sabbatical journey

I started reading this book - Sabbatical Journey by Henri Nouwen this week. I've only read about 20 pages so far, but it's really incredible. I have read a few other Nouwen books, but it's been a while. This is one my mom got for my dad after the sabbatical they took a while back. It got passed on to me and I brought it with me to Korea. It's his journal of his year of sabbatical, which turned out to be the last year of his life.

One of the first entries he makes is about prayer. He admits that he's in a season of his life where he doesn't like to pray. What, Nouwen doesn't like to pray? I can't believe it. He says that at 63 years old, he feels like his prayer is dead as a rock. He remembers fondly his teenage years when he couldn't get enough of it, but says that his prayers now are not anything special. They are dark and dry. Yet, he still says this:

Prayer is the bridge between my unconscious and conscious life. Prayer connects my mind with my heart, my will with my passions, my brain with my belly. Prayer is the way to let the life-giving Spirit of God penetrate all the corners of my being. Prayer is the divine instrument of my wholeness, unity, and inner peace.

He examines his darkness and dryness as a way that God is speaking to him: "Are the darkness and dryness of my prayer signs of God's absence, or are they signs of a presence deeper and wider than my senses can contain? Is the death of my prayer the end of my intimacy with God or the beginning of a new communion, beyond words, emotions, and bodily sensations?"

Wow. It's amazing to see him obviously so close to God that he knows how important and life giving prayer is, even though he's not experiencing the joy of it at the time of his writing. I love having the ability to peek into someone else's mind in this very raw way - through a journal that he may have known someone else would read someday, but that he wrote for himself, as an outlet of what was on the front burners of his mind.