Henri J.M. Nouwen. "Adam's Peace" from Shadow & Light 3rd Edition. Copyright ©2005, 2013 by Darryl Tippens, Jeanne Murray Walker, Stephen Weathers. Used by permission of Abilene Christian University Press.

Henri Nouwen

Nouwen was a Dutch theologian, priest, and professor of psychology who spent much of his adult life in North America, where he preached and wrote about the virtues of service to the poor and the weak and the practice of the spiritual disciplines. Although he taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, he found his greatest fulfillment living and working at Daybreak--a community for the severely handicapped near Toronto. Nouwen was a prolific writer on the spiritual life. In such books as Life of the Beloved, In the Name of Jesus, The Road to Daybreak, Way of the Heart, and Return of the Prodigal Son, he emphasizes the '"paradoxes of the Christian faith--that the Divine Presence is evident in the "downward way· taught by Jesus. Nouwen tries to counter the "forces of secularism with the story of a loving God who waits patiently for the return of his rebellious creatures. The writer died of a heart attack while visiting in the Netherlands in the fall of 1996.

ADAM'S PEACE

In the middle of this decade I moved from Harvard to Daybreak--from an institution for very bright people to a community for mentally handicapped ones.

Daybreak, situated near Toronto, is part of an international federation of communities called l'Arche--the Ark--where mentally handicapped men and women and their assistants try to live together in the spirit of the beatitudes of Jesus.

I live in a house with six handicapped people and four assistants. We live together as a family. None of the assistants is specially trained to work with people with a mental handicap, but we receive all the help we need from nearby professionals.

When there are no special crises we live just as a family, gradually forgetting who is han dicapped and who is not. All have their gifts, all have their struggles. We eat together, play together, pray I together and go out together. We all have our own preferences in terms of work, food and movies, and we all have our problems getting along with someone in the house, whether handicapped or not. We laugh a lot. We cry a lot too. Sometimes both at the same time. That is l'Arche, that is Daybreak, that is the family of ten I live with day in and day out.

When asked to return to Harvard to speak about peace, I suddenly realized that speaking about peace from this tiny family is not like speaking about peace as a professor. I need a new perspective and a new sensibility, a new language. It is not easy. It is even quite painful. I feel so vulnerable and so naked. But I will tell you the story of Adam, one of the ten people in our home, and let him become the silent witness for the peace that is not of this world.

Adam is the weakest person in our family. He is a 25-year-old man who cannot speak, cannot dress or undress himself, cannot walk alone, cannot eat without much help. He does rot cry or laugh. Only occasionally does he make eye contact. His back is distorted. His arm and leg movements are twisted. He suffers from severe epilepsy and, despite heavy medication, sees few days, without grand-mal seizures. Sometimes, as he grows suddenly rigid, he utters a howling groan. On a few occasions I've seen one big tear roll down his cheek.

It takes me about an hour and a half to wake Adam up, give him his medication, carry him into his bath, wash him, shave him, clean his teeth, dress him, walk him to the kitchen, give him his breakfast, put him in his wheelchair and bring him to the place where he spends most of the day with therapeutic exercises.

I tell you this not to give you a nursing report, but to share with you something quite intimate. After a month of working this way with Adam, something happened to me. This deep! handicapped young man, who is considered by many outsiders a vegetable, a distortion of humanity, a useless animal-like creature who shouldn't have been born, started to become my dearest companion.

As my fears gradually lessened, a love emerged in me so full of tender affection that most of my other tasks seemed boring and superficial compared with the hours spent with Adam. Out of his broken body and broken mind emerged a most beautiful human being offering me a greater gift than I would ever offer him: Somehow Adam revealed to me who he is, and who I am, and how we can love each other.

When I carried him into his bath, made big waves to let the water run fast around his chest and neck, rubbed noses with him and told him all sorts of stories about him and me, I knew that two friends were communicating far beyond the realm of thought or emotion. Deep speaks to deep, spirit speaks to spirit, heart speaks to heart. I started to realize that ours was a mutual love based not on shared knowledge or shared feelings, but on shared humanity. The longer I stayed with Adam the more clearly l saw him as my gentle teacher, teaching me what no book, school or professor could ever teach me.

