Foreword to The Way of the Urban Monk

Henri Nouwen, whom I consider to be my patron saint, penned a riveting foreword to Gustavo Gutieìrrez’s highly influential, seminal work on libera­tion theology some three decades ago. In We Drink Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People, after echoing the author’s own articulation of what spirituality is about as “like a living water that springs up in the very depths of the experience of faith,” Nouwen, foreword, We Drink from Our Own Wells. Nouwen follows it with his interpreta­tion of what Gutieìrrez means: “To drink from your own well is to live your own life in the Spirit of Jesus as you have encountered him in your concrete historical reality.” These opening remarks of Nouwen set the context for the following admission he then issues so transparently a couple of pages later:

But as I reflect on the impact of this spirituality on my own way of living and thinking, I realize that a reductionism has taken place on my side. . . . I became aware of how individualistic and elitist my own spirituality had been. It was hard to confess, but true, that in many respects my thinking about the spiritual life had been deeply influenced by the North American milieu with its emphasis upon the “interior life” and the methods and techniques for developing that life. Only when I confronted what Gustavo calls the “irruption of the poor into history” did I become aware of how “spiritualized” my spirituality had become. It had been, in fact, a spirituality for introspective persons who have the luxury of the time and space needed to develop inner harmony and quietude.2

I remember something got pricked inside of me the first time I read Nouwen’s public confession. Without a doubt, I could relate—and I would hazard to guess, many others resonate with it. Indeed, it is so easy to pursue a highly privatized and interiorized brand of spirituality devoid of any kind of public engagement with the world we live in. To my own shame, I am not exempt from this all-prevailing tendency of so many of us involved in promoting Christian spirituality to succumb to this lopsided mindset.

A little more than a decade ago, I founded CenterQuest (CQ), an ecumenical hub for the study and practice of Christian spirituality, with its School of Spiritual Direction (SSD) hybrid program as its main thrust. Luckily, Joe Colletti, a long-time friend prior to its launching, was there to lend his all-out support for our new endeavor. As a close ally, I felt it right for me to return the favor by also supporting his much earlier initiative of spearheading the Society of the Urban Monks. Through my own involve­ment with his outfit over the years, I have come to appreciate the com­mitment to lived-out spirituality that we share in common. Increasingly, too, I have become more keenly aware of how our two organizations could help strengthen each other in mutual and complementary ways. In fact, on numerous occasions over the years, we’ve had lots of brainstorming chats on a variety of possible ways by which we can more concretely collaborate together for our respective organization’s mutual benefit.

More recently, on our end, our CenterQuest program leadership, after running five cohort cycles of our School of Spiritual Direction, deemed that it’s about time to include in our curriculum a module on spiritual direction and social justice. Again, after much deliberation and consultation with Joe, we finally came up with the initial idea of field-testing an online course under CQ’s Lifelong Learning Community (LLC) on the topic of “Public Engagement: Integrating Spiritual Principles and Practices for Solving So­cial Struggles” and offering this to all our SSD cohort graduates. Joe and I started working together to design the course, which is mainly based on a number of writings he has developed over the years, to be facilitated by him. Due to the pandemic and other unforeseeable circumstances, the implementation of our pilot project got delayed. In the interim, Joe focused his attention into turning his seminal writings into a book, which is what you are now holding in your hand.

It is therefore with much excitement that I recommend very highly this book, which is a product of Joe’s lifelong efforts and commitment to rally all of us who are engaged in the work of spiritual formation and spiri­tuality toward a form of public engagement aimed at balancing the inward and the outward dimensions of our spiritual life. Like Henri Nouwen under

Gutierrez’s influence, we seek to advocate not a bifurcation but a more prac­tical integration between contemplation and action, between the mystical and the prophetic, between solitude and community, between prayer and service and, really, to highlight the indivisible thrust of the love command­ment itself: between love of God and love of our neighbor.

Joe is more than qualified to address this issue of integrating spiritual­ity and social concern, which many of us are most prone to dichotomize. As a social reformer who has modeled his life in the tradition of past and contemporary social reformers, Joe has dedicated his life to solving social problems that often stem from poverty, prejudice, and parochialism. He has worked fervently with many cities and counties throughout California to prevent and end homelessness and has helped develop and implement many local jurisdictional plans and programs founded on evidence-based, best, emerging, and promising practices that have resulted in thousands of homeless people exiting their state of homelessness. He has also worked passionately with numerous nonprofit organizations and congregations to design and implement programs and projects based on practices to help solve social injustices in the communities in which they serve. Such practices include creating coalitions made up of representatives of local government and community organizations which commit to long-term cooperation to achieve solutions to the problems they want to resolve.

Aside from being the cofounder and chief executive officer of the Hub for Urban Initiatives, together with his wife, Sofia Herrera, a clinical psychologist by training, they cofounded the Center for Urban Initiatives at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he also has served as an adjunct as­sociate professor of urban studies. His teaching focused primarily on the integration of Christian monastic practices and solving social struggles. Much of his community and economic development efforts address, from the human rights and social justice angle, the issues of affordable housing, economic development, fair housing, health and mental health care, home­lessness, human trafficking, and substance abuse.

In 2006, Joe established the Society of Urban Monks, which is an ecu­menical and multidenominational community of men and women who are involved in encountering, engaging, and ending social issues and injustices by infusing their Christian faith and spiritual practices into their employ­ment, education, social, and volunteer efforts and activities. Anyone can become an urban monk by living out spiritual principles and practices as a means to nurture a deep, collective, and public relationship with God to help encounter, engage, and end social injustices.

In the past, I’ve had several opportunities to participate in the mo­nastic mass that the Society used to conduct regularly. On few occasions, my wife and I, along with other invited friends, have enjoyed having sacred meals that he and Sofia have hosted in their home, which incorporated the practice of evening and night prayers.

In conjunction with the notion of the urban monk, Joe has labored passionately to put together in book form his vision for the urban monk emerging from his personal conviction that, as people of faith, it is impera­tive that we promote civic engagement. According to him, the way of an urban monk involves creating and cultivating an integrated rule of life that includes the following three elements: nurturing an intimate, personal, and private relationship with God; extending charity to others; and moving be­yond individual acts of charity by engaging in community efforts to achieve justice and right social wrongs.

As a practicing spiritual director involved in companioning others in their journey of faith in a holistic manner, I endorse his work enthusiasti­cally. I believe that anyone involved in the work of formation can profit much from the core message of the book along with its highly practical applications. In fact, what I particularly like about it is that each chapter is capped by carefully written reflection questions to help the reader person­alize and internalize each aspect of what is involved in crafting one’s rule of life.

I personally share Joe’s sincere hope that as a result of engaging the contents of this material, we, the readers, can be inspired and all the more motivated to imbibe in our hearts the way of the urban monk—by iden­tifying the spiritual principles that will inform and fortify our efforts and selecting the spiritual practices that will help sustain our commitment to social justice work as an integral part of our lived spirituality.

Wil Hernandez, PhD, Obl. OSB
Executive Director, CenterQuest
Author, Mere Spirituality: The Spiritual Life According to Henri Nouwen