Luther Smith

Bruce Adema: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Love Henri podcast, produced by the Henri Nouwen Society. My name is Bruce Adema. I’m the Executive Director of the Henri Nouwen Society, and therefore, I’m part of a great team that encourages spiritual transformation through the writings and legacy of the Spiritual Guide Henri Nouwen. Maybe you’ve appreciated Henri’s wisdom for a long time. Maybe you’ve just been introduced to it. Either way, I encourage you to sign up for the daily meditations on our website, henrinouwen.org, and be reminded every day that you are a beloved child of God. Our guest today is Dr. Luther Smith.

Bruce Adema: Professor Smith is Professor emeritus of Church and Community with the Candler School of Theology, part of Emory University. He’s the author and editor of influential books on Howard Thurman, Christian Community and Spiritual Practices. His current research focuses on the writings and correspondence of Howard Thurman on advocacy on behalf of children and a spirituality of hope. He is an ordained elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, and he retired from Candler in 2014. We’re going to be putting links about Candler and Emery and Dr. Smith in the show notes that will accompany this podcast. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Smith, I’ve introduced you in a brief way. What more should we know about you to really understand who you are?

Luther Smith: Thank you so much, Bruce. It’s good to be with you, and I so appreciate this invitation to be part of this larger community. I had taught in academic settings for over 35 years. My work in the larger community has especially been around children in poverty. I basically coordinate the Pan Methodist Campaign for Children in Poverty, which is a campaign of six Methodist denominations and have been finding a joy in working to change, especially systemic realities that affect the lives of children. This combination of being engaged in social activism and the matters of spiritual life has been so renewing for me.

Bruce Adema: Yes, renewing to you and important for Society and the world. Thank you for your very pointed interest in these really critical topics. Now, knowing that you are a teacher in the realm of spirituality,  I’m sure that you’ve become aware of Henri Nouwen, and can you tell us about how you came to know  of his work?

Luther Smith: Certainly. My formal work in terms of Christian spirituality began with Howard Thurman. And first in terms of just finding myself personally so influenced and deepened in his life and work, and then choosing him as a subject of schoL’Archehip. When I read Henri Nouwen’s first book, Wounded Healer, it felt like such a resonance with the kind of insights that I was also having with Howard Thurman, especially his transparency, that each would have about their own life and the reading of their own life as a way of understanding,  how spiritual forces are something that shaped them and upon which they rely,  the honesty in which they speak about their struggles. It really spoke to me so early on, even before I was a teacher. Early on as a student, I found myself so taken with Henri Nouwen and his way of speaking about his own struggles, and his reliance upon God and the transformations that would occur from that reliance,  and to hear so many people speak about how their own life had been affected by especially reading the Wounded Healer at that time.

Luther Smith: And that led me to read other works of Henri Nouwen that continued to reinforce the sense in which he’s a worthy guide.

Bruce Adema: Thank you. I totally resonate with that. Luther, when I’ve told many people that Henri’s book, the Wounded Healer helped me continue on in my ministry preparation in seminary, I was in a difficult spot, and Henri’s words helped me to gain the strength and hope to carry on. So thank you for sharing that as well.

Luther Smith: Thank you.

Bruce Adema: Our podcast is called Love Henri, because we’re drawing on the letters that he wrote during his life. He was a powerful letter writer. People would write to him because he became a well-known author, a spiritual guide, he led retreats, and all those kind of things. And so people would say, if I need advice or help, I’ll write to Henri. And they did. Well, Henri kept every letter that he ever received, and he replied to almost all of them and kept a carbon copy of every letter that he sent. So in the archive at the University of Toronto, there are 16,000 letters from Henri. Now, some of them, not all of them, obviously,  have been compiled and put into this book.  It’s called Love Henri, and it’s selected letters,  with a very brief introduction to each.