The gift of peace hidden in Adam's utter weakness is a gift not of this world, but certainly for this world. For this gift to become known, someone has to lift it up and pass it on. That may be the deepest meaning of being an assistant to handicapped people: helping them to share their gifts.

Adam's peace is first of all a peace rooted in being. Being is more important than doing. How simple a truth, but how hard to live.

Adam can do nothing. He is completely dependent on others. His gift is purely being with us. Every evening when l run home

to take care of Adam--to help him with his supper and put him to bed--I realize that the best thing I can do for him is to be with him. And indeed, that is the great joy: paying total attention to his breathing, his eating, his careful steps; noticing how he tries to lift a spoon to his mouth or offers his left arm a little to make it easier for me to take off his shirt.

Most of my life has been built around the idea that my value depends on what I do. I made it through school. I earned my degrees and awards and I made my career. Yes, with many others, I fought my way up to a little success, a little popularity and a little power. But as l sit beside the slow and heavy-breathing Adam, I start to see how violent that journey was. So marked by rivalry and competition, so pervaded with compulsion and obsession, so spotted with moments of suspicion, jealousy, resentment and revenge.

Oh sure, most of what I did was called ministry, the ministry of justice and peace, the ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation the ministry of healing and wholeness. But when those who want peace are as interested in success, popularity and power as those who want war, what then is the real difference between war and peace? When the peace is as much of this world as the war is, the choice is between a war which we euphemistically call pacification and a peace in which the peacemakers violate each other's deepest values.

Adam says to me: Peace is first of all the art of being. I know he is right because, after four months of being a little with Adam, I am discovering in myself the beginning of an inner at-homeness that I didn't know before.

When I cover him with his sheets and blankets, turn out the lights and pray with Adam, he is always very quiet. It's as if he

knows my praying voice from my speaking voice. I whisper in his ear: "May all the angels protect you," and often he looks up to me

from his pillow and seems to know what I am saying.

Ever since I've been praying with Adam I've known better than before that praying is being with Jesus, simply "wasting time" with him. Adam keeps teaching me that.

Adam's peace is not only a peace rooted in being, but also a peace rooted in the heart. Somehow through the centuries we have come to believe that what makes us human is our mind. Many people define a human being as a rational animal. But Adam keeps telling me over and over again that what makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love. Whoever speaks about Adam as a vegetable or an animal-like creature misses the sacred mystery that Adam is fully capable of receiving and giving love. He is not half human, not nearly human, but fully, completely human because he is all heart and it is the heart that is made in the likeness of God.

Let me quickly add that by "heart" I do not mean the seat of human emotions, in contrast to the mind as the seat of human thought. No, by "heart" I mean the center of our being, where God has hidden the divine gifts of trust, hope and love. Whereas the mind tries to understand, grasp problems, discern different aspects of reality and probe mysteries, the heart allows us to become sons and daughters of God and brothers and sisters of each other. Long before the mind is able to exercise its power, the heart is already able to develop a trusting human relationship.

When I say that I believe deeply that Adam can give and receive love and that there is a true mutuality between us, I make no naive psychological statement overlooking his severe handicaps; I speak of a love between us that transcends all thoughts and feelings, precisely because it is rooted in God's first love, a love that precedes all human loves. The mystery of Adam is that in his deep mental and emotional brokenness he has become so empty of all human pride that he has become the preferable mediator of that first love. Maybe this will help you see why Adam is giving me a whole new understanding of God's love for the poor and the oppressed.

The peace that flows from Adam's broken heart is not of this world. It is not the result of political analysis, roundtable debates, discernment of the signs of the times or well advised strategies. All these activities of the mind have their role in peacemaking. But they are all easily perverted to a new way of warmaking if they are not in the service of the divine peace that flows from the broken heart of those who are called the poor in spirit. Adam's peace, while rooted more in being than in doing, and more in the heart than in the mind, is a peace that calls forth community. At L'Arche the people hold us together as a family; in fact, the most handicapped people are the true center of gravity. Adam in his total vulnerability calls us together as a family.

