The spiritual journey is more about traveling than arriving, more often about divesting than accumulating. It is most often a journey made in relationship with fellow pilgrims. This reflection series is devoted to encouraging you on your journey by offering you a free, weekly reflection that affirms each person’s life as an opportunity to give their gifts to the world.

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On the Journey to Become More Fully Human
written by Sue Mosteller

Sometimes all our education fails to make us fully human. But sometimes in friendship we find a priceless mentor, wise in the ways of humanity.

Just after arriving at Daybreak from Harvard, Henri Nouwen was asked to help Adam with his morning routine. It meant he had to wake Adam, bathe, shave, and dress him, comb his hair and position him in his wheelchair, before making and having breakfast, then brushing Adam's teeth, putting on his coat, gloves, scarf, boots, and pushing him to his day program in another building.

Henri wrote, "I was aghast! I simply didn't think I could do this... Why should I, the least capable of all the people in the house, be asked to take care of Adam and not of someone whose needs are a bit less? The answer was always the same: 'So you can get to know Adam.' ... [But] "How would I get to know him? ... Even with the support of other assistants, I was afraid walking into Adam's room and waking up this stranger."

Completely unknowing, Henri moved beyond his fears and through his desire to be elsewhere and learned Adam's routine. Before long he was surprised. He wrote, "Gradually, very gradually, things started to change, and because I was more confident and relaxed, my mind and heart were opening for a real meeting with this man who had joined me [as a mentor] on life's journey." Adam didn't talk much, so Henri both spoke to him and was silent with him. Adam, needing presence, respect, and gentleness, fully accepted Henri's care and gave himself totally into Henri's hands. With time, Henri realized that he needed Adam as a friend, a mentor, and a guide. Henri wrote of the three essential principles that Adam gave him for becoming more fully human: "being" is more important than "doing", God's love is more important than the praise of people, and being together is better than being alone.

In his book, Adam: God's Beloved, Henri shares these and more principles with us to help us on our journeys to become more fully human.

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SUE MOSTELLER is retired having lived for more than 30 years in the community of L'Arche Daybreak. She and Henri Nouwen were friends and Sue now works for the Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust.

On the Journey To Becoming a Peacemaker
written by Rabbi Albert Lewis

(Rabbi Lewis has written this reflection using only one-syllable words. It is an old discipline, intended to be simple but not simplistic.)

What if God were to speak to us now; to give us a fresh look at what's real, true, and the core of our world? Might God say, "Be just, be kind, care, share, give, take, love, laugh, cry, feel the pain, and dance in the time of joy"? And what would we hear? Would it be what we want to hear, or what was said? Could we each hear in our own way? Must we all be of the same mind? Must the one who hears at twelve feet fight with the one who hears at twelve yards? Will the black one and the white one and the child of the land all know God in the same way? And if not, will they then fight?

What if God said, "I grant you a gift: a world full of peace, health, and food for all. I give you a time, now, when each may sit by his vine and by her fig tree and none will cause you fear"? Would we heed the words? If God came to each of us in a dream, would we hold the dream in our hearts and souls, or would we cast it off as just a dream? What would it take to look deep within, where we live and know truth, and there to find the one God, who cries for us and waits and hopes and says, "I am here. Do not fear. Live, love, talk, and walk hand in hand with me. Let no child learn war anymore, but let each bring what is right and just in his home and in her land!"

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On the Journey To Cherishing a Friend
written by Father Larry Gillick, S.J.

Imagine your house with all its furniture, decorations and plants right where you want them. Then imagine a stranger who knocks at your door and, upon entering, begins commenting on how terrible your arrangements are. Good friends, whom we love and who love us, have our doors opened to them. But we are rather careful who gets over that threshold. Experience tells us that very soon those friends will quietly move a this and straighten a that, maybe without even realizing they are doing so.

To reverence friends is to grow in reverencing change. We have well-set interiors. They become our personalities, our ways of relating. They are how we want to be known. Perhaps we are generally fearful of new things and ideas. We stay secure in our well-set world. There might be good reasons for those walls of worry and protection. Having been injured or betrayed can lead to a preventative posture.

Through prayer and reflection, we can begin allowing strangers to become friends and reverencing them for the changes, the growth they bring to us. One sign that we are freeing up and holding friends as sacred gifts is our accepting the awarenesses that those former strangers have brought. When we begin to love, ourselves and others, beyond fears, we will experience a greater cherishing and reverencing for those who have loved us into more reverential living. Bring on the furniture movers!

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FR. LARRY GILLICK, S.J. was ordained in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, after completing his theological studies at the Toronto School of Theology and Regis College, Willowdale, Ontario. It was there he became familiar with the L'Arche Daybreak community. He is presently director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

On the Journey To Seeing
With The Eyes of the Heart
written by Sue Mosteller

Living, as I have for the past thirty-five years, with people with intellectual disabilities, I've been learning from them what it means to have a high HQ (heart quotient). Let me explain.

priest spoke to a young man with a disability who was dying of AIDS. "Mike, are you OK?" he asked. Mike in turn asked the priest, "Does God love me?" The priest said, "I'm convinced that God has always loved you and loves you very much today." Mike then asked, "Do you love me?" The priest answered, "I really do, Mike." Spreading his arms to embrace the priest, Mike said, "Then I'm perfectly OK."

