Living as the Beloved

Here is food for thought from Henry Nouwen's book, The Life of the Beloved. This quote is taken from the Chapter, "Living as the Beloved".

Think of yourself as having been sent into the world...a way of seeing yourself that is possible if you truly believe that you were loved before the world began...a perception of yourself that calls for a true leap of faith! As long as you live in the world, yielding to its enormous pressures to prove to yourself and to others that you are somebody...your life can be scarcely more than a long struggle for survival. If, however, you really want to live in the world, you cannot look to the world itself as the source of that life...because the world is not the source even of its own life, let alone yours.

Everything changes radically from the moment you know yourself as being sent into this world. Times and spaces, people and events, art and literature, history and science, they all cease to be opaque and become transparent, pointing far beyond themselves to the place from where you come and to where you will return. It is very hard for me to explain to you this radical change...from living life as a painful test to prove that you deserve to be loved, to living it as an unceasing "Yes" to the truth of that Belovedness.

The unfathomable mystery of God is that God is a Lover who wants to be loved. The one who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us our being. God not only says: "You are my beloved." God also asks: "Do you love me?" and offers us countless chances to say "Yes". That is the spiritual life: the chance to say "Yes" to our inner truth. The spiritual life, thus understood, radically changes everything.

Once you are able to catch a glimpse of this spiritual vision, you can see how the many distinctions that are so central in our daily living lose their meaning. When joy and pain are both opportunities to say "Yes" to our divine childhood, then they are more alike than they are different. When the experience of being awarded a prize and the experience of being found lacking in excellence both offer us a chance to claim our true identity as the "Beloved" of God, these experiences are more similar than they are different. When feeling lonely and feeling at home both hold a call to discover more fully who the God is whose children we are, these feelings are more united than they are distinct. When, finally, both living and dying bring us closer to the full realization of our spiritual selfhood, they are not the great opposites the world would have us believe; they are, instead, two sides of the same mystery of God's love. Living the spiritual life means living life as one unified reality. The forces of darkness are the forces that split, divide and set in opposition. The forces of light unite. Literally, the word "diabolic" means dividing. The demon divides; the Spirit unites.

Copyright 1992 by Henri J.M. Nouwen