Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Draw Ever Closer
    Draw Ever Closer
    Draw Ever Closer
    Ebook93 pages1 hour

    Draw Ever Closer

    By Henri J. M. Nouwen and Robert M. Hamma

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Draw Ever Closer is an easy-to-use devotional for all who seek both intimacy with God and relationship with other people. This book offers you a personal, thirty-day retreat based on the most popular works of modern spiritual writer Henri J. M. Nouwen, a priest, psychologist, and lifelong seeker whose books include Out of Solitude and With Open Hands. Requiring only a few minutes each day, Draw Ever Closer allows you to reflect deeply on the fundamental longings for meaning, belonging, and intimacy as well as the call to service and social justice in each person’s life.

    Henri Nouwen—renowned Dutch priest, teacher, and spiritual leader—explored the depths of human experience as a meeting place with God in his spiritual writings for popular audiences. Trained as a psychologist, he was keenly aware of the inner movements of the psyche: the search for authentic self-awareness, the longing for human intimacy, and the desire to draw ever closer to the fullness of union with God.

    All titles in the 30 Days with a Great Spiritual Teacher series contain a brief morning meditation, a mantra for use throughout the day, and a night prayer to focus your thoughts as the day ends. This simple book is the perfect prayer companion for busy people who want to root their spiritual practice in Nouwen’s timeless, and timely, teachings on relationship. Reflecting perceptively on the words and deeds of Jesus, Nouwen shares his own relationship with Christ in a way that leads readers to Christ and teaches them to follow his example.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAve Maria Press
    Release dateFeb 7, 2020
    ISBN9781594719646
    Draw Ever Closer
    Author

    Henri J. M. Nouwen

    Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932–1996) was the author of The Return of the Prodigal Son and many other bestsellers. He taught at Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame universities before becoming the pastor of L’Arche Daybreak near Toronto, Canada, a community where people with and without intellectual disabilities assist each other and create a home together.

    Read more from Henri J. M. Nouwen

    Related to Draw Ever Closer

    Related ebooks

    Religion & Spirituality For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      The Spirit of Plum Village

      Mar 22, 2022

      The Spirit of Plum Village
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ever Present

      Dec 5, 2023

      Ever Present
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tender Hearts

      Jan 19, 2021

      Tender Hearts
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tears Become Rain

      Sep 19, 2023

      WITH HER CHILD experiencing mental health challenges, Celia Landman long blamed herself. “At times in my life, I’ve encountered so much pain I questioned why I became a parent,” she writes in When the Whole World Tips: Parenting Through Crisis with M

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ride The Waves

      Mar 21, 2023

      Ride The Waves
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      End Note

      Sep 26, 2021

      End Note
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Monk And Peace Activist, Dies At 95

      Jan 21, 2022

      Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime dedicated to working for peace.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Divine Wake-up Call

      Nov 26, 2020

      Divine Wake-up Call
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      DHARMA & DEVOTION

      Mar 21, 2023

      DHARMA & DEVOTION
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Faith For Troubled Times

      May 18, 2021

      Faith For Troubled Times
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sounds of Silence

      Feb 9, 2017

      Sounds of Silence
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reading Between The Lines

      Jul 6, 2021

      Reading Between The Lines
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books In Brief

      Nov 19, 2024

      IN THE MODERN WORLD, so many of us live indoors, on screens—strangers to our own bodies and sense experience—and this leaves us uneasy. We’re homesick, for a deep sense of place and belonging, so we try to fill the void the only way we know how: with

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Our Staff Picks

      Nov 20, 2018

      Associate Art Director of Lion’s Roar The subtitle of Sallie Tisdale’s book, Advice for Future Corpses and Those Who Love Them (Touchstone), is A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying, and she really is not kidding about it being practical. Tisdal

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books In Brief

      Jul 23, 2024

      MOST OF US STRUGGLE with confidence. As meditation teacher Ethan Nichtern puts it, we’re like the inflatable people found in used car lots. The wind causes balloon men to rise and sway proudly, but if the wind dies, they collapse completely. Praise m

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Teacher for Our Time

      Nov 19, 2019

      A Beacon of Light What Thich Nhat Hanh means to people of color, by bell hooks. I DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT when I first encountered Thich Nhat Hanh at a retreat, which focused on Vietnam and the survivors of the war there. But unlike most Buddhist

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Beauty In The Bittersweet

      Feb 14, 2022

      Susan Cain burst onto the literary scene 10 years ago with the publication of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which launched an entire Quiet Revolution and a few spin-off titles. For introverts, Quiet has provided v

