The Inner Voice of Love

Rating:
Summary: He loves me!!
Review: The first meditation in this book is entitled "Work Around Your Abyss." It begins: "There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes."

If only Henri Nouwen had been standing over the shoulder of the psalmist as he was writing Psalm 69 ("I sink in the muddy depths where there is no foothold") or Psalm 63 ("I thirst for you like a parched and weary land wherein there is no water") or Psalm 88 ("You have taken all my friends and my only companion is darkness") or Psalm 102 ("I am a desert owl among the ruins"), he could have told the psalmist to work around his abyss until it gradually closes.

The fourth meditation, on p. 6, is called "Trust the Inner Voice" and here we are asked: "Do you really want to be converted? Are you willing to be transformed?" Well? "You have to trust the inner voice that shows the way." Or maybe we should trust the voice of 70s-style pop psychology.

In the next meditation, "Cry Inward," Nouwen tells himself and his readers, "Your many human needs for affection, attention, and consolation are living apart from your divine sacred space." But "the community can truly hold you." That language fails to inspire this reader.

The Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann, of blessed memory, complained in his recently published journals of "the sickly gravy of progressive Christianity," and we know what he means. The Christianity that has sold its soul to self-help and pop-psych, the Christianity that tells us to "do community" and "be eucharist," the Christianity that jargonizes and groupifies and obsesses, the Christianity that suffers from Noun Juxtaposition Syndrome Compulsion Disorder, the Christianity that tells us to be tolerant and sensitive and to work around our abysses.

Henri Nouwen is often engaging, insightful, clever, endearing, heartwarming and helpful. But this reader cannot find these attributes in any great measure in Nouwen's "Inner Voice of Love." We'll take the Psalms at their most desolate, Thomas Hardy at his bleakest, and Gerard Manley Hopkins in those sonnets and other poems ("The Leaden Echo") where he is at the point of despair. At least in these dark works, we know we have company. In this work by Henri Nouwen, we find glibness, flatness of language, sickening echoes of pop psychology and an authenticity that is at best, sporadic. We can sympathize with the anguish of the author as he wrote this book, without being obliged to venerate the work as if it were a sacred text.

Rating:
Summary: Work around your abyss?
Review: The first meditation in this book is entitled "Work Around Your Abyss." It begins: "There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes."

If only Henri Nouwen had been standing over the shoulder of the psalmist as he was writing Psalm 69 ("I sink in the muddy depths where there is no foothold") or Psalm 63 ("I thirst for you like a parched and weary land wherein there is no water") or Psalm 88 ("You have taken all my friends and my only companion is darkness") or Psalm 102 ("I am a desert owl among the ruins"), he could have told the psalmist to work around his abyss until it gradually closes.

The fourth meditation, on p. 6, is called "Trust the Inner Voice" and here we are asked: "Do you really want to be converted? Are you willing to be transformed?" Well? "You have to trust the inner voice that shows the way." Or maybe we should trust the voice of 70s-style pop psychology.

In the next meditation, "Cry Inward," Nouwen tells himself and his readers, "Your many human needs for affection, attention, and consolation are living apart from your divine sacred space." But "the community can truly hold you." That language fails to inspire this reader.

The Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann, of blessed memory, complained in his recently published journals of "the sickly gravy of progressive Christianity," and we know what he means. The Christianity that has sold its soul to self-help and pop-psych, the Christianity that tells us to "do community" and "be eucharist," the Christianity that jargonizes and groupifies and obsesses, the Christianity that suffers from Noun Juxtaposition Syndrome Compulsion Disorder, the Christianity that tells us to be tolerant and sensitive and to work around our abysses.

