Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York : Ballantine Books, 2003, ©1981.
User reviews
LibraryThing member JDHomrighausen
It’s hard to give anything but a five star rating to Nouwen. Sometimes I suspect the man had God ghost write his books. This one, a short introduction to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Abbas and Ammas, meditates on silence and contemplation. Ministers, he writes, tend to be doers, caught up
Show More
in parish committees and ministries of caring. (I found his constant reference to ministers puzzling. Is this written for clerics? But then again, all Christians are called to be ministers.) We forget the need for silence, alone time with God. The Desert Fathers spent years in silence with God. But that did not make them alone or apart from the world. It made them more open and compassionate with those who came to visit them. Silence and contemplation, while they are fostered by spiritual practices of prayer and meditation, are less a state of mind to engage in at times and more a state of being to live at all times. Nouwen is always an inspiration. Show Less
LibraryThing member revslick
A delightful book merging Ancient with Contemporary spirituality through the lens of the Desert Mothers and Fathers. Spirituality in this sense is meant to bring about character transformation. Please note this is best read as a springboard to their wisdom and not the expurgated version.
Original publication date
1981