October 20-26: “Let Jesus Transform You”
This week we will be covering the chapters from “Seek a New Spirituality” to “Stay With Your Pain”. The two chapters for our discussion will be “Befriend Your Emotions” (page 42) and “Let Jesus Transform You” (page 40). Please share your thoughts and comments. And if you have a chapter in this section that you want to comment on, please e-mail me (jackgiven@comcast.net) your comment and I will include it as we go through this thought provoking, challenging and life-enriching way of exploring The Inner Voice of Love.
Let Jesus Transform You
“Jesus became flesh so that you could encounter him in the flesh and receive his love in the flesh.” What does Henri mean by this statement? Why is it important?
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October 25th, 2008 @ 11:38 am
Recently, a friend told me that he was like a fogged mirror and that Jesus came to clean his mirror, and that image underneath the fog reflects his soul that God created so perfectly. When I bog myself down with too much of a schedule, or apprehend things for my fleshy needs, is usually when I so easily find myself away from the “transformation” process. There isn’t anyone to blame as far as being knocked off center, because I make my own schedule, and generally I get over the lonely feeling of being inadequate when it comes to others gifts or blessings.
The scriptures that helped me with this question this week were the beatitudes and also in Matthew, chapter 11:28-30, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Jesus is so brilliant in his way of calling me to surrender!
“Blessed are the poor in Spirit”
October 23rd, 2008 @ 10:02 pm
I am thinking along the same lines as Sharon. I am struck by Henri’s recognition of the “body” blocking the spiritual path, the way home. Locked away in his (my) body are the guilt’s, inadequacies, the rejections – by those who he (I) trusted in a place of power. Yet these people never had the ability to bring freedom – only Jesus can do this.
I trust that Jesus became flesh so that I can encounter Him in the flesh – my body united with Jesus’ body – that Jesus and I may be one. When we are “home” this is obvious, trying to get home I am knocked off the path by those whom I give too much power, by my emotions – that have control over me before I know it.
I have to befriend all these things that knock me around – I have to realize they are there and take away their power. Always I must return to Jesus the true transformational being, within me, always present, fully ready to change me. It is true I cannot change myself. I need true love for this.
Peace
October 22nd, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
Henri gives several reasons why we don’t meet Jesus in the flesh & receive his love there: shame, guilt, fear (especially of authority figures), doubt, and not really being at home in our bodies. These are prison bars that keep me huddled in a corner unable to reach out to Jesus. But it is the very love of Jesus that breaks the bars, that frees me to meet with him in joy. It is this love that transforms me into who he created me to be. Jesus reaches out to me enfleshed in those around me, in his Word, in the Holy Supper, in the creation he crafted, in my own soul. My “task” is to bask, to be me in the life giving warmth of his love and presence.
October 22nd, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
As I read through this, I thought of the quote that is attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. When asked how she could do what she did everyday, her response was that she saw the face of Jesus in all to whom she ministered. I remember thinking……How could she do this?
In AA, CoDa, AlAnon, etc., they speak of a spiritual awakening. So often, we think we are responsible for that. But, Henri nails it…………especially in the last paragraph:”Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being.”
October 22nd, 2008 @ 10:25 am
Find the Source of Your Loneliness.
I was moved by Henri’s 3rd way - do not run from your loneliness, nor dwell in it, but discover the source of it as a free and beloved child of God.
This is so true for not only our pain (i.e. loneliness) but also our temptations and sin.
Henri is wrestling with the “narrow gate” of our walk with Jesus. As we grow in holiness, the path seems more and more narrow. The good news is that the path is my path, the path God has called me to walk. The narrower it becomes, the more aligned “I” am with God’s will for me. Holiness is the ultimate form of self differentiation.
