Showing results by author "Henri J. Nouwen" in All Categories

Home Tonight follows the path of Henri Nouwen's spiritual homecoming. More than three years prior to writing his great classic, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen suffered a personal breakdown followed by a time of healing solitude when he encountered Rembrandt's famous painting. Within his solitude he reflected on and identified with the parable’s characters and experienced profound and inspiring life lessons.

How does one live a spiritual life in a secular world? Henri Nouwen responds from the depths of his heart to this dilemna posed by his friend Fred Bratman. Nouwen's own interpretive reading of the text lends a sense of immediacy to the audiobook.

Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life invites you to adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual guide. Each session was carefully prepared by Dr. Michael Christensen, an award-winning professor of Christian ministry and practice, and Dr. Rebecca Laird, who was Nouwen’s student at Yale Divinity School. Like other volumes in The Nouwen Trilogy, this audiobook collects Nouwen’s unpublished homilies, interviews, classes, and speeches, as well as excerpts from his published writings.

At one of the lowest points in Henri Nouwen’s life, he gave a series of lectures on the importance of following Jesus in an age of anxiety. Drawn from those talks, this new work reveals what sustained Nouwen to remain faithful to the teachings of Jesus and led him to become an icon of compassion and vulnerability. Here, he writes eloquently about calling and purpose, fear and hope. And he explains why - with so many choices available to the 21st-century seeker - the greatest reward for those looking for spiritual direction is rediscovering Jesus’ teaching on love.

Love, Henri consists of over 100 letters that stretch from the earliest years of Henri's career up through his last 10 years at L'Arche Daybreak. Rich in spiritual insights, the letters highlight a number themes that emerged in both Henri's work over the years, including vocation, solitude, prayer, suffering, and perseverance in difficult times. These deeply spiritual letters, sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, ulimately demonstrate the rich value of communicating with God through others.

We lead our spiritual lives in relationship with others. A faithful community gives us opportunities for worship, sharing burdens, confessing faults, offering forgiveness, and celebrating life. Wherever he went, Henri Nouwen created such communities, and within them, he offered spiritual direction. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith is part of “The Nouwen Trilogy.” These convenient audio sessions let you adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual director. 

Masterminded by Michael Christensen, PhD, and Rebecca Laird, MA, DMin, The Nouwen Trilogy compiles Nouwen’s unpublished homilies, interviews, classes, and speeches, as well as excerpts from his published writings. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit is part of this trilogy. These convenient audio sessions move you through the five classical stages of spiritual development: Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, Dark Night, and Unification. 

Society teaches us to define ourselves by the things we have: belongings, education, experiences. Our inner worth depends on our surroundings, and, as the Gospels say, we "belong to the world." Spiritual master Henri Nouwen teaches you how to move beyond such traps and achieve a deeper sense of self. Nouwen draws upon his own experience of leaving a Harvard professorship to work with the disabled.

Perhaps no 20th-century spiritual thinker so profoundly captured the human experience as this Catholic priest and psychologist. Now, in this moving audio program, you have the rare opportunity to listen to Nouwen's voice. He powerfully draws upon his own struggles to show you how to move from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality, and from illusion to prayer.

Nouwen uses the cup as a metaphor to articulate the basic postures of the spiritual life: holding, lifting and drinking. The cup is a powerful image in our human experience. We use cups in our celebrations of a variety of events. Nouwen reminds us that we also use the cup as a symbolic vessel—for sorrow, joy, blessings, salvation.

From the heart of Henri Nouwen comes wisdom for the caregiver about the transformational power of relationship in the unique bond between caregiver and care receiver. Interlacing stories from his own life and the lives of friends, Nouwen communicates warmth and compassion as he shares insights on what it means to be a caregiver and to be cared for.

Find hope in suffering in this lecture set by Henri Nouwen, one of the 20th century's great spiritual masters, as your guide. In our society, we learn to hide our grief, to suppress our joy, to fight darkness with darkness. We are like Jesus' generation, to whom he says, "We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry" (Luke 7:32). Now, the spiritual master Henri Nouwen helps you practice healing through both suffering and joy.

Do you serve on your church's stewardship committee or need to raise money for a mission trip or some other faith-based cause? Perhaps the thought of asking people for money intimidates you. It's time to change the way you think about fundraising. "Fundraising is, first and foremost, a ministry," best-selling author and renowned spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen writes. "It's a way of announcing our vision and inviting other people into our mission."

The spiritual life is not a life then and there, but a life here and now. It is a life in which the spirit of God is revealed in the ordinary enccounters of every day. With a smile and a tear, Nouwen looks at the day-to-day events of our lives and discovers there places where God chooses to dwell and call us.