Bruce Adema: Very, very helpful, and people have received it with much appreciation. Today’s letter we’re going to be talking about is a letter that Henri wrote on July 25th, 1988, to Sue Mosteller, a Catholic sister of St. Joseph. Sister Sue was a longtime member of L’Arche Daybreak, and a catalyst for calling Henri to daybreak as pastor. She played a pivotal role in helping repair a broken friendship between Henri and another person, and Sue would continue to be Henri’s friend, intellectual partner, and wise counsel for the rest of his life. Now, I actually know Sue personally. She lives in Toronto, and that’s where our offices are. She’s a wise and wonderful, beautiful person who it’s my privilege to, to know. Well, Henri writes this letter to Sue, as they are both preparing to leave Winnipeg for a trip to France. He expresses that he’s feeling weak and apprehensive about the future. He contemplates his feelings of uselessness and emptiness as a means for God to enter his life more fully.

Bruce Adema: Now, let me read Henri’s letter, and, remember that this was written 36 years ago. Sue has given permission for her letter to be in the book,  which is generous also on her part. But let me read this for you:

Dear Sue,

Time is going fast, and within a few days we will be on our way to Paris. Something seems to be coming to an end. Last night I packed my boxes and suitcases and emptied my little room. I know that this is a time of leaving even though I am still very apprehensive about the future. I feel so weak and vulnerable! It seems that only a complete trust in Jesus’ guidance in all of this can make it possible for me to move beyond my anguish. Going to Marthe’s* place gives me much hope and confidence because the strength I need has to be given to me. The fruitfulness of her life that was so visibly weak, powerless and even completely ‘useless’ has to give me the inner knowledge that God wants my life to be fruitful too even though I feel so empty.

As I mentioned to you on the phone, the week after Daybreak was a very hard week interiorly. I do not know yet what it all means. Most of all I think God does not want to give me any chance to rely on my own emotional resources and won’t give me any consolation based on the ‘old ways.’ Well, no wishes, but much hope, no big plans, but trust, no great desires, but much love, no knowledge of the future, but a lot of empty space for God to walk in! There is a deep sense of uselessness but maybe that is the kind of soil God needs to sow his seed!

I have been praying for you and will pray with special fervor for you during this week. I am very glad that you finished your paper. That must be a real relief to you. It is important to let it go now, even when it is not perfect. It certainly is very good! I am also very glad that you are going to Nominingue [Quebec]. It feels very good to me that we are both that. It feels very good to me that we are both. It feels very good to me that we are both. It feels very good to me that we both are part of the renewal**. You will find there very good people with much love in their hearts and a great desire to be close to God and God’s little people. I hope you have a chance to tell them how deeply connected I feel with all of them, how much I miss being there, how grateful I am for their friendship and how strong my hope is that they will grow in the knowledge of the Father’s mercy and love. Your presence there can truly deepen and strengthen, widen and enrich the knowledge of God’s loving presence that I tried to offer in the first days of the renewal.

See you in the plane!

Love

Henry

* The trip included a visit to the home of Marthe Robin (1902-1981), a French Roman Catholic mystic who was bedridden for more than five decades.

** Henri is referring to a gathering of members of North American L’Arche communities called a L’Arche Renewal. He participated the previous month, giving talks on the theme of ‘returning’ based on Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son. The talks were edited by Sue Mosteller as Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (New York:Doubleday, 2009).

Interesting letter.  Luther, what was your reaction to this letter?

Luther Smith: Well, first, Sue and I have corresponded about L’Arche matters. I’ve worked with L’Arche in a variety of capacities, but one was serving on the National Board of L’Arche. So there’s that commonality of background. Hers is so deep in terms of the decades that she’s given to L’Arche. Mine primarily began in the late 1990s, or early two thousands. So there’s a kind of connection that I feel, with knowing the person, at least through correspondence to whom this letter is written.  Bruce, the themes that I hear in this letter are so much aligned. It seems to me, with the way in which Henri Nouwen comes through in his books,  I read Henri Nouwen as seemingly always on some path at which he is in sensing a call beyond where he is.

