Henri Nouwen and The Return of the Prodigal Son. Gabrielle Earnshaw
Henri Nouwen &
The Return of the Prodigal Son
GABRIELLE EARNSHAW
The Making of a Spiritual Classic
2020 First Printing
Henri Nouwen and The Return of the Prodigal Son:
The Making of a Spiritual Classic
Copyright © 2020 by Gabrielle Earnshaw
ISBN 978-1-64060-169-7
Permissions Excerpts from Behold the Beauty of the Lord by Henri J.M. Nouwen used with permission of the publisher. Copyright ©1987, 2007 by Ave Maria Press®, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, Indiana, 46556, www.avemariapress.com. | Excerpts from The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri Nouwen, copyright © 1992 by Henri J. M. Nouwen. Used by permission of Doubleday Religion, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. | Excerpts from Befriending Life: Encounters with Henri Nouwen edited by Beth Porter with Susan M. S. Brown and Philip Coulter, copyright © 2001 by The Henri Nouwen Literary Centre. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. | Henri J.M. Nouwen excerpts from Sabbatical Journey: The Diary of His Final Year, copyright © 1998 by the Estate of Henri J. M. Nouwen. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of The Crossroad Publishing Company, Inc., crossroadpublishing.com.
Photograph of Henri Nouwen trying the trapeze, 1993: copyright: Ron van den Bosch; used with permission. | Photograph of Henri Nouwen’s birth as a clown, 1992: attributed to Peter Doll; courtesy of the L’Arche Daybreak collection. Photograph includes Mary Egan with child (left) and Sue Mosteller (r). | Christmas 1990 with Sue Mosteller, Patsy Ramsay, and Elizabeth Buckley at the Dayspring, L’Arche Daybreak. Photo by Paula Keleher; courtesy of L’Arche Daybreak collection.
The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Earnshaw, Gabrielle, author.
Title: Henri Nouwen and the Return of the prodigal son : the making of a spiritual classic / Gabrielle Earnshaw.
Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Paraclete Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Earnshaw provides a detailed account of how the book came to be written, shedding light on Nouwen’s writing process and aspects of his life experience that influenced his insights and ideas”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019053060 | ISBN 9781640601697 (trade paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Nouwen, Henri J. M. | Catholic Church--Clergy--Biography. | Nouwen, Henri J. M. Return of the prodigal son. | Spiritual life--Catholic Church. | Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606-1669. Return of the prodigal son.
Classification: LCC BX4705.N87 E37 2020 | DDC 248.4/82--dc23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Response to The Return to the Prodigal Son
The Enduring Power of The Return of the Prodigal Son
Introduction
The same year Henri Nouwen published his masterwork The Return of the Prodigal Son he turned sixty years old. To celebrate this milestone birthday, the L’Arche Daybreak community, where Nouwen had lived for the previous six years, planned a special party for him. As part of the festivities, Robert Morgan, a friend of Daybreak and a professional clown, asked Nouwen to dress up in blue balloon pants with a matching shirt and a ruffled burgundycolored collar. Robert placed a beanie on Nouwen’s head and had him crawl into a large sack that was dragged to the middle of a large room. Giggles erupted from the gathered audience of his Daybreak friends. Then, with some instruction from Robert, Nouwen began to emerge from the pulsating sack. At first, all you could see was a skinny, bare foot poking out. Then, with his natural flair for the dramatic, Nouwen started making little chirping sounds as he stuck out more limbs. Finally, Nouwen sprang out, leapt to his feet, raised his enormous hands in the air, and gave the audience the wide-eyed, delighted look of a child. His rebirth as a clown was complete.
A video recording of this birthday drama is preserved in the Nouwen Archives at the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. It reveals how natural this shift from adult man to baby clown was for Nouwen. His sense of play was matched only by his capacity for understanding the symbolism he enacted. Later that evening, speaking to Daybreak friends about the party, he expressed his deep gratitude to them: “You know me. You really know me.” And they did. After years of searching, Nouwen had found his home.
The clown birthday is a vivid metaphor for a spiritual rebirth that began for Nouwen in the fall of 1983 when, exhausted and adrift, he first saw the poster that would change his life: The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.
At the time, Nouwen was living at La Ferme in the village of Trosly-Breuil, France, spending a few months at L’Arche, a community that offers a home to people with intellectual