Occupied and Preoccupied Space

Warning: This is a long excerpt from Nouwen's Reaching Out. I was struck today by the power and truth in his thinking on what he calls the second movement of the spiritual life, the movement from hostility to hospitality. (Back in January I put an excerpt from the previous section in this book on how hospitality is creating space for the one received to discover who they are more fully. You can read it here.)

So, without further adieu, here it is. (I would love to hear your thoughts and reflections on this section.):

Occupation and empty space is what most of us are looking for. When we are not occupied we become restless. We even become fearful when we do not know what we will do the next hour, the next day or the next year. Then occupation is called a blessing and emptiness a curse. Many telephone conversations start with the words: “I know you are busy, but…” And we would confuse the speaker and even harm our reputation were we to say, “Oh no, I am completely free, today, tomorrow and the whole week.” Our client might well lose interest in a man who has so little to do.

Being busy, active and on the move has nearly become part of our constitution. When we are asked to sit in a chair, without a paper to read, a radio to listen to, a television to watch, without a visitor or a phone, we are inclined to become so restless and tense that we welcome anything that will distract us again.

This explains why silence is such a difficult task. Many people who say how much they desire silence, rest, quietude would find it nearly impossible to beat the stillness of a monastery. When all the movements around them have stopped, when nobody asks them a question, seeks advice or even offers a helping hand, when there is no music or newspapers they quite often experience such an inner restlessness that they will grab any opportunity to become involved again. The first weeks or even months in a contemplative monastery, therefore, are not always as restful as they might seem, and it is indeed not surprising that vacations are more often spent on busy beaches, camping grounds and around entertainment centers than in the silence of monasteries.

All this shows that that preoccupation is in fact a greater stumbling block than occupation. We are so afraid of open spaces and empty places that we occupy them with our minds even before we are there. Our worries and concerns are expressions of our inability to leave unresolved questions unresolved and open-ended situations open-ended. They make us grab any possible solution and answer that seems to fit the occasion. They reveal our intolerance of the incomprehensibility of people and events and make us look for labels or classifications to fill the emptiness with self-created illusions.

We indeed have become very preoccupied people, afraid of unnamable emptiness and silent solitude. In fact, our preoccupations prevent our having new experiences and keep us handing on to the familiar ways. Preoccupations are our fearful ways of keeping things the same, and it often seems that we prefer a bad certainty to a good uncertainty. Our preoccupations help us to maintain the personal world we have created over the years and block the way to revolutionary change. Our fears, uncertainties and hostilities make us fill our inner world with ideas, opinions, judgments and values to which we cling as to a precious property. Instead of facing the challenge of new worlds opening themselves for us, and struggling in the open field, we hide behind the walls of our concerns holding on to the familiar life items we have collected in the past.

The conservative power of our preoccupation is very convincingly expressed by Don Juan, the Yaqui Indian, in one of his conversations with the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda. One day Carlos asked Don Juan how he could better live in accordance with the Indian’s teaching. “You think and talk too much, you must stop talking to yourself,” Don Juan answered. He explained that we maintain our world by our inner talk, and that we talk to ourselves until everything is as it should be, repeating our inner choices over and over, staying always on the same paths. If we would stop telling ourselves that the world is such and so, it would cease to be so! Don Juan didn’t think that Carlos was ready for such a blow, but he advised his student to listen to the world and so allow changes to take place.

Although this advice might sound bizarre to the ears of the “organization man,” it should not be strange for someone who has taken to heart the words of Jesus Christ. Didn’t he also say that tour worries prevent us from letting the kingdom, that is, the new world, come? Don Juan is asking how we ever can expect something really new to happen to us if our hearts and minds are so full of our own concerns that we do not even listen to the sounds announcing a new reality. And Jesus says: “…do not worry; do not say, ‘What are we to eat? What are we to drink? How are we to be clothed?’ It is the pagans who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on his righteousness, and all these other things will be given you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself” (Matthew 6:31-34).

So we can see that creating space is far from easy in our occupied and preoccupied society. And still, if we expect any salvation, redemption, healing and new life, the first thing we need is an open receptive place where something can happen to us. Hospitality, therefore, is such an important attitude. We cannot change the world by a new plan, project or idea. We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stories advice and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, to lay aside their occupations and preoccupations and to listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center….

To convert hostility into hospitality requires the creation of the friendly empty space where we can reach out to our fellow human beings and invite them to a new relationship. This conversation is an inner event that cannot be manipulated but must develop from within. Just as we cannot force a plant to grow but can take away the weeds and stones which prevent its development, so we cannot force anyone to such a personal and intimate change of heart, but we can offer the space where such a change can take place.