people around us with our own needs, our own "divine expectations, of which we ourselves are only partially aware." All of this inhibits true friendship. The author talks about a "final solution" of a new lover or a new community "maybe this time I have found what I've been searching for."
20 [The author struggles to get this idea across, but I think what he's getting at here is an idea of "fences make good neighbors," but in the psychological sense]: where we chase away loneliness by being excessively open, but real openness also paradoxically means closedness: this means we keep aspects of ourselves private and we shouldn't demand everyone to experience us as an open book in every aspect of our life, and every aspect of our personality. The author talks here about "mutual respectful protection of each other's uniqueness" and a backdrop of inner mystery. "There is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed and communicated. Dishonesty can be very harmful, and if it does not harm, it at least makes the relationship flat, superficial, empty and often very boring." [This section is a little bit of word salad, but I think I see what he's getting at.]
21 Interesting synchronicity for me here where the author talks about how "openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed." This actually uses language from Robert Monroe's book Far Journeys, which I'm reading at around the same time: there's a section late in the book where Monroe uses a sort of argot of his own to explain communications with other spirits/energy beings, using expressions like "he opened" (meaning to engage in communication, to engage in considering a new idea, to open oneself to a new experience, versus being "closed" which means to be silent and think through something, or to potentially reject some idea or notion). Henri Nouwen's uses of the word "openness" is in explaining the paradox of how healthy social relationships also require us to spend time alone in the privacy of our thoughts and our inner worlds. Note also the author's comments on his initial experience with the American way of life: it was almost too "open" in many senses of the word--open schools, open office doors, a general assumption that anyone could walk in and interrupt you at any time; and then on too much openness about people's private lives too; Nouwen struggled with this at first. Also the author actually writes "The American way of life tends to be suspicious toward closedness." Later he came to learn that there's less openness in USA culture than it appears.
22 More on the concepts of openness and closeness, here applied to marriage, using the famous poem from Khalil Gibran: "Stand together yet not too near together... Grow not in each other's shadow."
22ff Now to the punch line of this chapter, which is about a "conversion from loneliness into solitude." The author describes it as not running away from loneliness but instead converting loneliness it into a fruitful solitude, avoiding numbing behavior, avoiding distracting or diverting behavior, avoiding clinging to people, books, events, experiences, etc., and instead seeking a quiet solitude.
Chapter 2: A Receptive Solitude
25ff On how the word "solitude" is misleading because it suggests being isolated, alone, or we think about monks or hermits. The author is talking here about "solitude of heart; it is an inner quality or attitude that does not depend on physical isolation." However in the next paragraph he talks about the need for withdrawal from a distracting world as an element of solitude, but the solitude is that of the heart, which can be maintained in the center of a big city, in the middle of a big crowd, even in the context of a very active and productive life. On the idea of being present in loneliness and in solitude, enjoying solitude; contrasted from a restless solitude or restless loneliness.
27 Nice long quote here from the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, telling a young poet to stop seeking extrinsic validation, stop looking for editors to accept your efforts, stop looking for comments from others about whether your poetry is good; instead you have to go into yourself and "search for the reason that bids you to write." The author takes this idea to yet another level, to a discussion about making sure you have your own ideas, opinions and viewpoints rather than regurgitating the fashion of the time, or looking for answers in some book or some school. [As I grow older I realize how easy it is to outsource your thinking to others, to regurgitate things you heard, and think you are thinking. The discussion in Erich Fromm's book Escape from Freedom, especially Chapter 5's discussion of pseudo-opinions and pseudo-thinking, sits very heavily in my mind at this point of my life.]
28 Again quoting Rilke: "Do not now seek answers which cannot be given you." The author then writes how "we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to look for answers instead of listening to the questions. A lonely person has no inner time nor interest to wait and listen. He wants answers and wants them here and now." [In other words, ludic thinking combined with epistemic arrogance: and knowing that you know what it is that needs to be known, when you actually don't know.]
