Author HENRI J.M. NOUWEN
Publisher DARTON, LONGMAN and TODD
ISBN 0-232-52413-0
Henri Nouwen passed away in 1996, his books have continued in print and have been a blessing to many. This one contain four lectures/talks he gave during a stay in Rome in the 1970’s, they are packed full of help and insight as to spiritual life and growth. Solitude, celibacy, prayer and contemplation are the four subjects covered here. Not even the staunchest rigid Evangelical will find much to cause annoyance in these pages. Indeed, we need such counsel and insight. The book title was stirred by Henri’s fascination with the circus and with the place of the clown in the midst of the skilled acrobats, trapeze artists and polished acts that make up such a place. To him, whilst in the busy city of Rome he felt he saw the ‘clowns’ that are God’s clowns, the people who choose to live a life of love and service to God and others. It is true that such people might appear clownish in the midst of a world of violence, greed, history and sophistication (like Rome embodied) yet just as a clown some how elicits heart response in the audience at a circus so these people who are ‘foolishness to men’ grip our attention and we want to be like them. The first chapter shows how the life of God’s clowns is alone but not lonely. Solitude leads to many forms of intimacy, firstly with God, then with others. Fundamental to such a life is the celibacy Nouwen writes about, not so much about the absence of marriage but the celibacy of having what he calls “sacred space” which God Himself occupies in our lives. Actually, this is a powerful chapter as he shows just how interpersonal relationships between human beings can only be true and loving if there is always that sacred space occupied by God present between them. Although he does not use this particular language, he is showing that to live immediate to other persons is idolatrous and damaging, we must live ‘through Christ’ as our Mediator between us and others to live rightly with them. The third chapter develops very helpfully how we can grow to be those who pray without ceasing. Human beings are creatures of thought and we never stop thinking, therefore we must take steps to think prayerfully, bringing all thinking into the light of God and thereby we will be those living in prayerful thought. Finally Nouwen shows us how the contemplative habit, developed in the midst of ordinary living rightly enables us to live seeing the realties of nature, time and people, seeing ‘through’ and thereby living caringly and for the other. This little hundred-page book does take us into the heart of what it means to grow in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
