The Itchy Scabs of an Eternal Wound

I am still finding it hard to get into the Nouwen book. It was written by and for someone in a different place than I am. Of course, as is the case with suffering, there are parts of each person's experience that are common to all, but instead of being enriched, as I am sure the author intended, I find myself mostly analyzing his perspective.

The first theme I noticed is the prominence of love which, I must admit, did not initial stand out to me. My tradition defines God's love in terms of demonstrable acts, the saving of the ark, the parting of the Red (Reed) Sea, the crucifixion of Christ. There are even examples of it in the present, the granting of higher salaries to hardworking individuals and spaces in crowded mall parking lots for busy shoppers. Nouwen, by contrast, seems to see God's love as an end in itself, akin to Lewis God-shaped void, effectual by its very existence. Thus, God's love need only to be given to us in the cosmo-eternal sense (both timeless and boundless) without any expectation of all the trappings of earthly love the intensity and authenticity of which is usually judged by acts of affection and submission.

Nouwen's almost obsessive reliance on God's love caused me to wonder about my own needs and desires. For him, loneliness is a real and pressing problem like hungry, the embodiment of the human condition and he expresses it so convincingly, but he is even more convinced that God's love is its only remedy. I admire Nouwen because he is able to walk the fine line between a gospel that preaches temporal comfort and one that focuses only on eternal security. For him, love is our most enduring need and following from his description, God's love is both a salve for our earthly wounds, which are simply the itchy scabs of an eternal wound, and a promised cure for that condition.

As for me, I long, as everyone else does, for affection and affirmation, but as I found, my need of something does not justify or cause its existence. At this point in my life, God is a mystery to be solved not a balm to be applied. My pain, if I could call it that, is cerebral not necessarily emotional and as much as I would like to uncover other festering wounds hidden beneath the distractions, for now, I will continue to focus on my intellectual curiosity.