The Wounded Healer by Henri J. M. Nouwen

I am increasingly convinced that conversion is the individual equivalent of revolution. Therefore every real revolutionary is challenged to be a mystic at heart, and he who walks the mystical way is called to unmask the illusory quality of human society. Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring about radical change. No mystic can prevent himself from becoming a social critic, since in self-reflection he will discover the roots of a sick society. Similarly, no revolutionary can avoid facing his own human condition, since in the midst of his struggle for a new world he will find that he is also fighting his own reactionary fears and false ambitions.

The mystic as well as the revolutionary has to cut loose from his selfish needs for a safe and protected existence and has to face without fear the miserable condition of himself and his world. It is certainly not surprising that the great revolutionary leaders and the great contemplatives of our time meet in their common concern to liberate nuclear man from his paralysis. Their personalities might be quite different, but they show the same vision, which leads to a radical self-criticism as well as to a radical activism. This vision is able to restore the “broken connection” (Lifton) with past and future, bring unity to a fragmented ideology, and reach beyond the limits of the mortal self. This vision can offer a creative distance from ourselves and our world and help us transcend the limiting walls of our human predicament.

For the mystic as well as for the revolutionary, life means breaking through the veil covering our human existence and following the vision that has become manifest to us. Whatever we call this vision–”The Holy,” “The Numinon,” “The Spirit,” or “Father”–we still belive that conversion and revolution alike derive their power from a source beyond the limitations of our own createdness.

For a Christian, Jesus is the man in whom it has indeed become manifest that revolution and conversion cannot be separated in man’s search for experiential transcendence. His appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross.

Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he didn’t offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel. In this sense he also remains for nuclear man the way to liberation and freedom.

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