Draw Ever Closer is an easy-to-use devotional for all who seek both intimacy with God and relationship with other people. This book offers you a personal, thirty-day retreat based on the most popular works of modern spiritual writer Henri J. M. Nouwen, a priest, psychologist, and lifelong seeker whose books include Out of Solitude and With Open Hands. Requiring only a few minutes each day, Draw Ever Closer allows you to reflect deeply on the fundamental longings for meaning, belonging, and intimacy as well as the call to service and social justice in each person’s life. Henri Nouwen—renowned Dutch priest, teacher, and spiritual leader—explored the depths of human experience as a meeting place with God in his spiritual writings for popular audiences. Trained as a psychologist, he was keenly aware of the inner movements of the psyche: the search for authentic self-awareness, the longing for human intimacy, and the desire to draw ever closer to the fullness of union with God. All titles in the 30 Days with a Great Spiritual Teacher series contain a brief morning meditation, a mantra for use throughout the day, and a night prayer to focus your thoughts as the day ends. This simple book is the perfect prayer companion for busy people who want to root their spiritual practice in Nouwen’s timeless, and timely, teachings on relationship. Reflecting perceptively on the words and deeds of Jesus, Nouwen shares his own relationship with Christ in a way that leads readers to Christ and teaches them to follow his example.
Author
Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen (Nouen), (1932–1996) was a Dutch-born Catholic priest and writer who authored 40 books on the spiritual life. Nouwen's books are widely read today by Protestants and Catholics alike. The Wounded Healer, In the Name of Jesus, Clowning in Rome, The Life of the Beloved, and The Way of the Heart are just a few of the more widely recognized titles. After nearly two decades of teaching at the Menninger Foundation Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, and at the University of Notre Dame, Yale University and Harvard University, he went to share his life with mentally handicapped people at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. After a long period of declining energy, which he chronicled in his final book, Sabbatical Journey, he died in September 1996 from a sudden heart attack. His spirituality was influenced by many, notably by his friendship with Jean Vanier. At the invitation of Vanier he visited L'Arche in France, the first of over 130 communities around the world where people with developmental disabilities live and share life together with those who care for them. In 1986 Nouwen accepted the position of pastor for a L'Arche community called "Daybreak" in Canada, near Toronto. Nouwen wrote about his relationship with Adam, a core member at L'Arche Daybreak with profound developmental disabilities, in a book titled Adam: God's Beloved. Father Nouwen was a good friend of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. The results of a Christian Century magazine survey conducted in 2003 indicate that Nouwen's work was a first choice of authors for Catholic and mainline Protestant clergy. One of his most famous works is Inner Voice of Love, his diary from December 1987 to June 1988 during one of his most serious bouts with clinical depression. There is a Father Henri J. M. Nouwen Catholic Elementary School in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