At the kiss of peace during a Eucharistic service in our chapel, one of the women labeled disabled held a male assistant in a bear hug for quite a long time. Afterwards, a female assistant said to her, "Miriam, you know that hugging David like that is not appropriate and that we don't do those kinds of things, right?" Miriam replied, "I know, but don't you wish you could?"

In the children's ward of a large institution in Ukraine for people suffering from intellectual disabilities and mental illness, a hyperactive boy around six years of age was running about the room from one activity to another. When he saw us, he ran headlong into the open arms of my friend Joe, who held him a second and then stooped down to hear what he wanted to say. "I'm a beautiful guy!" he said. Joe then asked him through the translator, "How do you know that's true?" Without missing a beat, the boy responded, "Can't you see? It's obvious!"

The journey to seeing with the eyes of the heart is looking for signs that we are loved, even if we have to ask, then embracing those who love us in a long embrace, and finally claiming that we are, in all truth, beautiful guys and gals! Isn't it obvious?

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SUE MOSTELLER is retired having lived for more than 30 years in the community of L'Arche Daybreak. She and Henri Nouwen were friends and Sue now works for the Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust.

On the Journey Towards Accepting Other Faiths
written by Chaplain Randall W. Trego

We had not yet completed our first year as a new community hospital when Dr. J. came to ask me his question. We learned to know each other during our rounds, he a physician and I an Episcopal chaplain. I liked him because I could hear the compassion he had for his patients in his quiet, gentle voice, in the gaze of his bright eyes and humble smile. We would pause occasionally to speak about his childhood in a Muslim family in Pakistan and my years of living with Muslim school boys in Iran.

"The chapel is so quiet and peaceful. Would you mind if I went there to say my noonday prayers?" In my memory I heard the call to prayer from the mosque across the street where I had lived so many years before. In my minds eye I saw the shoes left outside that place of prayer in respect for the holy ground covered not only by the hand-woven carpets, but years of recited prayer. His question was a profound gift. It was an invitation to stand on holy ground with another whose faith was not like mine, yet who could show me how God was speaking, to gain new understanding of grace and the love of God.

There were many moments for gratitude in the months that followed as the chapel increasingly became a place of prayer for all people. I could be saying the words for a noonday Eucharist while the prayer rug was being used for the prayers of our Muslim staff. In a place of pain and suffering as a hospital we have been drawn to the hospitality of God to seek refuge and healing. Our individual faiths have been lifted to be a community of faith caring for all who come.

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RANDALL TREGO is the chaplain at St. Luke's Community Medical Center in The Woodlands, Texas. He continues to be inspired through the writings and his class participation at Harvard with Henri Nouwen in 1985. His life is lived with much gratitude for the invitation of Jesus to walk with those in "the valley of tears" where "broken glass shines brighter."

On the Journey Towards Becoming a More Authentic Minister
written by Ms. Beth Porter

I have sometimes felt so phony in my attempts at ministry. My words seem awkward and empty to me, and I can only imagine that the person receiving them recognizes this. Lately I have been looking back at one period of ministry when I felt I usually did have the right words—and right judgment about when silence and not speech was called for. It was a stint of chaplaincy training during which I was assigned to visit palliative care patients. Though I had little experience or training, authentic ministry seemed to come easily to me there, and fairly often I could sense the grace in the moment for the other person as well as for myself.

What were the elements in that situation that called the best out of me? I think the exigency of approaching death left no space for delay, for laziness, for the trivial, or platitudes, or dishonesty—or for self-conscious concern about whether or not I would find the right words. In the starkness, fully attentive, I reached deep for hope, and my ego took a backseat.

The word authentic means "from the author." I usually realize after I have said something when it has come from a superficial part of myself—it's as though the real me has not authored it! I don't particularly want to keep death always in mind, but I see the importance of the psalmist's plea that God "teach us to number our days, so that we might get a heart of wisdom."

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BETH PORTER works on educational initiatives and publications for L'Arche Canada. She edited the book Befriending Life: Encounters with Henri Nouwen (Doubleday, 2001) and has been a member of L'Arche Daybreak since the early 1980s.

On the Journey Towards Being a Healthy Parent
written by Dr. Carolyn Whitney-Brown

My in-law family gleefully quote a scene from The Godfather, in which a wannabe hit man is applying for a job. He sets out all of his expertise, as well as his cold-blooded ability to do what is required, and finally the Godfather leans forward and inquires in his New York Italian gangster accent, "But tell me. Do ya spend time wit' your family?"

I never heard Henri Nouwen quote from The Godfather, and I suspect the film is rarely cited in parenting books. But I think the tight-knit Brown side of our family is onto something. My experience is that nothing is more healthy and fun for a family than simply spending time together. I confirmed that in L'Arche, too, where "wasting time together" was highly valued.

