{"id":2086,"date":"2011-06-07T11:30:14","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T18:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=2086"},"modified":"2011-06-07T11:30:14","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T18:30:14","slug":"nouwen-on-centering-and-approval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2011\/06\/07\/nouwen-on-centering-and-approval\/","title":{"rendered":"Nouwen on Centering and Approval"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a gem from Henri Nouwen’s The Inner Voice of Love:\u00a0 A Journey from Anguish to Freedom<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It can be discouraging to discover how quickly you lose your inner peace.\u00a0 Someone who happens to enter your life can suddenly create restlessness and anxiety in you.\u00a0 Sometimes this feeling is there before you fully realize it.\u00a0 You thought you were centered; you thought you could trust yourself; you thought you could stay with God.\u00a0 But then someone you do not even know intimately makes you feel insecure.\u00a0 You ask yourself whether you are loved or not, and that stranger becomes the criterion.\u00a0 Thus you start feeling disillusioned by your own reaction.<\/p>\n

Don’t whip yourself for your lack of spiritual progress.\u00a0 If you do, you will easily be pulled even further away from your center.\u00a0 You will damage yourself and make it more difficult to come home again.\u00a0 It is obviously good not to act on your sudden emotions.\u00a0 But you don’t have to repress them, either.\u00a0 You can acknowledge them and let them pass by.\u00a0 In a certain sense, you have to befriend them so that you do not become their victim.<\/p>\n

The way to “victory” is not in trying to overcome our dispiriting emotions directly but in building a proper sense of safety and at-homeness and a more incarnate knowledge that you are deeply loved.\u00a0 Then, little by little, you will stop giving so much power to strangers.<\/p>\n

Don’t be discouraged.\u00a0 Be sure that God will truly fulfill all your needs.\u00a0 Keep remembering that.\u00a0 It will help you not to expect that fulfillment from people who you already know are incapable of giving it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a gem from Henri Nouwen’s The Inner Voice of Love:\u00a0 A Journey from Anguish to Freedom: It can be discouraging to discover how quickly you lose your inner peace.\u00a0 Someone who happens to enter your life can suddenly create restlessness and anxiety in you.\u00a0 Sometimes this feeling is there before you fully realize […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-xE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}