I want to spend this week’s posts letting you in on one of my favorite authors. Today, an abbreviated (I know, you still think its long) life story; the rest of week, excerpts from his writings with my own thoughts added. I have read Henri Nouwen’s, The Way of the Heart many times over since it was given to me by my campus minister Steve Hare 20 years ago. It deals with silence, solitude, and prayer - definitely stuff I needed to concentrate on at that time (and many times afterward).
The internationally renowned priest and author, respected professor and beloved pastor Henri Nouwen wrote over 40 books on the spiritual life. He corresponded regularly in English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish with hundreds of friends and reached out to thousands through his lectures and retreats. Nouwen’s books have sold over 2 million copies and been published in over 22 languages.
Born in Nijkerk, Holland, on January 24, 1932, he was ordained in 1957 as a diocesan priest and studied psychology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. In 1964 he moved to the United States to study at the Menninger Clinic. He went on to teach at the University of Notre Dame, and the Divinity Schools of Yale and Harvard. For several months during the 1970s, Nouwen lived and worked with the Trappist monks in the Abbey of the Genesee, and in the early 1980s he lived with the poor in Peru.
Nouwen began to discover the difference between being productive and being fruitful. Having succeeded in the academic world where productivity was an expectation, he discovered the pain and joy of caring for people who might previously have been thought of as useless. He found that even the most severely disabled person could be fruitful and also minister to him. Henri was attracted to the extreme vulnerability and honesty of the disabled community. Nothing was hidden and everything was exposed. Feelings were always openly displayed and they ranged from open anger to unconditional love. It was to these people that he was called and it was these people that he was to embrace, comfort and love. Further, these were the people that were going to bring him the words from God that he was to bring to others in his writing. They were to be his teachers and he was to bring their message to the average Christian.
In December 1985, Nouwen received a 'call' to become part of the Daybreak L'Arche community in Toronto Canada. In August 1986, Nouwen joined the Daybreak community, living and working with six disabled people and their assistants. Nouwen was to remain here until his death in 1996. The journey was not an easy one for Nouwen. He no longer could rely on his books, his lectures or his reputation as the foundations for his self identity. He was among people who had never read his books, for whom his lectures meant nothing and who had never heard about him. What was important for them was whether he loved them.
Nouwen was helped into a new self identity through the witness of a severely disabled man, Adam Arnett. Nouwen realized, as he cared for this man every day, that Adam was being used by God to minister to him. Through Adam's vulnerability and reliance on others, God was showing Nouwen what it meant to be led where he did not want to go. Henri learnt about passivity and reliance on God. Henri continued writing, publishing fifteen books in his years at Daybreak. It was however the pastoral work and not the writing that came first. He continued to travel, albeit much less frequently than before, but his travels took him all over the world.
En route to Russia to do a documentary about Rembrandt's painting of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen suffered a heart attack in The Netherlands. He died on Saturday, September 21, 1996. There were two funeral services, one in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and the other near Daybreak. Nouwen is buried in King City, close to his beloved Daybreak community.
(Above bio obtained from two sources: http://www.henrinouwen.org/ & http://www.nouwen.org.za/)
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