Nouwen Chapel

The shrine in Nouwen Chapel. Jesus of Nazareth is depicted at the center. On the left side (from top to bottom) are icons of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Martin Luther, Vincent Van Gogh, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and Pope John Paul II. On the right side (from top to bottom) are icons of the Cardinal John Henry Newman, St. Teresa of Avila, Thomas Merton, St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Jean Vanier, Henri J.M. Nouwen, and Adam Arnett. Photograph by the author.

Since I’ve come to New Haven, I’ve spent most of my time at the Yale Divinity School Library with my good pal Phil, who I’m staying with for the semester. Phil is working on a graduate degree at the Divinity School and I’m working on my UWest dissertation. Most mornings we come to the library together and set up shop somewhere in the Day Missions Reading Room–he works on his stuff, I work on my stuff.

At some point every day I find myself sneaking down to the library’s lower level to spend some time in Nouwen Chapel. The space is always available to use for prayer/meditation. (The shrine at the front of the chapel is pictured above.) It is named for Henri J.M. Nouwen, the Dutch Catholic priest and pastoral theologian who taught at the Divinity School for a number of years. Among his many books are the classics The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society, Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, and The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry. In 1986, Nouwen made the surprising decision to leave academia and devote the rest of his life to serving developmentally disabled adults at a L’Arche community called Daybreak near Toronto. He remained there until his early death ten years later.

Nouwen explained his decision to leave university life for Daybreak by telling the story of his work with one developmentally disabled adult named Adam Arnett:

    Because life is very small, you can never see it happening. Have you ever seen a tree actually grow? Can you see a child grow? Growth is too gentle, too tender. Life is basically hidden. It is small and begs for constant care and protection. If you are committed to always saying yes to life, you are going to have to become a person who chooses it when it is hidden.

    I have a case in point from my own life. I live in a community with handicapped adults. Just after I moved in they asked me if I would be willing to take care of a man named Adam. Adam cannot speak. Adam cannot walk. Adam is what some people might call “a vegetable.” “Would you be willing to wash Adam?” they asked. “Would you be willing to dress him and give him breakfast?”

    As I began to take care of Adam, I slowly discovered what life is about. Adam began to teach me about the smallness of living. As I bathed this twenty-five-year-old man, washed his face, combed his hair, fed him, and dressed him, I began to realize what an incredible gift life is. Adam spoke to me in a language I didn’t know he could speak. How told me how hidden, vulnerable, and deep life is. Being with him gave me a sense of being closely in touch with living. After a while I felt an enormous desire to leave my office and my books and to be with Adam, because he would tell me what life was about.

    I began to realize that every time people say yes to life in whatever form–the unborn life, life on death row, the life of the severely handicapped, the life of the broken and the homeless–they start to give hope to each other. I had never experienced hope so concretely until I began to wash Adam. Adam strengthened my hope. It wasn’t optimism. Adam is never going to get better. But he offers hope. This hope can form a very strong bond among people who are willing to go where life is fragile and hidden. [1]

This short reflection is a piece of Nouwen’s that I return to often. As a Buddhist, I’m tempted to put what I read here in dharma-speak and say that I appreciate the message about the importance of cultivating bodhichitta. But it also speaks to me in a more personal way, too. Let me say more…

Originally, I went to college to study film. Although I loved my colleagues and professors in the cinema program at Denison University (they remain some of my best friends), my priorities had completely shifted by the beginning of my sophomore year and I wound up doing normative Buddhist Studies. I’m still really interested in films and journalism and all sorts of things. I like to think and talk about these things with my friends and often at this blog. But if I were doing anything other than what I do now, I’m fairly certain I would constantly feel that itch to spend my time working with and attending to others in the way I do now as a chaplain. To use Nouwen’s words, chaplaincy is where I come most closely in touch with living. It’s where my hope is strengthened. And from a Buddhist point of view, responding to those moments of clarity is really important. As Shantideva writes:

    Just as a flash of lightning on a dark, cloudy night
    For an instant brightly illuminates all,
    Likewise in this world, through the might of Buddha,
    A wholesome thought rarely and briefly appears.

    Hence virtue is perpetually feeble,
    The great strength of evil being extremely intense,
    And except for a Fully Awakening Mind
    By what other virtue will it be overcome?

    All the Buddhas who have contemplated for many aeons
    Have seen it to be beneficial;
    For by it the limitless masses of beings
    Will quickly attain the supreme state of bliss.

    Those who wish to destroy the many sorrows of (their) conditioned existence,
    Those who wish (all beings) to experience a multitude of joys,
    And those who wish to experience much happiness,
    Should never forsake the Awakening Mind.

I think that’s why I like to visit the Nouwen Chapel. Seeing those icons of Nouwen and Arnett on the shrine remind me each time I visit never to forsake the Awakening Mind.

WORKS CITED:

  1. Henri Nouwen, “Fragile and Hidden” in The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, ed. Paul Rogat Loeb, 114-15 (New York: Basic Books, 2004).