John Vissers | Encouragement & Guidance Through Struggles
Bruce’s guest today is Dr. John Vissers. John is a member of the Knox College Faculty (Knox is part of the University of Toronto). John is a former Principal of Knox, as well as a former Moderator of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. He also serves as a board member of the Henri Nouwen Society. John and HNS ED Bruce Adema discuss a letter Henri Nouwen wrote to a minister who is experiencing conflict from those she expected support and encouragement.
Links & References
Check Out the Knox College website: https://knox.utoronto.ca/
Calvin's Institutes https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.toc.html
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Books Discussed:
Love, Henri
https://amzn.to/3fpnolF (US)
https://amzn.to/2C2lqcD (Canada)
The Wounded Healer
https://amzn.to/3hdDkcr (Canada)
Reaching Out
https://amzn.to/2AxxCBJ (Canada)
Available On
Transcript
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Bruce Adema: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Love Henri podcast, produced by the Henri Nouwen Society. My name is Bruce Adema, and I'm the executive director of the Henri Nouwen Society, and part of a great team that encourages spiritual transformation through the writings and legacy of the spiritual guide Henri Nouwen. If you've appreciated Henri's wisdom for a long time, or if you've just been introduced to it, I encourage you to sign up for our daily meditations on our website, henrinouwen.org, and be reminded every day that you are a beloved child of God. Our guest today is Dr. John Vissers. John is a member of the faculty at Knox College, part of the University of Toronto, and he was the college's principal between June, 2017 and September, 2022. John is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, and in 2012, he served for a year as the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those things are all significant and wonderful, but I think even more wonderful is the fact that he is a board member of the Henri Nouwen Society. Welcome, John, and it's lovely to have you with us.
John Vissers: Thanks so much, Bruce. It's a privilege for me to be here, to be a part of this podcast and to just be part of this society that I appreciate so much as it advances Henri Nouwen’s spiritual theology.
Bruce Adema: I've introduced you in a very brief sort of way. Is there more you'd like to tell us all about yourself?
John Vissers: Sure. In true Henri Fashion, the first thing I guess I want to say is, Henri's taught me always to remind myself that I'm a beloved child of God. I'm a husband, a father, grandfather, have been a pastor and Theological Teacher, all of those things. But at the core is this sense of being loved by God, which I appreciate so much of Henri's writing, in terms of helping me understand that. I, in terms of my connection to Henri go back a long way. I was thinking about this in advance of the podcast. I first read Henri Nouwen's book, “The Wounded Healer” when I was in seminary, a long time ago, 1980, at the Toronto School of Theology. A Catholic theologian over at St. Mike's University introduced us to that book, and it had a profound impact on me.
John Vissers: Then subsequently, I read, I'd say five or six years later, Henri's book “Reaching Out,” which doesn't get as much play these days, but I think is one of his most profound books. You see the dynamics of Henri's spirituality there. And then in the late eighties, I was teaching at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto when Henri came to Daybreak, and that's when I met him for the first time. We had him speak to faculty and students. We had him into classes, and we had a great relationship with him and he with us, right through to the time of his death, in 1996. In those years, I read everything pretty much that Henri wrote, and spent a bit of time with him.
John Vissers: I was not close to him, but I met him personally. I remember one encounter on a faculty retreat. I was sitting next to him after he had spoken and invited us into a time of silent prayer and contemplation, and we all moved into that space. Henri sat beside me and fidgeted the whole time <laugh>, and couldn't find a sort of a settled space. So I asked him about that afterwards, and he said, well, you know, what you're seeing is part of my wrestling, my struggle to come to a sense of that peace and that sense of just quiet in the presence of God. I used his book “In the Name of Jesus” as a leadership training tool when I was a pastor with my staff and when I was a principal, with my faculty and staff.
John Vissers: Then, about 2015, I went through a kind of dark period myself. Henri's book, “The Inner Voice of Love,” was my daily companion. I'll be forever grateful for having Henri's voice with me as I struggled through a time of burnout after 35 years in ministry, and found my feet again. So, Henri's been a dear companion, whispering in my ear all these years, “You are a beloved child of God.” Don't let the monkeys distract you, the chattering monkeys, and keep moving forward.
