Читать книгу Henri Nouwen and The Return of the Prodigal Son - Gabrielle Earnshaw - Страница 18

Nouwen was attuned to art and artists because he was one himself. Perhaps more suitable than any other definition of who he was is the term “artist.”³⁷ He used language and images to create meaning. Moreover, he saw his life as part of a larger story—God’s story. Over and over, in his books, talks, and letters, Nouwen encouraged people to have a larger vision for their lives. In one letter to a friend he suggested the friend try to have “a Grand Canyon experience.” He was referring to a time in his own life when seeing the Grand Canyon opened him up “to the mystery in which we are part.” He said to the friend, “You too need a Grand Canyon experience.”³⁸ We need to see our lives as part of something bigger than mere survival or worldly success.

Many of the insights in The Return of the Prodigal Son revolve around having a new vision such as this. Nouwen teaches us that when we act like the sons of the parable we cannot see properly. To clarify what I mean, let’s review the Gospel of Luke chapter 15, where the famous parable of Jesus can be found.

A father has two sons: elder and younger. The elder son remains by the father’s side, doing the work of a dutiful son, while the younger son asks for his inheritance so that he may leave; the younger son obtains the inheritance from his father and then leaves, squandering it all wastefully, eventually begging forgiveness and the ability to return to the father. When the younger son returns, the elder son questions his father, asking why he is so forgiving of the younger, wasteful one. The father replies, essentially, you have always been here with me, but he was lost and now is found.

Nouwen admitted myopia when stuck in the role of the elder son. He wrote, “When jealousy, resentment and bitterness have settled in my heart, I become unable to see what is already given to me. I am so focused on the seeming preference of God for the other that I completely lose sight of what is given to me.”³⁹ Depression, he said, restricts vision, too: “I completely lose sight of the love that surrounds me, and no longer can see the reality as God sees it. Depression makes me see from below where I am and disables me to see from above where God is.”⁴⁰

Nouwen noted that Rembrandt, seemingly aware of the potency of the eyes of his characters, “chose to portray a very still father who recognizes the son, not with eyes of a body, but with the inner eye of the heart” (Prodigal Son, 89).

The Rembrandt painting became an icon for Nouwen, a gate through which he could walk into the house of God. But he could do that only because he had been practicing that kind of seeing for a very long time already.⁴¹