Luther Smith: It’s not to diminish where he is as much as it is to have a sense that where he has been, be it in Nicaragua, or be it teaching in the classroom,  be it all of the lectures and retreats. There’s a sense I get from Henri Nouwen that there is more that is both needed, by him, as well as what is being called forth from him in terms of his relationship with God, and what comes out of his prayer life, as well as how he indicates the need for deeper prayer life in order to understand the direction he’s being called to. This matter of discernment is quite evident in this particular letter, and I think is also quite evident in all of Henri Nouwen’s writings.  So when I read a Henri Nouwen book, it’s always, for me, the identification of a phase in which Henri’s life is being lived.

Luther Smith: And the next book may tell you something very different, as to how he has discerned this next phase, being responsive to that discernment. But there’s never the sense in which, this is it. This is the place,  once and for all.  And the sense of discernment here, for him in terms of going forward is clearly informed, by a couple of things. One being his pain, in terms of a relationship at L’Arche. And I’ve understood that to be something of the background of this letter, and especially how Sue was very, very influential in addressing a painful relationship that Henri had while at Daybreak. And also his way of taking seriously these next steps, and very much affirming the friendship that he has with Sue.  There’s a tenderness in that, that is so appreciative and desired. And I think it’s also in many ways a reflection of what we come to know, both through Henri’s writings, but also through biographers, how Henri is hungry for caring, loving relationships. And this is part of his spiritual quest, his personal quest. And I think it gets reflected both in how seriously he responds to Sue, but also the anguish behind the letter, as well as how he’s looking for the future to be responsive to the hunger of his heart.

Bruce Adema: What I find really beautiful about Henri: I’ve heard him referred to as a spiritual master, and that if someone called me that I might have the temptation to get all full of myself. Henri was not a man who was full of himself. He was marked by humility and transparency. He had a struggle. He shared it. There was nothing false about him, as far as I have seen, and he was very willing to be transparent about his own brokenness. He had periods of depression where he had to receive treatment and counsel.  He was not a perfect man, not strong in every way, but he shared that. And that is a part of Henri that I know I wish to emulate.

Luther Smith: I think this is one of the appealing aspects of the Wounded Healer, as well as his other books where we have the privilege of hearing him speak about his vulnerabilities. When I hear that that kind of open-heartedness is not unusual for Henri, and certainly not usual among religious leaders who I think are seeking to provide guidance by enumerating the points of strength one should have; their own certitude about matters, should reassure one as a listener or as a reader. But when you read Henri, you have this transparency, this vulnerability, this open-heartedness that feels like the invitation to sacred ground. Anytime we’re on sacred ground,  there can be this urge to take off one’s shoes. And I think with Henri,  in reading him, I, I never met him, but in reading him, the feeling is that, here is an open heart, and the sacred ground is before me.

Luther Smith: As I’m reading this invitation into my life, my heart, my questions, my doubts, my certainties, my trust, my pursuit, that kind of invitation, I admire, (with so many other people) one with which they can identify. So he is speaking to me who also has vulnerabilities. He is speaking to me who also has disappointments. He’s speaking to me who doesn’t just have the questions of faith that are on the journey. But the questions as to how am I being who I was called to be on this journey, and what do I do with the disappointments I’ve had on this journey, and how might I be so resolved as a person of faith in ways that don’t require me to somehow or another be dismissive of my disappointments, but to embrace them as a way by which I can move forward more faithfully. It’s these elements that I think likely resonate with so many readers. It certainly resonates with me.

Bruce Adema: Thank you. You rightly pointed out the importance of friendship in this letter, that there was a friendship that that was strained,  which caused Henri real anguish, but there was also the friendship with Sue that gave him strength and what he needed. We see the importance of friendship. What do you see in this letter regarding that?