28-9 Extended quotes here from Thomas Merton, the 20th century Trappist monk, who found that solitude essentially made him more "convivial" in the Adlerian sense: "It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection and filled with reference for the solitude of others." See also the extended quote from Merton's work Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander where he achieves a form of clarity, an insight about being human, thanks to his solitude among others. The long quote here on page 29 is quite interesting and Merton's book is probably worth reading.
30 Back to the author's voice here: "Without the solitude of heart, our relationships with others easily become needy and greedy, sticky and clinging, dependent and sentimental, exploitative and parasitic, because without the solitude of heart we cannot experience the others as different from ourselves but only as people who can be used for the fulfillment of our own, often hidden, needs."
32 The author talks here about feeling closer to his friends in their absence than in their presence; he also quotes Khalil Gibran: "When you part from your friend, you grieve not: for that what you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain."
32-3 On various paradoxes of attachment here: examples like the gift of working as part of a harmonious team, but if our sense of worth depends on being on such a team, then we become sad people; likewise letters are good to receive, but we should be able to live happily without them; visits or phone calls from others are gifts but also we shouldn't be brooding without them; We should not need these things in order to not feel lonely, we should just find them to be things that we are grateful for.
Chapter 3: A Creative Response
34ff "As long as we are trying to run away from our loneliness we are constantly looking for distractions with the inexhaustible need to be entertained and kept busy. We become the passive victims of a world asking for our idolizing attention." The author writes that in the long run, this produces quick changes of mood, capricious behavior, and reactionary behavior as "our lives become a series of nervous and often anxious reactions to the stimuli of our surroundings."
35 The author contrasts that with comments here on the alertness of solitude, the ability to live in the world rather than deny it; accepting the world makes you aware of the world and it "becomes part of our contemplation and meditation."
36 Interesting comments here on reframing interruptions: the author quotes an older experienced professor/colleague who noticed his own complaining about interruptions to his work, but then he discovered that "my interruptions were my work." The author extends this to events of our lives that feel like big or small interruptions interrupting our plans and life schemes... but what if they are challenges to us in some way, or they help us grow, or even if they are events given to us by a "guiding hand"?
39ff Comments here on the burden of reality, of all the human suffering and tragedies around us: how can we live a healthy and creative life in the face of all this? The author doesn't know.
40ff The author notes that many of the activists from the 60s, after years of protest actually accomplished very little, that little could be done, that no changes took place; this makes it easy to devolve into cynicism; the author argues that the protests of the 60s were not based "on the solitude of the heart." [I shudder to think about what he would think of today's slacktivism/clicktivism; where "protests" are tweeted, or people put a "current thing" on their Facebook page.]
41-2 Back to Thomas Merton and the "paradox of his life that his withdrawal from the world brought him into closer contact with it... His compassionate solidarity with the human struggle made him a spokesman for many who...shared his solitude." [Worth noting here that Merton very much interacted with the world via his books: there is something interesting about the writer, he can spend most of his time in solitude yet still interact with the world at scale via his readership. Of course you need a great deal of solitude to write!] Nouwen quotes Merton here: "...it has become transparently obvious that mere automatic 'rejection of the world' and 'contempt for the world' is in fact not a choice but the evasion of a choice."
43ff Interesting final section here on "solidarity in pain": where we get more hope and strength not from people giving us advice or moralizing, but from people who have experienced the same experiences we have. Even in fiction! The author cites Anna Karenina and Graham Greene's character Querry [from Greene's 1961 novel A Burnt-Out Case] as examples of characters with whom we feel solidarity; likewise Kierkegaard or Solzhenitsyn, who didn't offer solutions either, but because of their words others found "strength to pursue their own personal search." The author contrasts this with the modern solution-oriented society, which seems to "alleviate pain without sharing it."