My partner and I and our children have a set of stories and humour that grew out of all our shared experiences together. Our children will launch off into their own lives as adults soon. As weary young parents, we could not have imagined what a time-limited offer family life is. So tell me. Do ya spend time wit' your family?

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CAROLYN WHITNEY-BROWN, Ph.D., and her family were part of the L'Arche Daybreak community from 1990 to 1997. Her large paintings welcome people to the Dayspring Chapel. Nouwen readers will be interested in an anthology of Jean Vanier's writings, selected and introduced by Carolyn, to be published by Orbis in September. The Whitney-Brown family lives on Vancouver Island.

On the Journey Towards Claiming the Sabbath
written by Mr. Doug Wiebe

Like many other overanxious first-time parents, I used to go into my son's room at night to make sure he was still breathing. Now I go in because I know he's resting. I want (and need) to welcome him into my life not only when he's awake and busy but also when he's asleep.

Perhaps the way a child sleeps after a day full of discovery is similar to the way God rested after he finished creating the world. Perhaps the love, gratitude and awe we feel when we watch our sleeping children is similar to the way God wants us to be aware of his presence during our times of quiet.

Imagine that the hours of our Sabbath day of rest are no longer numbers on a clock but pillars supporting a beautiful temple. Sleeping in perfect peace in the centre of this temple is the Creator of the universe. Our Sabbath invitation is to enter into this "temple of time" and to simply rest with God, who on this day has nothing but time.

I don't know the details of how this happens for any one of us. What I do know is that there was a marked contrast between my experience of my son during the work of toilet training and my experience of him when I watched him sleeping in my arms or in his crib. I need both experiences, and so does my son. The same goes for our relationship with God. May God continue to show us how to enter into the Sabbath temple of time to learn more and more how to rest with, and in, God.

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DOUG WIEBE (a.k.a. the bread man) has been a member of L'Arche since 1989 and currently fills the role of community leader in L'Arche Lethbridge, Alberta. He also serves as a lay preacher and congregational chairperson for the Lethbridge Mennonite Church. He is married and has one son.

On the Journey Towards Living Nonviolently
written by Pastor Daniel Cho

As a child I became deeply involved in the martial arts after watching the revolutionary 1973 film Enter the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee. In fact, my first few years of training took place in the basement of our church, and I loved every minute of it. Some called me obsessed with the martial arts; I couldn't disagree.

When, as a teenager, I began to get serious about the Christian faith, I had an opportunity to become a bit philosophical about reconciling a commitment to love, peace and "turning the other cheek" with an activity involving fighting and violence. Of course, violence describes both our inner fancies and the pernicious aggression against others.

I have found that my experience in martial arts never steered me towards violence; rather it led me to realize that the more I was willing to be in touch with my own violence - its emotional energy, causes, insecurities - the more I was able to "tame" both its interior experience and its expression. Violence's familiarity can breed its discipline and lead to a reclaiming of that dimension of one's spirit and character.

For me, the point of resonance with Jesus' temptations is that he faced the destructive potential of his power, yet learned to claim it for God. Likewise, every day I face potential for violence in word, behaviour, design and thought, yet I can learn to claim it for more authentic spiritual living.

I'm still an unapologetic martial arts film fanatic.

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DANIEL CHO is minister of Rexdale Presbyterian Church in Toronto and serves the national church as convener of the Life & Mission Agency. His martial arts training includes hapkido and aikido, and he holds a black belt in tae kwon do.

On the Journey Towards Radical Hospitality
written by Ms. Victoria S. Schmidt

My friend Isaiah, is a missionary who works in Medellin, Columbia with homeless youth. Many are addicted to glue which slowly causes irreversible brain damage. Their addiction to glue allows them to cope with their emotional pain and the violence of living on the streets of Medellin. The children survive by eating scraps from the garbage. Often Isaiah would visit with a young man named Louis who lived on the streets in a makeshift shelter of boxes and rusted scraps of corrugated metal. When Isaiah visited, Louis always took off his tattered shirt to spread on the ground so Isaiah would not have to sit in the dirt. Sadly, Louis was killed on the same street where he had shown love and hospitality to his friend.

I recall that story often as an example of radical hospitality. How often I have missed an opportunity to welcome someone into my home or to offer them a seat, or even a warm smile. It would not be a sacrifice for me like it was for Louis and yet I still protect my personal space. Fr. Richard Rohr once told a story about seeing a message written on a sidewalk by a homeless person that read, "See how they protect their nothing." And it challenges me to reflect on what God given gifts I am afraid to share with my brothers and sisters.

On my journey toward radical hospitality, I want to be like Louis who had nothing but the shirt on his back and a small homemade shelter to share with his friend Isaiah. Louis had nothing but gave everything, even his life.

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VICTORIA S. SCHMIDT lives in Springfield, Illinois (USA). She has a missionary heart that has been formed by thirty years of missionary work around the world. She currently serves as Director of Theresian World Ministry, an international Catholic women's organization.