Luther Smith: Well, clearly there’s a background of Sue and Henri, where they can be real with one another and understand dimensions of the particular issue that is one of travail for him. And I think it reflects not only how he was relying upon friendship, how he was hungry for friendships, as we know throughout his life, as he is very self-disclosing about that need of his, and even at times, what he describes as the desire for special friendships, which as we know is often discouraged in especially monastic communities, are the priesthood where one should be equally open and available and in relationship with everyone, because yours is a vocation of service. But I think Henri’s hunger is what we all have: a feeling and need for, and even in terms of the monastic Abbotts, recognizing that special friendships do not necessarily work against the monastic order and who we are called to be in terms of a priestly role in our lives.

Luther Smith: And so this hunger of his is certainly identified with Sue and, and how she is someone who accompanies him in this journey. Accompany is a major term in the L’Arche world in terms of who we are to be with one another, as well as recognizing, his hurt over a broken relationship with someone else in the life of that community. So, friendship is clearly important to him. He draws upon it, he pursues it. I know some people who knew Henri Nouwen personally and who themselves felt so privileged to have that kind of close relationship with him. And he emphasizes the importance of friendship. I think he’s sending a message to all of us about the importance of friendship, that it’s not just an expression of some kind of deficiency that one would hunger for friendship, but it’s an expression of what nurtures the soul. If we’re declaring ourselves as so independent. And so self-made that we are a people without this hunger, without this need. We’re really betraying the reality of what it means to be on the journey that relies upon caring relationship that relies upon the depth of friendship, and that relies upon our giving ourselves to it.

Bruce Adema: Couldn’t agree with you more.  As you were talking, I was reflecting on the life of Jesus Christ,  and he had these 12 men who he lived with and traveled with and shared everything with.  But there was one who was the disciple that Jesus loved, and obviously there was something special about the relationship that he had with that person. And think about Lazarus, who passed away, and Jesus stood at his grave and wept over, the death of his friend.  Jesus obviously valued friendship and sought it out.  What a privilege that would’ve been! Somebody said, oh, yeah, that guy, he’s a friend of Jesus. What a wonderful way to be described!

Luther Smith: Yes. As, as you know, I’ve just published a book on hope, and one of the things that I’ve emphasized is the necessity of friendship for this journey. I speak to the very point you just made Bruce, about Jesus and friendship. So often we think of the disciples as being gathered together, continue to proclaim the message that Jesus declared, beyond his own life. But as true as that may be, I believe Jesus gathered the disciples out of his own need, and that he would live in community through times of laughter and tears. And as we know, especially from the gospel of Mark, a lot of misunderstanding from the disciples, without those who were for him, an intimate community,  the journey would not only be lonely, it could possibly be unbearable.

Luther Smith: So, friendships are a gift of God. And if we need to phrase them in that way in order to understand their religious significance, fine. But we also know people who do not consider themselves as religious at all, are also deeply in need of friendship. I think even hermits are in need of friendship and make their lives possible because of the relationships they will have with a monastic community. Even at times with visitors they did not call upon, but who come there and who really speak to their higher vocation of love by showing up and being available, and at times even rescuing a hermit from starvation. So these matters of friendship are responding to how God created us to be with one another and for one another.

Bruce Adema: Henri refers to the sister, Martha, that he’s going to see her. I think he had seen her before, too, a woman who could not get out. People came to her, and obviously had a relationship. Henri deeply valued this woman, and her spiritual insight. In another letter that we’ve discussed on the “Love, Henri” podcast, with another person, there was an anchoress, somebody who stayed in one place and would not leave, but people came and she wrote letters, and she wrote to Henri, and, they experienced friendship through that. So yes, everybody needs friendship, and we find our way, with God’s help. Now, in this letter, another part of it is Henri having to make decisions about his future. At several points in his life he had to discern, should I become a missionary in South America? And he went to test that out, said, Nope, that’s not my calling.  Should I be a professor? And for quite a number of years, he did that. And he says, no, in the end, I have to go somewhere else. And he ended up in Daybreak with L’Arche. But even after that, he’s in this place of wondering. I don’t know what I have to decide or make a decision about. What do I have to do, where do I have to go? These are very important times for us, isn’t it?

