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Lukole Refugee Camp, Tanzania (Lolín Menéndez rscj)
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In an age where we can cross the globe in a matter of hours we find it increasingly difficult to connect to ourselves and to those closest to us.
There is a great need of new ways for people to be together, to solve conflicts, to work for peace. "Why do human beings learn so much, so soon, about technology, and so little, so late, about loving one another?" (Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak, pp. 182-183)
In 1983, as its readers waited for Time Magazine to name its Man of the Year, time released instead its Machine of the Year. On its cover was not a statesman, pope or president but the faceless communicator we call computer. In Nouwen’s view Human was out, Hardware was in as in the preponderance of machine over person marked a rupture between as post generation guided by its respect for personhood and a new generation fascinated by the wonders of technology.
Without denying the benefits of technology, Nouwen urges us to pause and re-evaluate its mixed blessing. Technology is so far ahead of human relations where Nouwen considers we are still in the Stone Age thinking that power games and fear tactics will settle our problems, Suicide attacks and military reprisals are such primitive ways to respond to threatening situations.
To develop our capacity for human relations we are called to move from fear to love. Is there in our lives ever a totally fear-free moment? Are we aware of the extent to which fear controls our choices and decisions? Would there be so much fear if it was not useful to somebody? As long as we are kept in fear we can be made to act, speak think as slaves? Fearful questions, “what if I do not....?” never lead to love-filled answers. Fear does not give birth to love.
Technology does not exist in a vacuum. It is the creation of human minds and can be used either for our benefit or harm. In Nouwen’s view the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved’. Being the beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” (Lk 3, 21-22)
"You are my Beloved" in Nouwen's conviction reveals the most intimate truth about all human beings, whether they belong to any particular tradition or not.
"How do we get in touch with our closenness when we are surrounded by rejections?"
What we need is to know the Heart of God, a heart in which there is no bitterness, resentment, vengeance but where love, forgiveness, compassion reign. The journey to this knowledge takes us from fear to love, from hostility to hospitality, from illusion to prayer.
When we live under blessing rather than curse we know ourselves taken (chosen), blessed, broken, given.
The happy life is the life of giving, death the final giving to our reality as "Beloved". Given our lifestyles today might we find ourselves eligible for being identified as "a machine of the year?”
The disciplines we need if we are to claim our humanity and avoid becoming a cog in the machines now having such an impact on the shaping of our lives:
listening attentively to the voice that calls us ”Beloved” where we discover not only our own truest identity but how we are able to relate to God’s Beloved around us.
looking critically at what we are living, we must know what we are living, it is the essence of being human to contemplate our life, think about it, discuss it, evaluate it, form opinions about it.
Half of living is reflecting on what is being lived. We must hold our cup and fully claim who we are and what we are called to love. Then we can reach out to the heavens.
Claim your humanity
Your humanity
Not someone else’s
You
God’s Beloved.
Meg Walshe rscj
Province of England - Wales
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