Bruce Adema: Oh, thank you for sharing that with us, John. It makes me even more glad than I was before, that you're speaking with us on this podcast. Now, this podcast is called Love Henri, because we're drawing on the letters that he wrote during his life. He was a powerful letter writer. As he became well known because of the books that were published and retreats that he led, people would write to him and say, Henri, this is my struggle. This is my issue. And he responded to them. He had a lovely habit of keeping every letter that he received and of making a carbon copy of every letter that he sent. All of those letters are in the archive at the University of Toronto, 16,000 of them. Some of them have been gathered together into a collection, this book called Love Henri.
Bruce Adema: In this podcast series, we're taking different letters from Love Henri, and meeting with someone who can give us some insight into Henri's thought, but also onto the bigger issue that it contains. Today we're reading a letter that he wrote to a lady named Anne. It was written on September 23rd, 1988, to a Canadian Anglican minister serving in South Australia. She was having some conflict with fellow ministers at her parish, because she was speaking about injustice, and they said, no, you’ve got to speak about Jesus. And that created tension. So it's in that context that she wrote to him, and this is the letter that he sent back to her. Remember, this was written 36 years ago. Let me read Henri's letter.
Dear Ann,
Many thanks for your very warm letter and telling me about the way you have been living your ministry since we met here in Toronto. I so much appreciate that you share with me your struggles to be faithful in such a difficult and often painful situation. I really regret that we don’t have the opportunity to quietly be together and explore what God is doing in your life and how the Spirit is guiding you.
Meanwhile, I just want to let you know that I really want to support you in your desire to be a minister who truly speaks in the Name of Jesus and who wants to give her life to proclaiming the crucified and risen Lord. It is hard for me to know how to offer you concrete help while you are living so many frustrations and so many experiences of rejection and of not being fully welcomed. It is an honor for me that you let me into this experience because it allows me to really pray for you and to hold you very close to my heart and to the heart of God.
I would very much like to recommend that you try to spend at least one hour a day in contemplative prayer during which you can pour out your wounded heart to God and let Jesus really touch you with His healing love. Without such a period of intimacy with Jesus, I cannot see how it would be possible for you not to become resentful and really angry, but the more you unite your heart with the heart of Jesus, the more I think you will be able to discern where to give in and where to hold on.
I am very happy to hear that you have your own prayer and praise service on Sunday nights. I feel that there you can really live out some of your dreams about ministry, and maybe it is in these small groups that you also will be more fruitful for the moment. It is so important to have people who pray with you and with whom you can share your deeper love for Jesus.
Meanwhile I would not put too much energy into trying to change Stephen. I don’t say you are trying to, but obviously he is in a very different place from you. It is very important that you continue to really be yourself in whatever you say from the pulpit because preaching means to witness to what you have seen, heard and touched yourself. On the other hand, I do not think that a direct confrontation with Stephen would be fruitful. He has to discover your own heart indirectly and gradually. Be sure to pray for him and to ask God to show you the ways to work well with him.
If you live through this very trying period, I think you will eventually be brought to a new place where you can experience some new freedom. In everything, continue to really work for the Lord, and if your inner pain becomes too great and your heart too tortured, don’t hesitate to ask to be put in a position where your ministry can be less restricted.
Thanks so much for writing and please write again. Be sure that I will respond to your needs the best I can. Enclosed is a little book that may give you some support.
With much love and prayers,
Yours,
Henri
Bruce Adema: That's a beautiful letter. John, what's your reaction to that letter?
John Vissers: Well, the first thing I'd say, Bruce, is what impresses me. And I think what impresses all readers is just how caring, how compassionate, how gentle, how patient, how thoughtful Henri is in his writing. When you think about the number of people who corresponded with him, and the fact that he wrote back to pretty much everyone as far as we can tell, and that he kept those letters, he obviously saw this as a vital and integral part of his ministry. I have to say, even just listening to you read that letter again, for Henri to take the time to respond in such a detailed and caring way, you can't help but be moved by that.
Bruce Adema: It really sounds like Henri, doesn't it?
John Vissers: Yeah, very much.
Bruce Adema: His compassion and his willingness to sacrifice himself to write this long and very detailed letter with strong pastoral advice, what a ministry that was for Henri.