Luther Smith: Yes, and in this letter, he speaks of prayer as the means by which he’s hoping to clarify what the next step is. And of course, in all of these matters, Henri Nouwen is praying and discerning, and it conveys how I think, on his particular journey, the prayer and the discernment was not a once and for all matter for him. The way in which prayer and discernment led him to a particular expression of his vocation was important and crucial and responsive to how he was giving himself to it. Because he decided to do something else after several years is by no means a reflection that he got the discernment wrong and the prayer wrong. But that we will continue faithfully in our destination when we take those paths that lead us to a place and to a time, and to relationships that enable us to address something that is speaking deeply within us. And out of that, we are able to gain some insight as to where next. It’s not a matter of having itchy feet, but it is a matter of taking seriously of how a calling can be one in which we’re not always being called to our final destination. We are called to another place of fulfillment and discernment, that enables us to continue to hear in a clearer way how the depths of us are speaking for more.

Bruce Adema: It’s said that people change careers multiple times during their lives.  I know for myself, I worked for an ambulance company, and then I thought, oh, maybe I need to be in ministry. And in ministry, my career has taken different twists and turns and different places and opportunities. I think many of our listeners will appreciate that if they are thinking, oh, I’m doing this now, but I’m thinking maybe I need to do something else in the future. And people were, I know I worried, am I just being fickle?  Do I need to just stick with it? Or does God’s call for me change from time to time? Yes, I like that word fickle. What do you think?

Luther Smith: Well, over my years of teaching, I’ve had many bi-vocational students. And so we would often at the seminary have students who had been lawyers or in the business world or into some other type of life making that seemed to them very different than ministry. I would have students who would say, well, I was a lawyer and I’ve left that all behind. Or, I was in business and I’ve left that all behind, and now I’m embracing ministry. And I would say to them, please do not separate the experiences you’ve had, the insights, the gifts as something that now you are dispensing, from your life. Altogether, you’re dismissing from your life would be a better expression. That in one sense, you’re turning your back to it all. You aren’t pursuing the places where this gets worked out in terms of a professional identity as a lawyer or as a business leader or some other firm.

Luther Smith: But ministry really relies upon you bringing your full self and whatever has been your previous experience,  be it these expert skills or even things that are embarrassing now to talk about. One of the ways in which, for example,  persons have gone into ministry in order to address gangs in their city, is to speak of their own experience in a gang. And it has given them a kind of authority among other gang leaders to hear this is part of my past, which is available in my present for the transformation of both our futures. It’s this sort of embrace of the whole journey that is crucial for making us as faithful as we might be in the present, as well as making us as transformative as we might be for the future.

Bruce Adema: The Christian tradition that I come out of talks a lot about how every area of life is under the Lordship of Christ. So if you’re a lawyer, if you’re a teacher, if you’re a construction worker, that you’ve been called to that, and do it to the glory of God, do it in a way that pleases God. This prayerful discernment is really important, that you can serve God in all these ways. You don’t need to be a clergyman. You don’t need to be a nun. You don’t need to be in ministry. You can serve God where you are with the skills you have, with the interest that you have, and bring him glory. But then you got to pray right, for discernment. How do you think we can trust that the conclusion we come to saying, “No, I’m going to go to law school, or I’m going to get my plumber’s ticket, or I’m going to be a homemaker. How do we have a sense of confidence that what we have prayed for is God’s answer to that prayer?

Bruce Adema: I just throw all easy questions.

Luther Smith: Well, in the book I just referenced, actually the first spiritual practice is contemplative praying. And in that I speak about how praying actually has at least three phases. That it’s not just, you know, having a particular posture at a particular place and speaking one’s heart to God, as if God doesn’t know what’s on one’s heart. We speak that for ourselves.  But how are we listening? And how are we giving ourselves to settle in such a way that the many distractions, the many anxieties and fears and the kind of discomfort that we might feel about realities that are happening to us, how do we settle to listen to ourselves more deeply, as well as to listen for what may come from beyond ourselves, may deeply listen to how God may be speaking to us through friendship, or God may be speaking to us through a reality occurring in our life where no one is necessarily calling our name, but the incident is one that is clearly a message for us.

