The Inner Voice of Love

A Journey Through Anguish To Freedom

Certainly one of the most compelling of Nouwens books. Its power lies in its strictly personal nature, a private journal not intended for publication. For eight years it sat in a drawer in Nouwen’s room, shared only with closest friends. Over the years friends urged that it be released for publication. Nouwen resisted throughout, insisting that it was too personal. Fortunately, only months before his death, he yielded to importunings and after the necessary editing released the journal to his publisher. The record of a fierce inner struggle following what he called "an interrupted friendship," a friendship that he had come to depend on, only to find himself seemingly abandoned and rejected. He left his community, went into counseling therapy, and during this period, after each counseling session wrote a "spiritual imperative" — "a command to myself that had emerged from our sessions. These imperatives were directed to my own heart. They were not meant for anyone but myself." Which is precisely what makes them so powerful. Sixty-two silver bullets targeted to pierce to the core of the human heart.

(Doubleday, 1996, Pp.118)

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