henri nouwen

if you’ve never read any of henri nouwen’s works, you should. now, i know many people have read “the way of the heart”, and i’m told it’s amazing. no, i’ve never read it. i’ve read many of his less popular books, which i’m sure is quite surprising to those who know me best. see, i have this thing…if something’s popular, i have a really hard time liking it or even giving it a chance. i’m working on that.

anyway, back to nouwen. yesterday, a friend told me to re-read an article written by him, “moving from solitude to community to ministry”. i’ve read it in the past, and it is quite good. i had a couple of copies of the article at my apartment, but i soon found out that one was only half complete and the other had many words cut off of the copy. so, no reading the article for now. but, this friend got me thinking about nouwen again. i began to ransack my shelves. i have an entire section dedicated to nouwen. so, i pulled quite a few of the books off of the shelf to give a chance again: clowning in rome; the return of the prodigal son; the life of the beloved; here and now; the inner voice of love. i then proceeded to go the bookstore, and i bought a version of the gospel told through his writings and rembrandt’s drawings. i’m excited. so, seeing as it’s early in the morning, and i’ve woken up and can’t sleep because of a sore back, i’m not willing to type out any excerpts. wait until tomorrow, or another day. you might just get to see a few things i need to hear from henri nouwen, and maybe something in you will need to hear them, too.