Luther Smith: And so it’s there, it’s this deep listening, and then there’s this discernment. The second phase, how do we come to understand the meaning of what has happened? And if we move too quickly to decide, you know, this particular happening of mine, it must mean X when it may not mean X, but how do I have the sort of ability and the time and the practices that enable me to discern, to test, to check with others about what my heart has been hearing? And then the third phase is engagement. That really a prayer is not over when I have ended this particular time of listening, but both the listening, the discernment, and the engagement are all part of prayer. And so, I think it’s possible to say that in many ways, we can pray without ceasing or we should pray without ceasing, because all of our lives is in some way an expression of prayer.

Luther Smith: How I’m engaged, how I’m discerning my engagement, how I’m listening. You know, his brother Laurent even understood,  working in the kitchen and doing dishes, and whatever he did was an expression of prayer. And, there can be this prayerful way of living that has no time of ending, and it doesn’t dismiss the deep times of that we may have in terms of a contemplative act of prayer. It doesn’t dismiss that. That’s crucial, but at least it helps to expand the whole notion of prayer itself and how that can be, for us, a way in which our lives are lived within prayer, and not just thinking of prayer as something that has a point of beginning and end. We’re only praying when we, somehow or another have gotten on our knees or spoken God’s name.

Bruce Adema: I love the way you said that Luther, that for the Christian, life is prayer.  And it is a corrective, for me, because my tendency probably coming out of my personality, I pray and then I decide, okay, I pray and I’m impetuous in my response. What you’re teaching me, and I’m hearing from you, is that you also need to listen for God’s response. And that God response doesn’t happen the moment you unfold your hands. God speaks also through friends or other things. And that in time, you know, it becomes clear. Certainly, I can testify to that, and that’s an important point.

Luther Smith: Yes. It’s the sense in which prayer is communication, and it involves both our speaking. As I said, I don’t think it’s to inform God about anything that God doesn’t already know.

Luther Smith: But as I speak, I’m naming some things for myself.  It may not be all together exhaustive, but I’m naming some things for myself. And at times when I do this, I hear things that may surprise me. It’s important for me to acknowledge them and to decide to continue to dwell with them and it, and to not expect there’s going to be some clarity about them in that moment. And this is where I think the ongoing discernment can be crucial.  It’s like the mystic vision, and we certainly speak of Henri as very much a part of the mystic tradition, where mystics do not always have a sense of what a vision means, but what they do have a feeling of is the vision itself.

Luther Smith: Like St. Francis who had the vision of hearing Christ say to him, repair my church. And he had asked for so long if this meant repairing church buildings when the message was really, my church has strayed away from its true mission in terms of relating to lives and transforming lives and the healing work. And it took him some time to come around to that understanding of the vision. This is the discernment dimension of it. And often that arises out of the way in which we’re involved. And there is for us this capacity to be honest, to be vulnerable, to name things, to make mistakes, and to have our trust not in our own perfection for getting things right, but in trusting God with our lives, and trusting God with our confessions and trusting God with our desires and our anguish, and trusting God to change our desiring so that we aren’t pairing into our prayers simply either wish fulfillment or our fears and our anxieties. All of those are important, but that we’re taking into our prayer life, the desire to align ourselves with God’s dream for us.

Bruce Adema: Henri has some challenge about that, right? It you in the Bible, right? There’s the man Peter sees, the man from Macedonia. There’s a guy, clearly a Macedonian person, saying, come here and help us. Oh, what? Okay, I know where I’ve got to go. God has made it crystal clear that this is my calling.  Henri had a calling to ministry, a calling to service, a calling to priesthood, but he didn’t always know where that was going to be directed. And it created an emotional toll for him. He wanted to be obedient to God’s call. Where do you want me to go, Lord? I will go, just let me know. And he struggled with that emotional toll.

