In the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg there is a huge scale larger than life painting called Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt. Observers say that it changes hour by hour with the sunlight as it drinks in every detail of the characters in their spare setting.
It is obviously inspired by the biblical parable of the same name; a story of two very different sons; one who blew his rich father’s inheritance on wine, women and song who had returned empty handed after a stint tending pigs and the other responsible son who had chosen to stay and work with his father but who is nonetheless very upset that his father would throw a celebration for the returning son and who chooses to absent himself from the festivities. The twist in the story is that it is implied that both sons are in some sense ‘lost’, yet it is the one who blew his inheritance on frivolities who seems closer to ‘home’.
As one famous religious apologist argued: a prostitute may be closer to home than a cold self- righteous prig.
In the summer of 1983 a famous and well respected Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen would visit the museum and spend day after day, for hours on end staring and taking in this magnificent work of art. Something about it spoke to his complex situation; on one hand, he was a respected academic with tenure at Harvard, an intense speaking schedule where he could command anything up to 10 000 dollars for an engagement and an impressive 16 books under his belt and on the other hand a deeply insecure and wounded man pierced with loneliness and inner turmoil and conflict. For you see, Nouwen was a celibate, closeted homosexual within a church culture that persecuted and mistreated gay people. Nouwen on one hand felt like the responsible elder brother; He had a resume’ to die for, was a deeply respected academic and had built a life in which he had the adulation and admiration of many people and yet on another level he was deeply unsatisfied, like the younger brother who had gotten tired tending pigs, he felt an intense dissatisfaction with life, so much so that he resigned his professorship at Harvard and became a missionary in Peru for 6 months. He lived in a slum in Northern Lima, a parish of 100 000 people and the children of the family he stayed with; giggling and climbing over him, literally hugged life and sanity back into him. Nouwen would later remark about the paradox he discovered; that the poor had a more profound sense of love than the materially privileged Westerners he knew and indeed as the great Harvard intellectual Robert Coles observed in his work with both the rich and poor for his Children of Crisis series, wealth tends to curse also what it blesses.
After a while Nouwen eventually found himself working at a home for the mentally and physically disabled called Daybreak in Toronto. Nouwen would have the responsibility of caring for the weakest member of that home; a severely mentally disabled young man called Adam who could not feed or bathe himself, someone whom many would consider a vegetable, who could only shriek and groan and sometimes have such severe seizures that one great big tear would roll down his cheek.
Nouwen found peace and acceptance in that home.
Though his inner conflict raged on over his unresolved sexual issues, by caring for Adam he learnt the ‘emptiness’ that so many religious masters and traditions talk of. Nouwen of course did continue to write and his relationship with Adam was chronicled in his book Adam: God’s beloved. Nouwen would also continue his speaking engagements, though now he only charged 500 dollars and that money would be signed over to Daybreak. Nouwen would also be at the forefront of caring for victims of the AIDS epidemic outbreak in San Francisco at a time when fear over the disease hung like a thick fog over the city and a time when many people simply refused to care for the members of the gay community who’d contracted it.
Though I admire Nouwen I feel quite sad, that though he found a sort of inner peace and ‘home’, he never took the next step to full self- acceptance, which he felt like he could never be fully a gay man who could seek the companionship that could stave off his loneliness and deep heartache. Some part of him remained resolute to be like the older brother in the painting, seeking the approval of a prejudiced church and a prejudiced laity in the church.
In a lot of ways Nouwen’s story is our story. We are born with shimmering original selves that are battered and bruised by our experiences, so much so that we feel the pressure to conform to something other people will like and think acceptable. Most of us never reach something like full acceptance, something like home, rather we would squander the gift of who we are in the pigsty of life and be too proud to return home.
Every single one of us has some sort of closet we need to come out of.
“It took me a long time to feel safe in this unpredictable climate, and I still have moments in which I clamp down and tell everyone to shut up, get in line, listen to me, and believe in what I say. But I am also getting in touch with the mystery that leadership, for a large part, means to be led. I discover that I am learning many new things, not just about the pains and struggles of wounded people, but also their unique gifts and graces. They teach me about joy and peace, love and care and prayer- what I could never have learned in any academy. They also teach me what nobody else could have taught me, about grief and violence, fear and indifference. Most of all, they give me a glimpse of God’s first love, often at moments when I start feeling depressed and discouraged”- Henri Nouwen
I Write What I like 