Heuresis

Henri Nouwen on why we hurt

When I listen to the sounds of greed, violence, rape, torture, murder, and indiscriminate destruction, I hear a long, sustained cry coming from all the corners of the world. It is the cry of a deeply wounded humanity that no longer knows a safe dwelling place but wanders around the planet in a desperate search for love and comfort.

Needs that are anchored in wounds cannot be explained simply… Our unquenchable need to be loved may be connected with an experience of rejection in our early months of life. Still, weren’t our parents subject to wounds and needs too, wounds and needs that go back to their paernts and grandparents and through them far into the most hidden recesses of the past? And we, in turn, may have a strong desire to be blameless in the eyes of our children and friends, to not hurt thme, and to keep the pain that we have suffered far from them. Yet we will come to the painful realization that they too will feel wounded and carry on in their lives a search for a love we could not provide, a search stretching out into the far reaches of the future. This is the pervasive tragedy of humanity, the tragedy of the experience of homelessness that winds through history and is passed by each generation to the next in a seemingly unending sequence of human conflicts with even more destructive tools of rage in our hands. The vicious repetition of wounds and needs creates the milieu of “those who hate peace.” It is the dwelling place of demons. And it is a place that lures us precisely because we are all wounded and needy.

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It is not hard to see that the house of those who are fighting is a house ruled by fear. One of the most impressive characteristics of Jesus’ description of the end-time is the paralyzing fear that will make people senseless, causing them to run in all directions, so disoriented that they are swallowed up by the chaos that surrounds them… (Luke 21:25-26). The advice that Jesus gives his followers for these times of turmoil is to remain quiet, confident, peaceful, and trusting in God. He tells them not to follow those who sow panic, nor to join those who claim to be saviors, nor to be frightened by rumors of wars and revolution, but “to stand erect and hold your heads high” (Luke 21:28).

Source: Henri Nouwen, Peacework: Prayer, Resistance, Community (Maryknoll [NY]: Orbis Books, 2005), pp. 28f., 34f. Quoted in in part in “Henri Nouwen on atrocity and violence,” “Just World News” with Helena Cobban (June 4, 2006).

Via azspot.