Luther Smith: Yes. It’s the sort of thing that can be for the deeply religious person, not only a matter of reassurance and comfort, but a matter of anguish. And you know, the expression “prayer changes things.” Well, yeah.  I think that can always be the case, especially when prayer is changing us in some form or fashion, but what gets changed in us is not always something that addresses the restlessness of our spirits. The important aspect of this is to not somehow another abandon prayer as unreliable or, as somehow failing to address what is needed. It’s sustaining the communication. It’s an expression of trust in God. It’s an expression of how I surrender,  how I give myself to this life, to this journey of pursuing God’s dream for not only me, but for pursuing God’s dream for the world.

Luther Smith: And at times that can be a pursuit that is experienced with a certain kind of desired peace. And at times, it can be a pursuit that seemingly is characterized by certain kind of anguish, in terms of, have I gotten it right and eagerness, and where’s this leading me? I think for most persons, it’s a combination of peace and anguish. Yeah. But there is a sense in which the peace and the anguish should not be understood as complete in and of themselves. But how is there, for me, joy, with the peace, with the anguish, how is there joy in being on a path, in being on the journey, having surrendered my heart and trusting and knowing that even with all of my stumbling and all of my need,  I am not making this journey alone.

Bruce Adema: As you’re saying, prayer is part of your relationship. That if we are in a relationship with God, that we will have times of focused prayer, but also the times of all times of living prayer, living in relationship,  with God. We have to do the best we can to understand what is God’s call for us, vocationally, relationally, in so many ways, and, waiting on God. This will help us to understand what his call indeed is for us.

Luther Smith: I also want to express how this time with you and with the Society is speaking to a previous experience that I’ve had at Daybreak, where I had the opportunity to spend a couple of nights in Henri’s bedroom. You know, the furniture had been changed, but here I was in the bedroom and there were all these thoughts for me of Henri and how he brought so much of this anguish and discernment, and the joy and the peace and the community, into this place, in which I now find myself. And as you know, the bedroom is right outside the library. The library area was also a place where Henri would do a lot of his interpersonal counseling. So here is this space where Henri Nouwen, the scholar, Henri Nouwen, the mentor, the spiritual guide, Henri Nouwen, who is alone and is discerning and, and seeking so deeply who he is to be in the midst of all of this. There was for me, this confluence of so much of, of Nouwen’s journey that I felt quite honored to have in the room. And so I just allowed the walls to speak to me.

Bruce Adema: That’s lovely. I’ve been there too. I’ve stood in what was his room and I’ll tell you, the desk that I use in my office was Henri’s bedroom writing desk. So, every day I come to work and I sit at Henri’s table and try to represent him as he represented Jesus to the world. And what a privilege this has been, Luther, truly a wonderful privilege. I just want to thank you for being with me today, for sharing your wisdom with me and with all who listen. We wish you God’s blessing in your continued life and study and your writing.

Luther Smith: I was just going to say, I’m very honored for the invitation. Thank you. And thank you for the ongoing work that you’re doing to keep the witness of Henri Nouwen. And not only in some way available to us, but in an expansive way so that, Henri is increasingly in the cloud of witnesses of so many people.

Bruce Adema: Thank you, Dr. Luther Smith, it’s been a privilege to have you. Now I also want to say thank you to you, our listeners. If you’ve been listening on the audio version of this conversation, that’s wonderful. But you also, if you wish, can find the video version of it on our YouTube channel, which you can access through our website, henrinouwen.org. And while you’re there, sign up for the free daily meditations, learn about the other interesting and important programs of the Henri Nouwen Society. If you’ve enjoyed today’s program, why don’t you leave a nice review and give it a big thumbs up. You could also share the link with your family and friends and help them to receive a blessing from today’s conversation. And may you never forget that you are a beloved child of God.