John Vissers: And I think it's worth observing the date on the letter, Bruce, as you said at the beginning, it's September 23rd, 1988. And for those who know Henri's life and biography, you'll know that this was really just after he had taken a leave away from Daybreak, because he had experienced a pretty traumatic event in his life and had gone into a depression. Out of that actually came his book, “the Inner Voice of Love.” When the focus really would've been on him trying to get his life back together, even in his own brokenness, has this incredible ability to minister to others. You know, I think most of us would be just concerned about ourselves, <laugh>, but he has this incredible ability. So again, it's one of the reasons why I think his legacy endures.
Bruce Adema: Henri was a man who, as you said, had significant struggles. He struggled with depression from time to time, who would go in for treatment. Sometimes people say, oh, if you are a servant of the Lord, then everything is always going to go your way, when in fact, that's not the way it works. Often clergy have struggles that are just like those of anyone else, interpersonal and spiritual and emotional. Anne is in a very tough spot. She's gone far from home. She left her home of Canada, went to Australia to serve, and then found conflict with her colleagues. That professional struggle is really, really hard to bear.
John Vissers: Yes. Absolutely. I don't know that we know the whole background to how Henri knew her or how she knew Henri, whether there had been previous correspondence or relationship, but the fact that he was able to respond so directly and in an understanding way to her. Certainly as a priest, Henri would've understood life within the church and pastoral ministry and the kinds of things she would be experiencing, I think is significant.
Bruce Adema: The person who put the book Love Henri together was Gabrielle Earnshaw, who was the chief archivist for many years of the Henri Nouwen collection. She wrote a little introduction to this letter, and it talked about the problem Anne had was understanding how to speak about injustice and what focus that should have in ministry and in preaching, and in life. Her colleagues said, this is what I'm assuming by reading this, that her colleague said, “No, don't talk about those things. Just talk about Jesus.” How does real life impact life and ministry for a Christ follower?
John Vissers: It's a great question, Bruce. The interesting thing about this letter to me is - there are a lot of interesting things about it. One of the things is that he encourages Anne to respond to all of this by just going, not just, but going deeper in her relationship with Christ and, and focusing on Christ, and being reminded of her own belovedness and her own giftedness for ministry, and then her own calling that what she's called to do. And her call is really this, also this call to justice, to speak on behalf of others, to work for caring and compassion. And so what I observe in the letter, first off, is for Henri, there's, there doesn't seem to be a conflict in this for him. For Henri, I think there's not an inner conflict between those who are committed to justice and working for peace and justice in the world, and those who want to focus on Christ.
John Vissers: I think for Henri, that's almost incomprehensible. Those two things absolutely belong together. They don't often in the church. And that's what Anne was experiencing. But in that sense, I think Henri is a prophetic voice, and I mean, prophetic in a very specific way. There's Michael Ford's book, called The Wounded Prophet, which is one of the early biographies of Henri. But if you think about the Old Testament prophets, what did they do? They spoke out fundamentally about two things. One was against idolatry among the people of God, a lack of right, true worship. And they spoke out against injustice, the treatment by the people of God of one another, and of those around them. I mean, at the end of the day, whether you're looking at Jeremiah or whichever of the prophets you're looking at, that's fundamentally what it comes down to.
John Vissers: The relationship with God and the relationship with others. Love for God, love for others. And I think Henri, in his own way, always held those things together. At least in his later writings, I think he struggled with it himself because you remember, he had a period where he thought he was called to work among the poor in Latin America, but then he realized that really wasn't his call. Then he finally found his calling and working with L’Arche and with Daybreak and with those who were disabled and unable to really care for themselves without the assistance of a community. And so I think that's where he found himself, where he found how these things came together for him. So, to go back where I started, it's a long answer to your question, but in this letter, I never sense any dichotomy.
John Vissers:
I never sense that there's a choice here. He says to Anne, go deep with Jesus. Remember, you're loved. Remember that you're serving the crucified and risen Lord, be a minister who truly speaks in the name of Jesus. Then he reminds her: And for you, part of that calling is to be who you are and your commitments to justice, et cetera. So, I hope that's helpful because I do think Henri is a helpful voice in the midst of that particular discussion. It's not an either or. It's, it's a both and, and it's not even a both and. It is what the Christian faith is about. Jesus says, what does it come down to? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and love your neighbor as yourself, love others as yourself. So I think he is expressing this in deep ways.