The weakest members are not the handicapped residents but the assistants. Our commitments are ambiguous at best. Some stay longer than others, but most move on after one or two years. Closer to the center are Raymond, Bill, John, and Trevor, each of whom is relatively independent, but still in need of much help and attention. They are permanent family members; they are with us for life; they keep us honest. Because of them, conflicts never last very long, tensions are talked out, disagreements are resolved. But in the heart of our community are Rose and Adam, both deeply handicapped, and the weaker of the two is Adam. Adam, the most broken of us all, is without any doubt the strongest bond among us.

Because of Adam there is always someone home. Because of Adam there is a quiet rhythm in the house. Because of Adam there are words of affection, gentleness and tenderness. Because of Adam there is always space for mutual forgiveness and healing. Adam, the weakest among us, is our true peacemaker. How mysterious are God's ways!

Most of my adult life I have tried to show the world that I could do it on my own, that I needed others only to get me back on my lonely road as a strong, independent, creative man. And most of my fellow intellectuals joined me in that desire. But all of us highly trained individuals today are facing a world on the brink of total destruction. Now we wonder how we might join forces to make peace!

What kind of peace can this possibly be? Who can paint a group portrait of people who all want the center seat? When all want the honor of being the final peacemaker, there will be no peace.

Adam needs many people, none of whom can boast of any, success. Adam will never be better. Medically, he will only grow worse. Each person who works with him does only a little bit. My part in his life is very small. Some cook for him, some do his laundry, some give him massages, some let him listen to music or take him for a walk or a swim or a ride. Others look after his

blood pressure, regulate his medicine, look after his teeth. Even with all this assistance Adam often slips into total exhaustion. A community of peace has emerged around him, a peace community not just for Adam, but for all who belong to Adam's race. It's a community that proclaims that God has chosen to reveal his glory in complete weakness and vulnerability.

I've told you about Adam and about his peace. But you're not part of L'Arche, you don't live at Daybreak, you're not a member of Adam's family. Like me, however, you search for peace in your heart, in your family and in your world.

I've told you about Adam and his peace to offer you a quiet guide with a gentle heart, a little light for walking through this dark world. In Adam's name, therefore, I say to you: Do not give up working for peace. But remember that the peace you seek is not of this world. Don't be distracted by the great noises of war, the dramatic descriptions of misery, the sensational exploitation of cruelty. Newspapers, movies and war novels may numb you, but they do not create true desire for peace. They mostly create feelings of shame, guilt, and powerlessness--the worst motives for peace work.

Keep your eyes on the one who refuses to turn stones into bread, jump from great heights or rule with great temporal power. (See Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-12.) Keep your eyes on the one who says,

Blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness. (See Matthew 5:3-10.)

Keep your eyes on the one who touches the lame and the blind, the one who speaks forgiveness and encouragement, the one who dies alone. Keep your eyes on the one who is poor with the poor, weak with the weak and rejected with the rejected. That then is the source of all peace.

As long as we think and live as if there is no peace and that it all depends on ourselves to make it come about, we are on the path to self-destruction. But when we trust that the God of love has already given the peace we are searching for, we will see this peace poking through the broken soil of our human condition, and we will be able to let it grow fast, even to heal the economic and political maladies of our time.

An old Hassidic' tale summarizes much of what I have tried to say.

The Rabbi asks his students, "How can we determine the hour of dawn, when the night ends and the day begins?

One student suggests, "When, from a distance, you can distinguish between a dog and a sheep?"

"No," the Rabbi answers.

"Is it when you can distinguish between a fig tree and grapevine?" asks a second student.

"No," the Rabbi says.

"Please tell us the answer, then," say the students.

"It is," says the wise teacher, " when you have enough light to look human beings in the face and recognize them as your brothers and sisters. Until then the darkness is still with us."

Let us pray for that light. It is the peace that the world cannot give.