love and the pain of leaving by henri nouwen

"Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies ... the pain of the leaving can tear us apart. Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking."

what I am reading right now

--------------------------- About the Author Born in Texas and raised in Chicago, Janna Levin is now an Advanced Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. She holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked previously at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 IS THE UNIVERSE INFINITE OR IS IT JUST REALLY BIG? Some of the great mathematicians killed themselves. The lore is that their theories drove them mad, though I suspect they were just lonely, isolated by what they knew. Sometimes I feel the isolation. I'd like to describe what I can see from here, so you can look with me and ease the solitude, but I never feel like giving rousing speeches about billions of stars and the glory of the cosmos. When I can, I like to forget about math and grants and science and journals and research and heroes. Boltzmann is the one I remember most and his student Ehrenfest. Over a century ago the Viennese-born mathematician Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) invented statistical mechanics, a powerful description of atomic behavior based on probabilities. Opposition to his ideas was harsh and his moods were volatile. Despondent, fearing disintegration of his theories, he hanged himself in 1906. It wasn't his first suicide attempt, but it was his most successful. Paul Ehrenfest (1880-1933) killed himself nearly thirty years later. I looked at their photos today and searched their eyes for depression and desperation. I didn't see them written there. My curiosity about the madness of some mathematicians is morbid but harmless. I wonder if alienation and brushes with insanity are occupational hazards. The first mathematician we remember encouraged seclusion. The mysterious Greek visionary Pythagoras (about 569 b.c.-about 475 b.c.) led a secretive, devout society fixated on numbers and triangles. His social order prospered in Italy millennia before labor would divide philosophy from science, mathematics from music. The Pythagoreans believed in the mystical meaning of numbers and developed a religion tending towards occult numerology. Their faith in the sanctity of numbers was shaken by their own perplexing mathematical discoveries. A Pythagorean who broke his vow of secrecy and exposed the enigma of numbers that the group had uncovered was drowned for his sins. Pythagoras killed himself, too. Persecution may have incited his suicide, from what little we know of a mostly lost history. When I tell the stories of their suicide and mental illness, people always wonder if their fragility came from the nature of the knowledge-the knowledge of nature. I think rather that they went mad from rejection. Their mathematical obsessions were all-encompassing and yet ethereal. They needed their colleagues beyond needing their approval. To be spurned by their peers meant death of their ideas. They needed to encrypt the meaning in others' thoughts and be assured their ideas would be perpetuated. I can only write about those we've recorded and celebrated, if posthumously. Some great geniuses will be forgotten because their work will be forgotten. A bunch of trees falling in a forest fearing they make no sound. Most of us feel the need to implant our ideas at the very least in others' memories so they don't expire when our own memories become inadequate. No one wants to be the tree falling in the forest. But we all risk the obscurity ushered by forgetfulness and indifference. I admit I'm afraid sometimes that no one is listening. Many of our scientific publications, sometimes too formal or too obscure, are read by only a handful of people. I'm also guilty of a self-imposed separation. I know I've locked you out of my scientific life and it's where I spend most of my time. I know you don't want to be lectured with disciplined lessons on science. But I think you would want a sketch of the cosmos and our place in it. Do you want to know what I know? You're my last hope. I'm writing to you because I know you're curious but afraid to ask. Consider this a kind of diary from my social exile as a roaming scientist. An offering of little pieces of the little piece I have to offer. I will make amends, start small, and answer a question you once asked me but I never answered. You asked me once: what's a universe? Or did you ask me: is a galaxy a universe? The great German philosopher and alleged obsessive Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) called them universes. All he could see of them were these smudges in the sky. I don't really know what he meant by calling them universes exactly, but it does conjure up an image of something vast and grand, and in spirit he was right. They are vast and grand, bright and brilliant, viciously crowded cities of stars. But universes they are not. They live in a universe, the same one as us. They go on galaxy after galaxy endlessly. Or do they? Is it endless? And here my troubles begin. This is my question. Is the universe infinite? And if the universe is finite, how can we make sense of a finite universe? When you asked me the question I thought I knew the answer: the universe is the whole thing. I'm only now beginning to realize the significance of the answer. 3 SEPTEMBER 1998 Warren keeps telling everyone we're going back to England, though, as you know, I never came from England. The decision is made. We're leaving California for England. Do I recount the move itself, the motivation, the decision? It doesn't matter why we moved, because the memory of why is paling with the wear. I do remember the yard sales on the steps of our place in San Francisco. All of my coveted stuff. My funny vinyl chairs and chrome tables, my wooden benches and chests of drawers. It's all gone. We sit out all day as the shade of the buildings is slowly invaded by the sun and we lean against the dirty steps with some reservation. Giant coffees come and go and we drink smoothies with bee pollen or super blue-green algae in homage to California as the neighborhood parades past and my pile of stuff shifts and shrinks and slowly disappears. We roll up the cash with excitement, though it is never very much. When it gets too cold or too dark we pack up and go back inside. I'm trying to finish a technical paper and sort through my ideas on infinity. For a long time I believed the universe was infinite. Which is to say, I just never questioned this assumption that the universe was infinite. But if I had given the question more attention, maybe I would have realized sooner. The universe is the three-dimensional space we live in and the time we watch pass on our clocks. It is our north and south, our east and west, our up and down. Our past and future. As far as the eye can see there appears to be no bound to our three spatial dimensions and we have no expectation for an end to time. The universe is inhabited by giant clusters of galaxies, each galaxy a conglomerate of a billion or a trillion stars. The Milky Way, our galaxy, has an unfathomably dense core of millions of stars with beautiful arms, a skeleton of stars, spiraling out from this core. The earth lives out in the sparsely populated arms orbiting the sun, an ordinary star, with our planetary companions. Our humble solar system. Here we are. A small planet, an ordinary star, a huge cosmos. But we're alive and we're sentient. Pooling our efforts and passing our secrets from generation to generation, we've lifted ourselves off this blue and green water-soaked rock to throw our vision far beyond the limitations of our eyes. The universe is full of galaxies and their stars. Probably, hopefully, there is other life out there and background light and maybe some ripples in space. There are bright objects and dark objects. Things we can see and things we can't. Things we know about and things we don't. All of it. This glut of ingredients could carry on in every direction forever. Never ending. Just when you think you've seen the last of them, there's another galaxy and beyond that one another infinite number of galaxies. No infinity has ever been observed in nature. Nor is infinity tolerated in a scientific theory-except we keep assuming the universe itself is infinite. It wouldn't be so bad if Einstein hadn't taught us better. And here the ideas collide so I'll just pour them out unfiltered. Space is not just an abstract notion but a mutable, evolving field. It can begin and end, be born and die. Space is curved, it is a geometry, and our experience of gravity, the pull of the earth and our orbit around the sun, is just a free fall along the curves in space. From this huge insight people realized the universe must be expanding. The space between the galaxies is actually stretching even if the galaxies themselves were otherwise to stay put. The universe is growing, aging. And if it's expanding today, it must have been smaller once, in the sense that everything was once closer together, so close that everything was on top of each other, essentially in the same place, and before that it must not have been at all. The universe had a beginning. There was once nothing and now there is something. What sways me even more, if an ultimate theory of everything is found, a theory beyond Einstein's, then gravity and matter and energy are all ultimately different expressions of the same thing. We're all intrinsically of the same substance. The fabric of the universe is just a coherent weave from the same threads that make our bodies. How much more absurd it becomes to believe that the universe, space, and time could possibly be infinite when all of us are finite. So this is what I'll tell you about from beginning to end. I've squeezed down all the facts into dense paragraphs, like the preliminary squeeze of an accordion. The subsequent filled notes will be sustained in later letters. You could say this is the story of the universe's topology, the branch of mathematics that governs finite spaces and an aspect of spacetime that Einstein overlooked. I don't know how this story will play itself out, but I'm curious to see how it goes. I'll try to tell you my reasons for believing the universe is finite, unpopular as they are in some scientific crowds, and why a few of us find ourselves at odds with the rest of our colleagues.

"In Western Christian culture, we tend to oppose light with darkness and assume that since light is good, darkness must be bad. But it is not, necessarily. The darkness of the womb and of the soil, for instance, are places of incubation, gestation and growth. Seasons of darkness in our lives are often good and necessary...Death is a mystery, veiled and dark. We are tempted to fear this darkness, to forget that the good shepherd is with us, guiding and comforting us. In our fear, we can become hasty, rushing blindly and desperately through the darkness in order to get to the other side. But this we must not do. We must remain in the darkness as long as it takes to learn in death's shadow the lessons we can only learn there. We must wait patiently in the darkness, trusting that God is with us and is growing new life in us. For, Jesus says, only if a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies will it bear much fruit." Kimberlee Conway

“What we have to be is what we are.”
― Thomas Merton

I have become a victim to a humble state of fatigue. After days of resisting, I have finally given into going to the doctor tomorrow.
The thing I despise about being sick is that many of the emotional walls I have constructed fall and emotions surface. Its amazing how events from years ago still are buried deep down within. It makes sense I guess. We dont have time to properly mourn pains that should be grieved. And sometimes, even after we think we have properly grieved, we realize that the human heart isnt capable of completely erasing memories.
But to the credit of repression, we also cant function on a daily basis with being plagued by the past.
I tried to search and find a thread through the emerging emotion; was there a common element in the memories that were continually gnawing on my heart?
I realized in an instant that all these memories I was grieving were due to the loss of innocence; whether a part of my own or the loss of someone else's, what is it so deeply within humanity that wishes to maintain something that can never be returned?
I had a memory of an image. The image was the same one I had seen one night riding the bus in Buenos Aires about 9 months ago. I imagined one of my friends 10 years ago before I knew him. Now a man calloused by the world, a man possessed by an ambition that has already planted a deep seed of hatred towards himself, I saw him as he would have been ten years ago eating ice cream.
There he was, sitting on a table outside an ice cream shop, eating the melting ice cream illuminated by the city street lights. In the dark I stood across him. While speaking to each other, the words in the image were mute because the significance was within one simple moment. Bending over his cone, I saw an innocent boy who understood nothing of the complexities of life, and in that instance I suddenly knew that it was this simplicity that eternity is composed of.
I quickly turned my head from the window. The rain in the dark blurred my view and reminded me that I would never see his innocence.
What did thomas merton mean when he wrote this phrase: what we have to be is what we are? Did he mean, as the great writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote,“In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.”
Or was it that we are destined to become whatever virtue or vice is developing our character?
Regardless, I have concluded that though people will eventually lose their childlike innocence, it does not mean that they cant cultivate a simplicity or sincerity about life that are both forms of innocence. And while I can grieve over the calloused hearts that have taken over so many people, I can have hope that God will one day restore.

Goodbye Argentina

"I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer..." rainer maria rilke
I used to believe that one day I would put a white dress on, and in a single moment, give my heart away. But as many ideas we discover to be illusions as we journey through life, I have slowly found that this is not the case. If to love is to be vulnerable, then love is something given away year by year. The deepest pain is seeded in the reality that a large part of our heart has been distributed before we are aware of it.
As if once upon a time, my heart existed as a mirror which served only to reflect my own ego. Looking back, the truth has surfaced that my heart was indeed, in the beginning, fully mine. But the mirror has been shattered. Piece by piece, I have given my heart away. How strange it is to arrive at a place in life where I see the necessity in grieving each piece in order to find peace.
Maybe even stranger, I have discovered that part of my heart has been given to a country.

Confessions

that “which thing I was sighing for, bound as I was, not with another's irons, but by my own iron will. My will the enemy held, and thence had made a chain for me, and bound me. For of a forward will, was a lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not resisted, became necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together (whence I called it a chain) a hard bondage held me enthralled. But that new will which had begun to be in me, freely to serve Thee, and to wish to enjoy Thee, O God, the only assured pleasantness, was not yet able to overcome my former wilfulness, strengthened by age. Thus did my two wills, one new, and the other old, one carnal, the other spiritual, struggle within me; and by their discord, undid my soul.”
Then one night, Augustine finds himself alone in a garden weeping.
“I cast myself down I know not how, under a certain fig- tree, giving full vent to my tears; and the floods of mine eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to Thee. And, not indeed in these words, yet to this purpose, spake I much unto Thee: and Thou, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord, wilt Thou be angry for ever? Remember not our former iniquities, for I felt that I was held by them. I sent up these sorrowful words: How long, how long, “to- morrow, and tomorrow?” Why not now? Why not is there is hour an end to my uncleanness?
So I was speaking and weeping in to most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, 'Take up and read; Take up and read.' Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find...I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all darkness of doubt vanished away.”

- st. augustine

excerpt from dark night of the soul

“...God desires to withdraw them from this base manner of loving and lead them on to a higher degree of divine love. And he desires to liberate them from the lowly exercise of the senses and of discursive meditation, by which they go in search of him so inadequately and with so many difficulties, and lead them into the exercise of spirit, in which they become capable of a communion with God that is more abundant and more free of imperfections. God does this after beginners have exercised themselves for a time in the way of virtue and have persevered in meditation and prayer. For it is through the delight and satisfaction they experience in prayer that they have become detached from worldly things and have gained some spiritual strength in God. This strength has helped them somewhat to restrain their appetites for creatures, and through it they will be able to suffer a little oppression and dryness without turning back. Consequently, it is at the time they are going about their spiritual exercises with delight and satisfaction, when in their opinion the sun of divine favor is shining most brightly on them, that God darkens all this light and closes the door and the spring of sweet spiritual water they were tasting as often and as long as they desired. For since they were weak and tender, no door was closed to them, as St. John says in the Book of Revelation [Rv. 3:8]. God now leaves them in such darkness that they do not know which way to turn in their discursive imaginings. They cannot advance a step in meditation, as they used to, now that the interior sense faculties are engulfed in this night. He leaves them in such dryness that they not only fail to receive satisfaction and pleasure from their spiritual exercises and works, as they formerly did, but also find these exercises distasteful and bitter. As I said, when God sees that they have grown a little, he weans them from the sweet breast so that they might be strengthened, lays aside their swaddling bands, and puts them down from his arms that they may grow accustomed to walking by themselves. This change is a surprise to them because everything seems to be functioning in reverse.” - St. John of the Cross

Stanzas of the Soul

1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
- St. John of the Cross