To Be Held and to Hold

God wants to love you in all that you are, spirit and body. . . . How then do you bring your body home? By letting it participate in your deepest desire to receive and offer love. Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires . . . you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.

– Henri J.M. Nouwen
Excerpted from The Inner Voice of Love
p. 19

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Henri Nouwen
• Lent with Henri
• David Whyte: "To Be Courageous is to Stay Close to the Way We Are Made"
• "In Finding Myself, I Found God and My Voice"
• Lovemaking: Pathway to Truth, Harmony and Wholeness
• The Many Manifestations of God's Loving Embrace
• The Longing for Love: God's Primal Beatitude
• Never Say It is Not God
• Charis
• Just Now and Then
• Love at Love's Brightest
• Carlos

Related Off-site Links:
Henri Nouwen: Priest and Author Who Struggled with His Homosexuality – Kittredge Cherry (Jesus in Love Blog, September 21, 2012).
The Anguish of a Closeted Priest – Nihil Obstat (June 24, 2008).
The Official Website of the Henri Nouwen Society

Recommended Books:
Wounded Prophet: A Portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen – Michael Ford (Image, 2002).
Henri's Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen's Legacy – Chris Glaser (Pilgrim Press, 2010).

Image: Marcus Dean and Bill Heck in Yen Tan's 2013 film Pit Stop. To read Michael D. Klemm's review, click here. For an interview with Jonathan Duffy, the film's producer, click here.