Reaching Out to Our Fellow Human Beings
The Second Movement: From Hostility to Hospitality
Chapter 4: Creating Space for the Stranger
46ff On moving from hostility to hospitality: A discussion here of how we live in a world of strangers, but by the Christian concept of hospitality we can help people not be strangers; examples given here from both the New and Old T exampless: the Middle-Eastern obligation to welcome strangers into your home; the biblical/ancient idea that often strangers brought important gifts; the author cites Abraham's visitors who brought in news that Sarah would give birth; on the idea that we can think of hospitality in the literal sense of receiving a stranger into our house, but we can also see it more "as a fundamental attitude toward our fellow human being, which can be expressed in a great variety of ways."
48ff On our ambivalence towards strangers, despite the Christian requirement to reach out to them; comments on the overt fear and hostility which pervades society today; the author describes this in the literal sense of our fear of strangers for our physical safety, but also our fear and hostility in the form of threats to our "intellectual or professional safety" from classmates or colleagues at work. The author describes an example here of backstage hostility between actors who rehearse and perform scenes of love and tenderness on stage; in reality the actors were jealous of each other and worked in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion. The author extends the metaphor to other professional examples: ministers who don't have peace and love at their own home but yet speak of it from the pulpit, other examples like doctors who ostensibly work to heal the sick but are involved in intense rivalries, etc.
51ff On offering hospitality without expecting your guests to adopt your mode of living: in other words creating a "free space" for the other person; also a "free space" in the sense of not filling up all the time with activities, entertainment, things to do.
52ff Discussion here of the concept of preoccupation: where we're afraid of emptiness or silent solitude and thus keep ourselves busy. The author quotes Carlos Castaneda quoting Don Juan: "You think and talk too much, you must stop talking to yourself." Also the author cites Jesus Christ's comment that our worries prevent the arrival of the New Kingdom; "Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will take care of itself."
54 The author writes: We cannot change the world... We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stores, advice and proposals [Harry Brown would be very proud to read this!] but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, to lay aside their occupations and preoccupations..." Finally the chapter ends with a Zen story about a master inviting a university professor in his home to inquire about Zen. The Zen master pours tea and fills the visitor's cup, but then keeps pouring. The professor says, "It is overfull. No more will go in!" And the master responds, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?" The author says you can't force someone to change or force a plan to grow but you can create space for a person to grow.
Chapter 5: Forms of Hospitality
55 "We probably will never be free from all our hostilities, and there even may be days and weeks in which our hostile feelings dominate our emotional life to such a degree that the best thing we can do is keep distance, speak little to others and not write letters, except to ourselves." [I give this author a lot of credit for essentially admitting to his own occasional "hostilities" even though he's a man of the cloth]
55ff Comments here about different levels of "strangeness" [in the sense of "being a stranger"] or different levels of relationships and how we can invite people into our lives at many different levels; also the idea of a "stranger" who can be someone in our own familiar circle, see for example the [familiar but in some ways stranger-like] relationship between parents and their children, teachers and their students, professionals and their patients/clients, etc.
56ff Comments on parents having a hospitable environment for their children: an interesting metaphor here that children enter their home as a "stranger" on some level, and the parents need to get to know them, and then can help them become who they are, and then as the children reach maturity the parents help see them off to live their lives. Likewise parents can introduce their children to the "larger family" in the form of a church or the community. [This is an interesting metaphor here.]
58ff On teachers and students: a similar metaphor of creating a hospitable environment: thoughts here on our modern technocratic society where students are burdened with obligations, things are required, they "owe" a paper of 20 pages' length, they have to "earn" credits; "If there was any culture that has succeeded in killing the natural spontaneous curiosity of people and knowing the human desire to know, it is our technocratic society."
60 [Note this quote here]: "Just as words can become obstacles for communication, books can prevent self-knowledge." [The context here is a young student reading a book on Zen meditation but perhaps lacking the maturity or the life experience to really apply it. But this is one of many issues that can fool us into thinking book learning is more than it is: we can "hide" in books, we confuse reading a book with navigating reality, or confuse ludic book knowledge with practical, pragmatic real-world knowledge.]