Bruce Adema: It's interesting to me that the presenting issue that Ann wrote to him was, I want to speak against injustice, and my colleagues only want to talk about Jesus and not address the injustice. The way that I would write a letter in response to that would be to say, well, let's look at it. Let's talk about the call to speak against injustice. And I would've dived into that issue where Henri is wise enough to take a step back and say, what is the grounding of this? You know, that what's important is that you are a person who really is centered spiritually and out of that spiritual health that you get from that, you will be able to speak appropriately to all these things. So there's the call to contemplation, to prayer, and to this spiritual centering.
John Vissers: I think that's exactly right, Bruce. And I think one of the reasons Henri's writings are so popular, and I don't mean popular in a superficial way, but the reason his writings resonate with many, many people who are struggling spiritually, or trying to be faithful in their faith, and in their discipleship, is because Henri speaks directly to you as the person. He doesn't tackle the issues. I mean, well, he does, but, but not directly. Indirectly, he speaks. His writing is to you. And so that's why the letters come across in such a powerful way. But if you read some of his books, it's, it's the same thing. He, he's speaking to you, the text of all of his books, really, the text is his own life, his own relationship with Christ, with Jesus in terms of his, his faith as a priest.
John Vissers: In many ways, many of his books are similar as a result. It's never just about him. It's about him in his coming to some deeper sense of who Christ is and what Christ means for him, and what that means for him. You'll appreciate this. Not not everyone will, but you know, I come out of the Protestant, Reformed tradition and the opening sentence of Calvin's Institutes are all the wisdom we possess consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. And I think Henri Nouwen, his whole work is basically an exposition of the knowledge of God and of ourselves, and how those two are related. I'm not saying that Henri was a Calvinist, nor should he be, but there's a deep tradition here of this sort of sense of the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God that runs just like a straight line through the best of our theological tradition, the best of our spirituality. And it's there in Henri, very, very clearly.
Bruce Adema: Thank you. I've spoken to lots of people now about Henri Nouwen, and, and people from all kinds of Christian traditions, every single one of them, well, not every single one, lots of them from many denominations claim Henri as their own. They say, oh, Henri is so Reformed! Oh, Henri is so Catholic! Oh, he's so Lutheran! That's part of his great appeal.
John Vissers: Yeah,
Bruce Adema: I thought it was interesting in his letter where he said you should make sure that you take time in prayer and deep contemplation, lest you become angry. Now, in our world, in our society, it seems like anger is on the rise. It's polarized. People are staking, I'm here, you're there, and therefore, you are my enemy. I sense in her situation that there's a bit of this, the two solitudes. Are you going to speak about social issues, about justice, or are you going to speak about spiritual things? And if you don't speak it as I speak it, then you are my enemy. Henri says, the way to overcome that is by getting close to God. You're spending that time in prayer, and quiet, reflecting on who God is.
John Vissers: Yes. Absolutely. And I mean, that paragraph there where he says, I would like very much to recommend that you spend at least one hour a day in contemplative prayer, during which you can pour out your wounded heart to God. That's just a classic priestly, pastoral response. I had a priest friend, this past year, when I was chatting with him, he basically challenged me and said, how much time are you spending in prayer each day? And how are you spending that hour? The hour is the standard traditional sort of way of framing that. So in, in one sense, what Henri's saying here is just very simple, classical, sort of priestly, pastoral advice, but at a deeper level, you're quite right.
John Vissers: I think Henri speaks into a culture that is driven so much by anger. And the flip side of anger is anxiety. What I mean by that is anxiety is often for many of us, just anger turned inward. I think what we've we're seeing in our culture today is an explosion of the anxiety that people can no longer contain within themselves. It’s just now affecting our political, social, educational, church ecclesial contexts. There's a long tradition in spiritual writing about seeing what anger is and, and how it manifests itself, both in spiritual lives of individuals and in societies and cultures, and why there is a righteous anger, which is righteous. But most of us, I think, express more often than not unrighteous anger.
