Leaving the House of Fear

"We who live in the illusion of control and self-sufficiency must learn true joy, peace, forgiveness, and love from our poor brothers and sisters… It is as important for the rich to be converted by the poor as it is to share their wealth with the poor. As long as we only want to give and resist becoming receivers, we betray our desire to stay in control at all costs. Thus we remain in the house of fear."  Henri Nouwen

How do I become a receiver so that I might leave the house of fear?  

Our lives are changed through illness, depressions, addictions, old age. Fear of these losses before they happen can rob us of joy.  When they happen, we can experience a terrible isolation from the world, lost to us now, that gave us sustenance and pleasure. It is frightening when care become a necessary lifeline, and we don’t know where it will come from.  

My grandmother Philly spent the last ten years of her life in a nursing home.  She required care for her most basic and intimate needs like toileting, getting in and out of bed, eating. She gave up so much these last ten years of surrender. My grandfather Nunzio, her husband who died at 94, became frail only the last few years of his life.  My parents provided the care and support he needed to stay at home.  It was heartbreaking when his children moved Philly into the nursing home.  Nunzio could not understand why they couldn’t continue to care for her at home.  Because she needed daily insulin shots, help toileting, getting in and out of bed, it was no longer possible to keep her at home.  So, Nunzio was left living alone in the house they had share for fifty years. 

But he did not give up so easily.  We might have expected this from a man who escaped the Italian fascists as a young man, leaving home and country, eventually making his way to America as a stowaway in the belly of a cargo ship.  Twice he attempted to break Philly out of the nursing home.  Each morning, he took a taxi to the nursing home to spend the day with her. Twice he convinced the driver to take her back to the house.  After that, he came to realize and accept the necessity of the nursing home for her care.  With her diabetes stabilized, a regular schedule, meals, bathing, her health had improved.  She wasn’t in so much pain, the ache in her legs subsiding. After a time, she too stopped asking to go home.

When I think about the challenges they faced in their old age, my heart becomes so tender.  So much to give up after a long life that wasn’t easy. In old age, there was pain and frailty in the body, confusion in the mind, extreme dependence. 

For many years, Henri Nouwen served as pastor to a L’Arche community in Toronto a community of abled and disabled people lived together.  In one sermon, he describes how four profoundly disabled adults required the care of ten people.  This is not the “productive” “efficient” profit-seeking model of care that we tend towards in this country.  And yet, how beautiful it would be if we prioritized care in this way giving ourselves a chance to care deeply and well for one another and in turn receiving care when it is our turn.  St. Francis said that “it is in the giving that we receive”.  Nouwen tells us that this is how we come to bring God into the world, in our profound neediness, in the care we give to each other.  Perhaps, this is how we leave the house of fear behind.