Community - now in paperback

“What an enormous, important spiritual journey it is when we discover that where our healing begins is where joy is rooted. Not in where you are different from people but in where you are the same.”

“Essays, by turns inspiring, challenging, and sometimes achingly human, on one of the most important topics of our age—by one of our age’s most important spiritual masters.”—James Martin, SJ, author, Learning to Pray

“Community presents ten chapters that are at the heart of the Gospel! Solitude and silence are the anchors that stabilize. Action for justice is the result. But the heart of Community revealed by Nouwen is that it is our similarities that led us to compassion and oneness. This message is good news for these challenging and divided times.”—Simone Campbell, SSS, author, Hunger for Hope: Prophetic Communities, Contemplation, and the Common Good.

Community was one of Nouwen’s constant and central themes, a subject on which his thinking evolved and matured, especially after his experience as part of the L’Arche community in the last years of his life. This book, drawing on previously unpublished material as well as articles written over many years, provides a complete picture of his understanding of community, and why he felt it to be such a necessary and integral part of the spiritual life.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, a Dutch priest who spent most of his life in North America before his death in 1996, is widely regarded as one of the most influential spiritual teachers of our time. After teaching at several prestigious universities, he accepted an invitation to serve as chaplain to the L’Arche Daybreak Community in Richmond Hills, Ontario, his home for the last ten years of his life. His many books include Adam: God’s Beloved, With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life, and Ukraine Diary.  

Covert art: Vincent Van Gogh, Corn Harvest in Provence, 1888. Pixabay images

Cover design: Regina Gelfer