John Vissers: I think what he's trying to do here, in a sense, is be pastoral and protect from letting this situation deplete her as a follower of Christ. It's a real situation, a real conflict. She has real feelings about this, and perhaps her feelings are even quite the right feelings to have, and her perspectives are the right perspectives to have. But he's aware that if she does not express them correctly in a good way, and if it's not rooted in this relationship with God, that, she'll run into problems. I quite like the direction he gives here. And it's a good example of one of the ways I would describe Henri Nouwen as a prophetic friend. He is always a friend, but he's a friend who's willing to tell the truth. If you don't have friends who are willing to tell you the truth, I'm not sure you really have friends <laugh>. That's part of being in the Christian faith, at least this idea of prophetic friendship is a key one. And, I think Henri expresses it beautifully in his role as a letter writer in this particular case.
Bruce Adema: He talks to Anne. He said, I want you to be authentic. And her authenticity comes out of her spiritual practices that as she spends her time in contemplation and prayer, she gets closer to God. Jesus touches her heart, heals her, and equips her. And as she is healed, she is made to be the authentic person that God created her to be. She's not created to be a person angry and upset and discouraged. We're created to be joyful, understanding our calling, and living it out in each way. So the summons to spiritual practice is the summons to authenticity.
John Vissers: Yes. I think that's right, Bruce. And, and I think Henri saw that. The language he uses is just simple and so beautiful. It's very important that you continue to really be yourself in whatever you say from the pulpit, so that your preaching is a means to witness what you have seen, heard, and touched yourself. And so what I really love about that is, on the one hand, he's inviting her and reminding her, that in this, in her being loved by Christ, and in exercising spiritual practices to cultivate that relationship, she can be truly herself. But as you said, the being truly yourself is being truly faithful to what God has created and who God has created and called you to be. And so, ultimately, the witness, and even Henri uses the idea of witness here, so that her life in its authenticity will point to Christ, will point to the reality of God's love.
John Vissers: So what I'm trying to say is that often in our culture, authenticity means being true to yourself. And it is that, but for Henri, being true to yourself is being true to the Christ who is in you, the God who loves you, who calls you beloved, which ultimately means that being true to yourself is being a witness for another. I think that's one of the key things in the Christian life, that it's the introspective turn in a sense, that this kind of deep spirituality can never stay there because it's given to us for the sake of others, for the sake of witness, for the sake of the world, for the sake of justice, for the sake of service. And without it, without that authenticity or without that deep sense of genuine being who God has made us to be, and then cultivating that with spiritual practices, prayer, scripture, and other disciplines, that's how you fulfill the calling that you have. I think that's what he's saying to Anne in a pretty profound way.
Bruce Adema: That calling - he uses the word freedom - that as you experience your calling, you become free. An interesting point and an important point, because sometimes people understand what you're calling is, is the burden that you carry. Henri is putting it in terms of it is the freedom that you can enjoy, to understand who you are in relation to God, and also then in relation to others, which is going to help Anne as she has to interact with her fellow clergy folk. It allows her to speak, to act in ways that are freeing for her.
John Vissers: Yes. I think that's exactly right. And the freedom is a spiritual freedom, and I think a psychological freedom, because in ministry, one of the hard lessons I learned early on was that it actually doesn't depend on me. And if it did depend on me, I realized it would be psychologically and spiritually unbearable. So that's the first lesson. That gives you a certain sense of freedom. But then the other freedom is, and most of us take a long time, and we never get there fully, I don't think, in this life, but this sense that what others think about us or what others, what others say about us, or what others think we ought to be doing, ultimately doesn't matter. What matters is what God thinks and what God has called us to do, and the fact that we are the beloved children of God.
John Vissers: And you know, I don't know about you, Bruce, but as a pastor, I mean, I've been at it 43 years as a pastor and leader, and I still have my moments where I hope, oh, you know, what are people gonna say about this sermon? Or what are people gonna say about this article I've written? There's always that sense. Someone's out there judging you, and they are. Someone's always out there judging you. That's the reality. But what Henri's saying is, you get free, there's a freedom from that. And one of the things I love about Henri is that <laugh>, if you read him carefully, he never found total release from that himself. He was so great at telling us all and reminding us all about this reality, but he was struggling with his own insecurity. So that freedom from insecurity and from anxiety and free, uh, I think one of his great gifts.
John Vissers: But I think he also realized, you know, you never, you never, uh, resolve this 100%. You have to constantly live it out. And it is one of the fundamental, upside down realities of the reign of God, of the kingdom of God, that it's, as Paul says, it's in my service to Christ that I am most free. And, it is in my service, in my relationship to God that I find my, my true freedom. And it's one of the great ironies of the Christian faith, but it is, I think, what the good news is all about.