64ff On healers and their patients: here the author is talking about various helping professions, ranging from social workers to ministers to doctors. He's speaking here on the danger of the "increasing professionalization" of these fields, that "they become ways of exercising power instead of offering service."
65 "In our society technocratic streamlining has depersonalized the interpersonal aspects of the healing professions to a high degree, and increasing demands often force the healer to keep some emotional distance to prevent overinvolvement with his patients." [Holy crap, I wonder what this author would make of today's three-minute office visit, where a GP types into his EMR system while avoiding eye contact. Talk about depersonalization!]
66 Interesting comment here about Dr. Karl Menninger, who asked his psychiatric residents "What is the most important part of the treatment process of a mental patient?" His answer was "the diagnosis": without that, subsequent treatment has little effect and diagnosis is the beginning of treatment. [Interesting, it might be worth looking up some of Menninger's works.]
67 Further comments here on how all of us can be healers on some level, by offering to listen, by reaching out to others, by letting others tell their stories and giving them safe boundaries to do so.
68ff Finally comments here on the idea of receptivity: "receiving" a stranger in our world on his or her terms, not on ours. But then on the other hand, paradoxically, the author says we have a right to set clear boundaries for our own way we live and think. "We are not hospitable when we leave our house to strangers and let them use it any way they want. An empty house is not a hospitable house. In fact, it quickly becomes a ghost house, making the stranger feel uncomfortable." The author's point here, I think, is we can receive strangers but we should also "show ourselves" and our opinions and lifestyle clearly and directly, not in order to persuade them to our way of life, but just to reveal ourselves. "Receptivity without confrontation leads to a planned neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody." [I'm not sure "confrontation" is the right word to use here but I see what he's getting at.]
Chapter 6: Hospitality and the Host
72ff On the idea that you cannot be hospitable when you are lonely: an example here of a student who felt unfree while staying with a family, because he was being used by the husband and wife for a form of social contact and affection that they had lost for each other.
73 On the interesting paradox that "poverty makes a good host": we have nothing to lose, nothing to defend, this is a turn the other cheek metaphor. "Who wants to sneak into her back door, when our front door is wide open?" Also the author talks about the metaphor of "poverty of mind"--again not the best choice of phrase since it is idiomatic in English and means lack of curiosity--but what he means here is a mind that isn't already full of ideas, a person who doesn't already have all the answers to everything and thinks he knows it all. [See the Zen story of the Master overpouring the teacup from p54 above.] meaning is not filled already with ideas and doesn't know it all; and then finally the idea of "poverty of heart," which to the author means someone who is not filled with jealousies, worries or prejudices, where the heart is open to a stranger.
74 Intriguing anecdote here about a young minister who had all kinds of fervor and confidence in what he knew... until he started a genuine theological education. Quickly he became much less certain about everything.
75 [Again the use of the phrase "poverty of mind" here isn't quite the right word but he means genuine openness, genuine open-mindedness]: "A voluntary poverty of mind makes professionals open to receive constantly new knowledge and insight from those who ask their help."
75ff On poverty of heart [again not quite the right phrase!]: on having room in your heart, not being filled with prejudices, worries, jealousy, etc.; the author later describes this as having an "inflated heart."
77 Very interesting passage here about "boasting of our weakness": a sort of spiritual or social version of "lying down" and an implicit rejection of modernity's adulation of power and influence.
78 And then a transition/foreshadowing of the next chapter, on moving from illusion to prayer, "the most crucial movement of the spiritual life undergirding all that has been said thus far."
Reaching Out to God
The Third Movement: From Illusion to Prayer
Chapter 7: Prayer and Mortality
80ff The author describes this as the "first and final" movement; it needs to be in place first, it makes possible the movements from loneliness to solitude and from hostility to hospitality. Discussion of prayer and how it's both easy and difficult to do, also how it is mocked and perceived as superstitious.