October 22nd, 2008 @ 8:43 am
Perhaps downward mobility is an inner transformation or realization that everyone, including oneself is vulnerable, is nothing- suffering one sort of poverty or another- and yet that epiphany brings us to the one who fills us with Christ and permits us to see Christ in all around us through His eyes. Henri was quite human, quite vulnerable despite his status, sucesses and worldly recogition. His willingnesss to share his struggle to reach the inner voice of love makes him most compelling, holy. He is listening to God. He took the emptyness within and filled it with Christ.
October 21st, 2008 @ 7:24 am
Thanks, Steve, for your post and observation. As I was reading your post I thought about the scripture “inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40).
I think that Jesus does come to us in the flesh in the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the children because they are unable to “pay us back”, give us the power, position or respect that the world says important to be “somebody”. Loving them is what Nouwen terms an act of “downward mobility”. The way Nouwen lived his life.
I’m appreciating Steve’s focus on the presence of Jesus in the flesh today in the faces of children. While I spend my days planning to build bigger barns(Luke 12:18), Jesus asks I spend my days loving Him in the flesh by loving and caring for those who will never help me build bigger barns.
October 21st, 2008 @ 7:14 am
Top of page 41, “Jesus came among us as an equal, a brother. He broke down the pyramidal structures of relationship between God and people as well as those among people and offered a new model, the circle….” page 40 “But something remains in you that prevents this meeting. There is still a lot of shame and guilt stuck away in your body, blocking the presence of Jesus. You do not fully feel at home in your body….” Nouwen’s language here is something I think I believe to have a sliver of understanding of. Even monks in their monasteries out in the dessert go through this journey–I think it might be the journey of sanctification, of being made holy. The most unlikely people enter into one’s life and one has a “bodily” connection. Defenses are ripped down, feelings of “union” arise, the struggle ensues to “live holy” and–when a person turns to God in helplessness, the circle is made, that which seemed degradation makes equals, Jesus among us as an equal, a brother. It’s hard to understand and a person can’t control this happening, it seems to be God’s Work. I think it helps the community, even the one out in the dessert needs this Work of God but perhaps I only understand a sliver of this developmental task of feeling at home in one’s body. My faith is that body and Spirit are joined and necessarily so, for the good of everyone at all times.
October 21st, 2008 @ 6:49 am
Jesus becoming flesh, a person, lets me know God in the limitations of my humanity, rather than an abstraction, an invisible presence above or around me. He is real,his earthly life was and continue to be an inexhaustible fount of love, compassion and truth, as He told us. A recent discussion made me think that wherever we are in our journey, Jesus is with us and if we will it, walks with us farther along the path to His father and to ourselves. Steve says that in his reflection,as does Henri who writes that Jesus offered a new model; the circle where people live with God and with each other as beloved. Perhaps that is partly the “Way” of Christ- to see ouselves and all those around us with his eyes. That is a transformation of grace.
October 20th, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
I SAW HIM for the first time….in the faces of the children in Afghanistan. I honestly had never seen Emmanuel in the flesh before. The sight is simply overwhelming. I apologize for not having read the chapters. I accidentally sent the book home ahead of time for my redeployment. But I do now know this…HE IS. He is alive and walking among us with an intensity and subtleness that is tangible and spiritually real. It is impossible for me to comprehend the more I sit with the fact.
October 17th, 2008 @ 10:32 am
What Adam did in the flesh, Jesus came to undo. Adam walked with God, rebelled and then tried to hide among the vegetation of the garden and camouflage himself with fig leaves. Jesus comes in the flesh to show us that we can actually know and walk with God while we are in the flesh, here on earth. The epiphany of the body is the realization that we are created in the image of God. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. We have breath and life by the grace of God. Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life and that more abundantly.” Emmanuel, God with us, is Jesus. Our bodies are our vehicle of carrying our spirit, our intellect, our emotions while here on earth, in the flesh. That flesh is only redeemed by Jesus. If it was important to God to communicate His Love for man through the incarnation, it must be important for man, as flesh to receive God’s gift in the flesh in the flesh.