What is our vision for community?
Nouwen in Lviv, Ukraine, 1993. Photo courtesy of Laurent Nouwen. Used with permission.
The Henri Nouwen Society helps others to create and nourish Christian community. Christian community happens whenever we gather as God's beloved—whether at home, work, or church— to embrace our vulnerability and discover our strengths. It happens when we enter solitude with God and find others in God. It happens when we reach inward to our wounded hearts with acceptance and outward to a wounded world with compassion and creativity.
In his years of teaching at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard, in his ministry to the privileged and to the poor, in his hundreds of sermons and lectures, and in his thirty-five books, Henri Nouwen sketched out for us a vision of community that is inclusive, compassionate, creative and, most importantly, sustainable.
Nouwen's vision is distinctive because it represents a spirituality of relatedness that leaves nothing and no one out. It is distinctive because while it is grounded in humility and inclusive receptivity, it simultaneously invites each community member to claim his or her creativity and power in a wholeness shaped by the power of the Spirit.