82 The author talks here about the "illusion of immortality": we are delusional about our mortality, we act like it isn't really the reality that it actually is. The author describes how we have the illusion of control: we can be very quickly made sad by just a hostile word, we collect "successes" across our lives, each of these are examples of behaviors that are implicitly oblivious of our mortality.
83ff Discussion here of sentimentality and violence, these also are behaviors "anchored in the human illusion of immortality." The author says sentimentality can come from false expectations about intimate relationships: this leads to depression and despair when we lose perspective. Likewise on violence: the author tells a story of a Lutheran bishop who was being tortured by an SS officer, who tells him "I have already died." This takes away the SS officer's power over his victim. "It is indeed not so strange that sentimentality and cruelty are often found in the same people." "...violence is a symptom of the illusion that our lives belong to us."
85ff Interesting comments here on dreams (I think here the author means both sleeping dreams but also daydreams for our lives). He considers them as a form of idolatry.
87ff On the various paradoxes of prayer: that it indicates powerlessness; that we receive it as a gift; that we also have to learn how to do it; that there are so many contrasting statements about prayer, etc. Comments from Theophan the Recluse from the tradition of Hesychasm (from the Greek word for repose) saying to always keep your thoughts with God and do not let them wander; on the impression you can get from Christian writers that prayer is hard work, but through that hard work you can reach any level of prayer, but yet another paradox emerges here that even this isn't exactly true, since prayer is a gift from God. "God comes to us on his own initiative, and no discipline, effort, or aesthetic practice can make him come."
89 "So, the paradox of prayer is that it asks for a serious effort while it can only be received as a gift."
91 Quote here from Simone Weil: "Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life."
92 "In our impatient culture, it has indeed become extremely difficult to see much salvation in waiting."
93-4 Finally a discussion here on protesting against reality: an example of a young theological student who died in a bike accident just after finishing his studies, how it was such an unexpected, horrible thing; how we protest against such aspects of reality. "Often our first and most visible response is a protest bursting forth from our bewilderment." "But such a protest is the continuation of our illusion that we know what life is all about, that we rule it and determine its values as well as its goals. We do not..."
Chapter 8: The Prayer of the Heart
95ff On having a concrete structure for prayer: examples here of the Trappist monks that have a very rigorous and rigid structure in their daily lives. Also on three rules or components that are guidelines to prayer: 1) a contemplative reading of the word of god, 2) silent listening to the voice of god, and 3) a trusting obedience to a spiritual guide. Comments also on reading scripture but not subjecting them to analysis and discussion and "taking the words apart," but rather letting the scripture lead you to contemplation and meditation.
98 Comments here on finding a spiritual guide, but first appealing to our fellows to invite them to become our spiritual leaders. "If there were no students constantly asking for good teachers, there would be no good teachers."
98-9 "Thus, the Bible, silence and a spiritual director are the three important guides in our search for the most personal way to enter into an intimate relationship with God."
99 The author gives a list of influential historical figures that we can use as guides: Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Jacob Boehme, Francis de Sales, George Fox, John Wesley, Henry Martyn, John Henry Newman, Soren Kierkegaard, Charles de Foucauld, Thomas Merton.
100 Also another rabbit hole here as the author mentions Therese of Lisieux [whose autobiography Story of a Soul is in the public domain, see the "To Read" section below] in a discussion of the search for spiritual guides. "The really great saints of history don't ask for imitation." Also mention here of Anthony of the Desert and Bernard of Clairvaux; also a funny quote here where the author says some of these saints turn us off and make us feel uneasy; others even irritate us." [I hear it! I recall being both turned off and irritated by reading The Little Flowers of Saint Francis (a collection of various stories about St. Francis) many years ago for example. It was beyond my comprehension.]
100ff mention of the Hesychasts of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the anonymous work The Way of a Pilgrim [which is also in the public domain, again, see below]; on Hesychasm, which the author says "has a remarkably modern ring to it." A quick history of it given here: a spiritual tradition that began in the 5th century, and renewed in 19th century Russia, which is now being discovered by the West as a valuable school of prayer, using the very simple "Jesus prayer": "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me." Note that Elder Porphyrios' work Wounded By Love focuses on this prayer extensively. More on the book The Way of the Pilgrim which is about a Russian peasant who goes from town to town and church to church to find out "how to pray without ceasing"; finally he finds a holy monk who teaches him the Jesus prayer.