Bruce Adema: Yes. St. Paul cried to God, release me from my thorn, whatever that, that trouble was. Every significant, wonderful person in scripture had a struggle, had a worry, had a burden, went through a dark time, you know, even Jesus himself, right? At the garden of Gethsemane he said, if you can take this cup away from me, do so, but not my will, but yours be done. I appreciate so much about Henri, not that I, I wish this on him, but he did have these dark times, depression as a person in ministry. I've had dark times, John, you've said you've had dark times. Everybody has dark times. Having someone like Henri speak to us says This person who was so wise also had dark times. And that gives me hope that I can live through and endure these things and continue in the calling that I have. Anne was going through a dark night of the soul when she wrote to Henri saying, I'm trying to be a faithful minister. I'm trying to speak truth, speak to the issues that are before me, but my colleagues are speaking against me or trying to hinder me. Yet, she did not give up. I'm sure with a letter of encouragement like this, that she would've been given the strength, as a gift from above to continue on.
John Vissers: Yes. I think that's exactly right. It's, it's hard not to imagine a letter from Henri Nouwen giving you some sense of encouragement, and helping her through what was obviously a difficult period in her ministry.
Bruce Adema: John, do you mind sharing with us what, what you have found to be your own, uh, best spiritual practices that keep you going?
John Vissers: Yes. The first thing to say is, I am simply a deep believer in what my tradition calls the ordinary means of grace, which is the word, the sacraments and prayer. Daily, I've been listening to Psalms read in the morning. That's my first thing. And then spending time in a gospel, Lectio. So I spend about a half hour, 40 minutes in the morning after I get up with my first cup of coffee doing that. And then I try to round out, uh, midday with something, and then in the evening with something. So I try to honor the hour at least a day. Sometimes it's more, it's seldom less. I'm sort of at a stage in life where I've been able to cultivate that.
John Vissers: So, scripture, and prayer, I'm a great believer in using the prayers that have been handed on to us in the tradition of the church, as well as extemporaneous prayer. It's not either or. I pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day. That's the basic prayer the Lord has given us. And I think if it was good enough for Jesus, it ought to be good enough for us. So, I pray that three times a day. And then depending on circumstances, et cetera, I'll pray either generally, but I use the daily liturgy of prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican Prayer. I'm always looking for new prayer books. I've got a book on the prayers of Kierkegaard. I've got John Bailey's book of daily prayers, a Scottish theologian.
John Vissers: I'm always just trying to find people who can articulate a prayer in ways that are far more elegant and eloquent, and insightful than I can. I think that's a, a good practice. I come from a tradition, as do you, Bruce, where we celebrate the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, less frequently than some of us would like. I would prefer to do it every week. In fact, I would prefer to do it every day. When I was in residence in San Antonio at the Oblate School earlier this year, I had an opportunity to do that almost daily, and I found it to be a wonderful practice. So, at any rate, those are the three main things. But what I have found after 40 years of ministry is that for the past 25 years or so, I have had a small group of spiritual friends. Uh, there were six of us, but two of us have gone to be with the Lord. There were eight of us and two have have died. There are six of us left, and we journey together as friends in Christ. And that spiritual friendship for me has been one of the means of sustaining my life. And in a sense, Henri has been a part of that sort of group. There's just a small group of people whose voice I listen to carefully and who hold me to account. And I have three or four people that I read regularly. Henri is one of them. And I have this group of now five other friends, six of us who, uh, meet together at least twice a year in retreat. I can't imagine my life in Christ, or in leadership without that.
Bruce Adema: Okay. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, John. I'm sure it's food for thought for many of us. We will be putting up some links to Knox College and some of the books we've referenced in the show notes. So if anybody wants to look them up, they'll be there. Thank you, John. I also wanna say thank you to you, our listener. If you've been listening to the audio version of this conversation, know that you can find the video version of it on our YouTube channel, which you can access through the website, henrinouwen.og. While you're there, you can look and see where you can sign up for the daily meditations, and also learn about the other great and important programs of the Henri Nouwen Society. Now, if you've enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a nice review and give it a big thumbs up and how nice it would be if you would share this with your family and friends. Maybe they'll find a blessing in it too. Well, thank you for listening and never forget you are a beloved child of God.
