Thursday, April 10, 2008

Loving Our Spiritual Leaders - Henri Nouwen

Loving Our Spiritual Leaders

Religious leaders, priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams can be admired and revered but also hated and despised. We expect that our religious leaders will bring us closer to God through their prayers, teaching, and guidance. Therefore, we watch their behavior carefully and listen critically to their words. But precisely because we expect, often without fully realising it, to be superhuman, we are easily disappointed or even feel betrayed when they prove to be just as human as we are. Thus, our unmitigated admiration quickly turns into unrestrained anger.

Let's try to love our religious leaders, forgive them their faults, and see them as brothers and sisters. Then we will enable them, in their brokenness, to lead us closer to the heart of God.

In the News

Here are a few stories that caught my attention today:

Tourists Die in Peru Plane Crash

Four Prisoners Executed in Japan

In Search of Zawadi