Now that I have mocked the meditation of one of the most prominent Catholic theologians of our time, let me say that I adore Henri Nouwen’s stuff.

Because it is so raw and real.

A friend of mine told me to take my time with Nouwen’s “The Inner Voice of Love,” to sit with each of his reflections, because their wisdom can’t be absorbed in one sitting.

Lent is an appropriate time to pull out Nouwen’s book because I’m supposed to be getting more spiritual the closer we get to Easter. During these forty days, Christians go into the painful place so to arrive at the other side knowing how to love more deeply. The ouch is like a refiner’s fire purifying the heart.

But frankly I don’t really get that. Because almost every time I venture into extreme discomfort, I wind up in a group therapy session with a bunch of depressives, who, after a brief tango with electrical currents (electroconvulsive therapy or ECT), can’t do much more than drool with open mouths.

For right now, this soul ain’t going anywhere but happy places (voluntarily, that is). I’ll deal with pain only when I’m forced to. Nouwen agrees. I shouldn’t go near the fire until I’m no longer afraid of its flames.

“You have to live through your pain gradually and thus deprive it of its power over you. Yes, you must go into the place of your pain, but only when you have gained some new ground…. You have to begin to trust that your experience of emptiness is not the final experience, that beyond it is a place where you are being held in love….

“So you have to go into the place of your pain with the knowledge in your heart that you have already found the new place. You have already tasted some of its fruits. The more roots you have in the new place, the more capable you are of mourning the loss of the old place and letting go of the pain that lies there. You cannot mourn something that has not died. Still, the old pains, attachments, and desires that once meant so much to you need to be buried.

“You have to weep over your lost pains so that they can gradually leave you and you can become free to live fully in the new place without melancholy or homesickness.”

I really want to get there–to the place beyond the fear, the tears and the pain, to the spot so removed from the pain that you can visit the pain without pain.

But this Lent, I think I’m still at the funeral—looking at the casket and calling the guy (my depression) a bastard. The memory of those desperate days–hanging onto life by a thin, tiny thread with a medal of St. Therese on the end of it–holds way too much power over me right now to pay it a visit. In fact, almost every decision I make in a day goes to avoiding Mr. Pain, and insuring our paths don’t cross.

Perhaps next Lent I’ll be ready to say hello.