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dr. Anouk Aimée Shambrook

      Sep 19, 2023

      I’M A BLACK BUDDHIST teacher in a troubled America. I was raised in a conservative white town in Southern California. My Haitian mother and Irish father raised my siblings and me Catholic. They also introduced us to Buddhist philosophy. Maman would l

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Heart To Heart

      Jan 24, 2023

      Heart To Heart
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ask The Teachers

      Sep 20, 2023

      ROSHI JOAN HALIFAX is the abbot and head teacher of Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her most recent book is Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, which explores how we can face the challenges of ou

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Rosary In My Pocket

      May 23, 2023

      A Rosary In My Pocket
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      My Two Religions

      Jan 18, 2022

      My Two Religions
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Scent Of Roses

      Apr 25, 2019

      The Scent Of Roses
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Marriage Made in Heaven

      May 19, 2020

      A Marriage Made in Heaven
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books In Brief

      Jul 23, 2024

      MOST OF US STRUGGLE with confidence. As meditation teacher Ethan Nichtern puts it, we’re like the inflatable people found in used car lots. The wind causes balloon men to rise and sway proudly, but if the wind dies, they collapse completely. Praise m

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Draw Ever Closer

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Draw Ever Closer - Henri J. M. Nouwen

      America.

      CONTENTS

      HENRI NOUWEN

      HOW TO PRAY THIS BOOK

      THIRTY DAYS WITH HENRI NOUWEN

      ONE FINAL WORD

      NOTES

      PERMISSIONS

      HENRI NOUWEN

      Henri J. M. Nouwen was one of the leading Catholic spiritual writers of the later part of the twentieth century. He was the author of thirty-nine books that sold millions of copies both in the United States and around the world. Nouwen had an exceptional ability to articulate his own inner experience of faith in an unreserved way and was thus able to give voice to the spiritual strivings of not only Catholics but also spiritual seekers of many diverse backgrounds. He once wrote, By giving words to these intimate experiences I can make my life available to others.¹

      Henri was born on January 24, 1932, in Nijkerk, a city in the Netherlands, and the oldest of four children. His father was a lawyer and his mother a bookkeeper. As early as age six he wanted to be a priest as his uncle Toon was. His grandmother even had little vestments made for him so he could conduct play Masses with his friends.

      A gifted student, he attended the Jesuit secondary school in The Hague and then the minor seminary where his uncle was president. He went on to study for six years at the major seminary for the diocese of Utrecht where he was ordained a priest in July 1957.

      Always interested in the human experience of faith, Nouwen studied psychology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. After six years there he received a fellowship to the Religion and Psychiatry Program at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. The noted psychologist Robert Jonas said of him, He knew instinctively that he could use his own humanness, his own woundedness in a way that would help ordinary people find a way into grace.² Having finished his studies, he spent the most of the next twenty years teaching in America at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, and traveling around the word to speak and lead conferences. Although he relished his work, especially with young people, he was restless about what further direction to take.

      During these years he took two sabbaticals to discern where God was calling him. He spent seven months with the Trappists at the Abbey of the Genesee in New York, discerning whether he was called to live a contemplative life. After returning to teaching for a time, he then lived with missionaries in Peru and Bolivia, discerning whether he should work among the poor in the developing world. After six months he returned to the United States and took a part-time teaching position at Harvard Divinity School, which would allow him to return to Latin America for parts of the year.

      In 1985 he resigned from Harvard and spent the next year living in at L’Arche, a community in France founded by Jean Vanier where people with differing intellectual abilities live together in community. This was a turning point for Nouwen. When he returned from France he moved into another L’Arche community near Toronto called Daybreak, where he lived alongside and cared for a young man with profound disabilities named Adam. He spent the last ten years of his life there, caring for Adam and other members of the community as their pastor.

      Among the many things that can be said about Henri Nouwen, perhaps one of the most important is that he was a person of prayer who modeled his life on Jesus. Almost all of his books deal with prayer in some way. Because he recognized himself as often distracted, restless, and self-preoccupied, his reflections on prayer speak to the struggles of so many.

      Nouwen constantly focused on the gospels and sought to live out the compassion and fidelity of Jesus. In A Letter of Consolation, written in memory of his mother, he wrote, My whole life is centered on the Eucharist. . . . My life must be a continuing proclamation of the death and resurrection of Christ.³ This is how he understood all of Christian life and in particular his ministry as a priest.

      Among the many perspectives from which we can look at the life of Henri Nouwen, perhaps one of the most revealing is through his

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1