The Winter of my Discontent

A Lenten reflection from Henri Nouwen:

“The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it. The great secret of the spiritual life, the life of the Beloved Sons and Daughters of God, is that everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward the full realization of our humanity. It is not hard to say to one another: ‘All that is good and beautiful leads us to the glory of the children of God.’ But it is very hard to say ‘But didn’t you know that we all have to suffer and thus enter into our glory?’ Nonetheless, real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to joy.


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Leonard Cohen once described love as a “cold and broken hallelujah.” For the past couple weeks, I, too, have felt cold and broken, uninspired, restless: such is the “winter of my discontent.” But I am strangely at peace with this phase of my life, for I know that life is cyclic and that joy and sorrow will ebb and flow until the Eschaton.

When I was reading today’s Lenten meditation from my Henri Nouwen Lenten devotional booklet, I found it providential [how Presbyterian!] that he is referring to the very brokenness that I am currently experiencing in my own life. Brokenness is not teleological. Our brokenness is a fundamental facet of our humanity. Therefore, we must embrace the good with the bad, the joy and the sorrow, the yin and the yang. We must also embrace each other and be mindful of each other’s struggles, always remembering that brokenness is often the beginning of joy, rather than the death of it.