On Loneliness and Hospitality, from Henri Nouwen

“It is important to stress that every human being is called upon to be a healer… We are all healers who can reach out to offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out (1975). p. 93.

Nouwen passed away a few years ago. He was a Catholic priest and teacher and the author of many books about the spiritual life. I picked up this one as much because it happened to be on the shelf at my local library as any other reason. But have found it quite helpful.

An underlying theme in Nouwen’s book is that the more we understand (and not simply deny) our inner struggles, the more fully we will be able to embrace a prayerful and genuine life that is also open to others’ needs.

We all have so much in common, don’t we? But a lot of that common ground is territory we would prefer to deny or run away from – things like pain, and fear, and failure. It reminds me of some lines from a Madeleine L’Engle poem:

Because you’re not who I would have you be / I blind myself who in truth you are / seeking mirage, where desert blooms. / Because I’m not who I would have me be, I idolize two ones who never touch. / Reality would burn. I do not like it much.

In this book Nouwen explores what it means to grow from the state of a stifling loneliness into a content solitude, from a hostility toward others to a receptive hospitality for others, and from preferring a world of illusion to turning to God in honest prayer.

From Loneliness to Solitude

Nouwen writes about having to nearly tie himself to a chair to face a blank sheet of paper, longing for any distraction which would keep him from having to face his own loneliness or explore his own thoughts.

He describes riding in the subway, where nobody speaks to one another or feels quite safe, but sits staring at the subway ads that feature happy people enjoying and encouraging one another – what a contrast.

He talks about going to parties where everyone is friendly but nobody is real, where everyone is welcome but nobody is missed if they do not come.

All are symptoms of the clash between our longings and our fears, a “society growingly populated with lonely people desperately trying to love each other without succeeding” (p. 28), the loneliness of “a world in which a competitive individualism tries to reconcile itself with a culture that speaks about togetherness, unity, and community as the ideals to strive for.” (p. 25)

It’s not surprising then that we try to use other people to fill our loneliness or cover it up, so reluctant are we to be alone with ourselves. He quotes Thoreau, who says (in terms easily translatable to the technologies of our own time):

“In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters proud of his extensive correspondence has not heard from himself this long while.” (p. 29)

From Hostility to Hospitality

Maybe it is ironic that when most suffocated by loneliness, we can respond to each other with greater hostility than hospitality. Nouwen suggests that it’s because at its root, what true hospitality is about is accepting and even developing our own sense of poverty, putting aside our needs and agendas and desire to speak, or give, or control, or do something. The teacher, the host, the minister should be willing not to “lead,” to speak, to control, or to offer a solution, but to humble themselves to create a friendly space for the other person.

Hospitality at its most effective is not about sharing your abundance with others. It's about welcome, about receptivity. We who long for someone to talk to, someone who will understand, find that the greatest gift we can give to another person is to really listen.

I think all that might be easier if we could be given some kind of promise that we were going to be treated with hospitality by others – that we were going to be welcomed and received and heard and understood, not just the one who gives those things to others.

Perhaps that’s why this section is sandwiched between the one about finding peace in one’s inner self and one on connecting authentically with God. Because with human relationships, there are lots of happy surprises, but no promises.

Serving One Another

If we really saw our service to one another in terms of hospitality, the way Nouwen defines it, we would prepare people for ministry differently. We would be less concerned about growing in experience and competence, in picking up the tools, techniques, and skills that make us “rich” and able to give out of that abundance.

“Real training for service asks for a hard and often painful process of self-emptying. … Training for service is not a training to become rich but to become voluntarily poor; not to fulfill ourselves but to empty ourselves, not to conquer God but to surrender to his saving power. All this is very hard to accept in our contemporary world… but it is important that in this world there remain a few voices crying out that if there is anything to boast of, we should boast of our weakness.” (p. 108)