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| photo from Ron Rolheiser.com |
Notes from Ron Rolheiser's first talk at the Henri Nouwen Society's 'Way of the Heart Conference' - June 10, 2016.
- Henri taught theology for 16 years
- He had an intelligence to challenge the heart
- His unique stunning popularity
- His cadence, his writing, his formula for writing
- His was a very gentle voice
- Most popular writer in terms of spirituality in the last 70 years
- Academic legacy - stunning popularity
- He purged himself of the language of academia
- He'd distill ideas like wine from grapes
- Simple rather than complex
- It takes a great mind to be simple
- He was an artist, he could turn a phrase
- He developed a new language for spirituality
- He opened the field of spirituality to Protestants
- At Harvard and Yale he made spirituality topical, he brought it into the mainstream
- Humiliation brings about depth
- He was a deeply wounded and a hushed soul
- He couldn't hide his weakness
- His wound opened him up
- Henri wrote spirituality rather than write about spirituality
- He sought to find the language of the heart
- He wrote a new language about how God has touched our lives
- He tries to be direct
- He wrote about Jesus, intimacy about Jesus - not about Jesus Christ
- He tried to write as a human being not as a priest
- His formula for writing - work hard to reach simplicity
- Worked at it for hours and hours
- He worked at his craft for hours
- Radically simple without being simplistic
- He would take his own pains and break them open for everyone to read
- To be a saint it is to will the one thing (Kierkegaard)
- Life a trial - wanted poverty and luxury
- Devotional without being pious
- The liberals can't pious and the pious can't be liberal
- Dorothy Day and Henri Nouwen could be both
- He was a pacifist but he didn't alienate people with the language
- He was an iconoclast without being alienating
- Always left you with hope, without abandoning struggle
- Language sensitive to human weakness even as it moves us to the sublime
- Put on the big mind and believe the good news
- Metanoia is the opposite of paranoia
- Metanoia is the Greek word for 'Repent'
- There are no righteous people
- It is not a question of whether your family is dysfunctional but how much
- He is the saint for the complex
- Prior to 1970 there was no word 'spirituality'
- Struggle to get your life together
- Puberty is God's gift to drive you out of the house
- Trying to give your life away - how can I be more helpful? How can I give my life away?
- How can I live so my dying will be a gift?
- Mourn my people mourn
- Mourn for the absence of warmth
- Mourn for absence of love, the dark force of evil - cry for redemption for freedom
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