seed of immortality

Henri Nouwen faced a dilemma when he was talking about resurrection. On one hand, our bodies return to dust. On the other hand, Nowen believed that "nothing we have lived in the body will go to waste." How can these two awarenesses be reconciled?

His answer came from the teaching of St. Paul where the body that returns to dust is compared to a seed. Seeds are virtually indistinguishable from dust. And yet seeds hold the promise of life. The seed carries both sides, the return to dust and the transformed life.

Nowen said that this teaching really woke him up, and made spiritual sense. "Our life is a seed that must die to be dressed in immortality."

That message mirrored my own experience. The moment of lying flat on my back breath and intensely aware of my mortality was a seed moment. I could not see it then, but afterward it was clear that I to be led through the seed moment of death against my will before my life could be clothed in a heavenly body.

It is my spirit now, not some angel living in me. and yet on the other hand, I am no longer the center. I am a witness. I need to practice receptivity.

Nouwen was interested in embodiment. "There is no divine life outside the body." He was not neo-platonist. The body is where it is at. But it is not the same body. It is an end-time body. For those with eyes to see, the second coming is here now. It is here and now in the spiritual realm, it is hidden in the lives we live. The spiritual body is hidden in the physical body. That is why the trapeze artist is like an angel. The trapeze artist gives a spiritual message with their bodies. The fly and they catch.

That night I received in my body the flier, and I was witness in my body to the power of the catcher. It was the most amazing flight show I have ever witnessed. It was the apocalyptic trapeze.

But it is not enough to see the end of time. What is needed is a path to move us into the end. Not just for people with special mystical gifts, but for everyone. That path in short is prayer, study of the life of Jesus, ministry of reconciliation across social divisions, and intimacy between lovers. It is the path of present moment prayer, it is the path of receiving the death of loved ones as a gift -- the greatest gift. It is receiving Nouwen's death as his greatest gift.

To understand how is mortal death is a gift, we must realize that he died many times before. He died daily. And in dying he sent out his spirit on the wings of love to all his Angels.

an angel has come

An Angel of Jesus Christ has come to open a doorway for the transformation of our life in the body, for our mortal bodies to be clothed in immortality, for our parishable clothed in imperishablity, our visible weakness, to be clothed in hidden poser: bodies of flesh and blood clothed in the stuff of stars.

Childlessness

Like Henri, Nathaniel had no biological children. Childlessness is part of what brought them together. If Nathaniel had been blessed with biological children, he guesses he would not have taken Nouwen's journey of angels.

nathan read

    When Adam Ardnett died Henri Nouwen rushed to be near his body, and said this prayer:  "May all the angels guide Adam now into paradise..."  There it is, thought Nathaniel: "a journey of angels, by Henri Nouwen" Adam's journey invoked by Henri.  But Henri was doing more than speak of Adam as some distant other.  Henri saw Adam as a companion to his soul, and when he spoke of Adam's journey at death, he was looking toward his own death as an angelic journey into paradise.

"You will see angels descending and ascending"

I dreamed that a journal writer, oh so beautiful, visited my wife Cindy's garden in the night. I was in the garden too, bent over on hands and knees, gazing at a place on the tilled soil where, oddly it seems to me now, although it did not strike me as odd then, a few orange cut and peeled carrots, the mass produced kind, were resting fresh and luminous in the soil, as if recently dropped there. And as I gazed at the carrots, I sensed the presence of someone and looked up. The journal writer seated before me wore a dark robe, her hair was shiny black like wet ink, and her exposed forearms and lower legs was flawlessly paper white. What made her so beautiful was the long slender quality of her bone structure, the solemn, mournful dignity conveyed in her posture, and her intense focus on writing. I could not see her face, but I could see a page in her journal. She was writing on the left hand side, apparently unaware of me, as I strained to see, and the right hand page said, in typed script, centered like this text here, but alone on the page:

Journey of Angels
(forthcoming)
by Henri Nouwen

I was puzzled. Was she writing the words that would appear in a forthcoming book authored by Henri Nouwen? I had seen Nouwen, and she did not look like Nouwen. I think of her now as my image of Nouwen's inner beauty or an aspect of Nouwen's angel.

I was marvelously confused, when something happened that really fits the the notion of a "journey of angles," the descending and ascending kind of journey. First came the descent. A voice from the sky spoke and with each word seemed to come closer to earth. It was a resonate voice and it made me want to know and welcome the speaker. I looked to see who it was, and above the orange red ribbon of sunlight on the horizon, all I saw was dark night sky. The voice began in a tone of disorientation, slowly asking,

"Why am I in this place a this time?"

Then the tone shifted to hopeful discovery, declaring,

Unless...

There was a pause that seemed literally to make my heart muscle gulp and stand still. And then came the self-relinquishing announcement:

I'm one of them.

With the word "them" my mind did an instantaneous scan of possible meanings. Was the voice saying, I'm one of them: the angels on a journey? Or saying, I'm one of them: the orange carrots fallen to the ground? Or was the voice speaking of my kind of creature -- I'm one of them: the mortals? The words touched my whole body. In a flash, saw myself from above down there in the garden on my knees looking up, my frame pale, and skinny and, except for my usual bed clothes, a pair of white cotton briefs, I was naked. Back in my body, I was being tossed head over heals by an invisible force, a power. And as I was about to land on my back, suddenly I awoke, breathless.

The dream was over. The thought that flashed in my mind was, "I'm cursed." A horrible new interpretation of what it means to be "one of them." I never felt so abandoned, so vulnerable to my mortal condition, so aware of the inevitability of death. A moment earlier, I had felt blessed to identify with the heavenly voice, but upon awakening I felt the complete opposite. I rebelled against the feeling, and told myself that it was only an emotional remnant of a dream. I tried to take a deep breath to restore my sense of normalcy. But I was unable to breathe. I was wide awake mentally, fully aware that I was lying flat on my back in bed with my wife, but my body remained in the paralysis of dream sleep, and so, my body was completely unresponsive to my wishes.

When I was at my lowest point, then came the upward journey....