Henri Nouwen is often engaging, insightful, clever, endearing, heartwarming and helpful. But this reader cannot find these attributes in any great measure in Nouwen's "Inner Voice of Love." We'll take the Psalms at their most desolate, Thomas Hardy at his bleakest, and Gerard Manley Hopkins in those sonnets and other poems ("The Leaden Echo") where he is at the point of despair. At least in these dark works, we know we have company. In this work by Henri Nouwen, we find glibness, flatness of language, sickening echoes of pop psychology and an authenticity that is at best, sporadic. We can sympathize with the anguish of the author as he wrote this book, without being obliged to venerate the work as if it were a sacred text.

Rating:
Summary: An honest and faithful guide through spiritual doubt
Review: The Inner Voice of Love is a book Nouwen never intended to publish. The short chapters are entries from his personal diary of a very dark and difficult time in his spiritual life. I found every page to be moving and instructive in how to reach out to God and others in times of doubt and confusion. This book should not be read in one sitting, but in many short readings with time for reflection and application.

Rating:
Summary: The Answer to the dark night...
Review: There are few that understand the devastaion of the dark place that Nouwen describes in the intro. There are far less that have words that act as wisdom as well as a soothing balm to this raw wounded inner place. I am convinced God himself communicates through Henris' pen.

This book is especially a must for anyone that has suffered deep loss, any kind of abuse or trauma. You will feel understood, less alone, and hear a guiding wisdom gently calling you back into the Divine embrace of wholeness and Love.

This book is a beautiful gift. It is a deep, profound sacred gem with life changing qualities.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a reference book to be used many times over.
Review: This book is an honest journey of the human experience and enables one to understand the meaning of life. It is very useful to all adults whether one is dealing with first hand depression or someone close to you is. He is able to reach the inner most sensitive parts of every human being and give comfort where there is pain. This is a book that needs to be kept out so one can read it at anytime, any chapter. It shows how going through very painful periods in this physical world lead to peace and valuable information that needs to be shared. It looks at life through very healthy eyes with God as our director. I don't think anyone could possibly read this book and not feel hopeful afterwards.

Rating:
Summary: He loves me!!
Review: This book was my anchor when I was sick and unable to take care of myself and my family. I read the whole book like a weak soul seeking for instant strength. Halfway through, a voice kept telling me to "Stop and listen to me". I stopped and opened to a random page and read what God was telling me "I love you and My love is enough for you". In conjunction with my daily scripture readings I hear God's loving voice amidst my own share of challenges and successes as well. A perfect gift of love.

Rating:
Summary: Heartrendingly Beautiful...Mindshatteringly Life Changing...
Review: Wow...

Let me say it again: WOW!!! This book will change you. It does not matter who you are or what your story is...if you are a human being...this book will change you.

Stop reading this review for a moment. Go buy the book. Come back and I will tell you more:

OK then. Now that you have purchased a copy (if you haven't I'm serious-go do it) lets talk about the book you will soon posses---or should I say will soon posses you. This book is amazing. It is the chronicle, told with heartbreaking honesty, of one man's ascent from darkness to light; from death to life...from nothingness to the arms of God.

This is not a story however. There is no narrative. It is a collection of spiritual imperatives that Henri Nouwen wrote to himself during the worst spiritual, emotional, and psychological crisis of his life. Each one drips with meaning.

Each imperative is soaked in the power and grace that can only come from passing through the fire of human suffering. This stuff is what was left at the end of each day Henri spent in the refining fires of his struggles. There is no dross here.

God has clearly spoken here in and through this man. Get this book and listen to what He has to say.

Rating:
Summary: Keep this one close
Review: You do not have to be Catholic to learn from and appreciate what Henri Nouwen has to say. He will touch your soul. Demonimational differences are moot. You do not have to be suffering from personal anguish to relate to Nouwen's words. His hunger for relationship with others and God are part of the common human experience. This book is a gift of "words". Words we have, at one time or another, tried so inadequately to find to explain our hunger to ourselves. Read it piece by precious piece and keep going back to it. It will keep you in touch with your own humaness, sensitive to the humaness of others, it will sand away the callouses of life and help you to focus on what is really of value.