At Home In Your Own House

Most Christian Leaders are used to thinking in terms of large-scale organization: getting people together in congregations, schools, and hospitals and running the show as a circus director.  They have become unfamiliar with, and even somewhat afraid of, the deep and significant movements of the Spirit within.  I am afraid that in a few decades the Church will be accused of having failed at its most basic task: to offer people creative ways to communicate with the divine source of human life.  

But how can we avoid this danger?  I think by no other way than to enter the heart, the center of our existence, and become familiar with the complexities of our inner lives.  As soon as we feel at home in our own house--discover the dark corners as well as the light spots, the closed doors as well as the drafty rooms--our confusion will evaporate, our anxiety will diminish, and we will become capable of creative work and a spiritually informed life.

The key work here is articulation.  People who can articulate the movements of their inner lives, who can give names to their varied experiences, need no longer be victims of themselves but are able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the Spirit from entering.  They can create space for the One whose heart is greater than theirs, whose eyes see more than theirs, and whose hands can heal and form more than theirs.

- Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit

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I am not at home in my own house.  I haven't been for a while now.  I do not like seeing the cobwebs and spending time dwelling in memories lingering in the drafty rooms.  But by the end of reading this book, I will.