102ff The peasant begins to do so ceaselessly and then finds "if I happened to meet anyone, all men without exception were as dear to me as if they had been my nearest relations." [In other words it provides him the gift of hospitality, it makes him open.] He journeys all over Russia reciting this prayer constantly: "At times I do as much as forty-three or -four miles a day, and do not feel that I am walking at all. I am aware only of the fact that I am saying my prayer." On his travels he finds all sorts of people who respond deeply to him. [In a way this peasant is an embodiment of the central ideas of this book.]
104 Now this reader is thrown for a loop here a bit as the author makes a strange transition from the Russian peasant in The Way of a Pilgrim to the J.D. Salinger novel Franny and Zooey [?] What he is suggesting here is that if you fail to look beyond the 19th century romanticism of the Russian peasant's story, you'll be led to the same mental confusion that Salinger's characters arrived at; the author is trying to say that this is just part of the deep mystical foundation of Russian Hesychasm; that this domain is a very deep one, as he points to the book The Art of Prayer, an anthology 19th century Russian spiritual writing including works from Bishop Theophan the Recluse. The author cites this book as one of Thomas Merton's favorite books.
104ff Now returning to the simple Jesus prayer, which the author calls "a powerful summary of all prayer." On how it empties our minds and makes God our only thought.
Chapter 9: Community and Prayer
107ff Interesting quote here of John 21:18 ("...when you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands, and somebody else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go.") The author considers it a sign of spiritual maturity when we "give up our illusory self-control and stretch out our hands to God." Also comments here on Jesus praying at Mount Tabor and at Gethsemane, where the disciples saw him shining like the sun at Mount Tabor but then saw him in anguish at Gethsemane; then a discussion of how the Hesychasts talk about various paradoxes in prayer: for example the importance of non-attachment to the results of prayer, but also on the sort of great heights of prayer, like the illumination of Moses on Mount Sinai or the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor.
108ff The author tells the reader here that much of what's been said so far about prayer gives the false impression that it's a private, individual action, and that it perhaps can't be talked about or even shared, but he argues the opposite is true: that it needs a community "to grow and flower"; that we're not waiting alone; musings here on community and what that means; comments here on despite that fact that we live in anonymous cities and in the alienation of modernity, we can still form small communities like prayer groups or bible study clubs or home churches to form our own communities.
114 The chapter closes with musings on the Last Day: quoting St. Paul about staying "wide awake and sober," and being ready (1 Thessalonians 5:2-11). The author frames this as a form of waiting. And then the chapter closes with Psalm 121, about how "The guardian of Israel does not doze or sleep."
Conclusion
116-7 "We are living in this short time, a time, indeed, full of sadness and sorrow. To live this short time in a spirit of Jesus Christ, means to reach out from the midst of our pains and to let them be turned into joy by the love of him who came within our reach. We do not have to deny or avoid our loneliness, our hostilities and illusions. To the contrary: when we have the courage to let these realities come to our full attention, understand them and confess them, then they can slowly be converted into solitude, hospitality and prayer."
To Read:
Henri J.M. Nouwen: Aging
Henri J.M. Nouwen: Creative Ministry
John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent (trans. Lazarus Moore)
Paul Reps, ed.: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet
Thomas Merton: The Sign of Jonas
***Thomas Merton: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Graham Greene: A Burnt-Out Case
Karl Menninger: Man Against Himself
Johann Baptist Metz: Poverty of Spirit
Simone Weil: First and Last Notebooks
St. Thérèse of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul (trans. Thomas N. Taylor) [Public domain copy here]
Anonymous: The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way (trans. R.M. French) [Borrowable public domain copy here]
Igumen Chariton, ed.: The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology