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On September 21, 1996, Henri Nouwen died of a heart attack in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Nouwen was a Catholic priest and psychologist, best known among Protestant pastors for his book The Wounded Healer.
One of Nouwen's themes was living our brokenness under God's blessing. In one interview, Nouwen said, "Many people … don't think they are loved, or held safe, and so when suffering comes they see it as an affirmation of their worthlessness. The great question of ministry and the spiritual life is to learn to live our brokenness under the blessing and not the curse."

In 1982, Leadership published an interview with Nouwen and Richard Foster on what it takes for church leaders to know God. Founder and chair of Renovare, Foster has written, among other books, Prayer and Celebration of Discipline. After hearing of Nouwen's death, we reread the interview and were moved by its timeless and timely wisdom on the spiritual life. We offer it again in memory of the wounded healer.

Where are you currently in your spiritual journey?

Henri Nouwen: I'm in one of the most difficult periods of my life. At times I've felt my spiritual direction to be clear-cut; right now, however, everything is uncertain. When I came from Holland to the United States, I became a diocesan priest, a psychologist, and a fellow at the Menninger Clinic. I joined the faculty at Notre Dame, taught in Holland, and came back to teach at Yale Divinity School. People started to respond more and more to what I had to say, and that led to an
increasing sense of "Yes, I obviously must have something to say." I should be happy.
But these past months I've come face to face with my own spiritual abyss. None of this success has made me a more saintly or holy person.
Last semester I traveled all over the world and spoke to large audiences. All this created a sense of having arrived. Yet my inner life was precisely the opposite of that. More and more I felt that if God has anything to say, he doesn't need me. I found myself experiencing two extremes at the same time: high affirmation and great darkness.
Richard Foster: Back in my earlier years of coming to God, I was very intense. I once spent three days fasting and praying. After doing so, I felt an urging to call a man I had confidence in for his spiritual guidance. He lived quite a distance, but I called and asked him if he would come and pray for me. He came, and I was all ready to place myself before him and let him minister to me.
Instead, he sat down in front of me and started confessing his sins. I thought, I'm supposed to do that to you. After he finished, and I had prayed forgiveness for him, he said, "Now, do you still want me to pray for you?"
All of a sudden I realized his discernment. He knew I had thought of him as a spiritual giant who was going to set me right. Only then did he place his hands on me and pray for me.

What made you believe so intensely that you needed to find God?

Foster: Desperation. Not so much for me at first, but for people I saw who needed help. Later, I began to feel how very much I also needed God.

Although the hunger is deep to spend time in solitude, many of us feel trapped by the demands of ministry.
Nouwen: I'm like many pastors; I commit myself to projects and plans and then wonder how I can get them all done. This is true of the pastor, the teacher, the administrator. Indeed, it's true of our culture, which tells us, "Do as much as you can or you'll never make it." In that sense, pastors are part of the world.

I've discovered I cannot fight the demons of busyness directly. I cannot continuously say "No" to this or "No" to that, unless there is something ten times more attractive to choose. Saying "No" to my lust, my greed, my needs, and the world's powers takes an enormous amount of energy.
The only hope is to find something so obviously real and attractive that I can devote all my energies to saying "Yes." In effect, I don't have time to pay any attention to the distractions.
One such thing I can say "Yes" to is when I come in touch with the fact that I am loved. Once I have found that in my total brokenness I am still loved, I become free from the compulsion of doing successful things.
Foster: After I finished my doctorate I went to a tiny church in Southern California that would rank as a marginal failure on the ecclesiastical scoreboards. I worked and planned and organized, determined to turn the church around. But things got worse. Anger seemed to permeate everyone: the conservatives were mad at the liberals, the liberals were mad at the radicals, and the radicals were mad at everyone else. I hated to go to pastors' conferences because I didn't have any success stories. I was working myself to death, but it seemed to do no good.
Then I spent three days with my spiritual director. Toward the end of that time he said, "Dick, you have to decide whether you are going to be a minister of this church or a minister of Christ."
That was a turning point. Until then I had allowed other people's expectations to manipulate me and my own expectations.

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