I am still reading Henri Nouwen’s book Reaching Out – The three movements of the spiritual life. For those who are yawing you will be happy to know I am in the last chapters! However, the last section of the book deals with our reaching out to God. He makes an interesting point that our sense of the ‘immortality’ of all things breeds insipid sentimentality and/or violent behaviour. When we mask our relationships with others with the illusion of immortality we create a sentimentality that creates false expectations of human relationships and when shattered brings about depression. Violence is bred when we start to own others, property and material goods as ours for eternity and when this is challenged it brings about violence as we try to perpetuate our ownership of them. Interesting thought, the idea that concepts like eternity and immortality can be as negative as they are positive in our faith journey.
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