SPIRITUAL FOCUS ON BOOKS February 12, 2007 Issue

NEW VIEWS OF HENRI NOUWEN

KIM SHIPPEY, SENIOR WRITER

IN THE 1970s, Michael Christensen, now director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Drew University, attended some of the classes on spiritual direction given by theologian Henri Nouwen at Yale Divinity School. He kept his notes from those sessions and used them as the basis for a new book, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith. Along with coauthor Rebecca Laird, an ordained minister, Christensen has drawn together strands of timeless wisdom and personal guidance from Nouwen's sermons, homilies, articles, journals, course lecture notes, unpublished manuscripts, and published writings.

If you've read the Sentinel for a few years, you may have become acquainted with Nouwen's writings through our review of his book The Return of the Prodigal Son (November 18, 2002). This work was inspired by a Rembrant painting that depicts the emotional reunion of father and son in Jesus' parable of the prodigal, which hangs in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

After spending many hours in front of the painting, Nouwen concluded that the way Rembrandt portrayed the father suggests a whole new interior understanding of tenderness, mercy, and forgiveness. Nouwen wrote that the Bible story is one that "speaks about a love that existed before any rejection was possible, and that will still be there after all rejections have taken place. It is the first and everlasting love of a God who is Father as well as Mother."

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