SAR Snapshot: Gratitude for Henri Nouwen

A thank you note from the distant past resurfaces in a surprising way

With Henri Nouwen in 1995 (author photo)

This week’s SAR Snapshot highlights one of my most memorable life experiences: spending a week with the Catholic writer Henri Nouwen. It was 1995, and I was a college sophomore. I learned that the Methodist student group at Duke was taking a spring break trip to Toronto to visit L’Arche, a community that cares for people with significant intellectual disabilities. Because I had been deeply influenced by Nouwen’s writings and knew he worked and lived there, I immediately signed up to join the trip, thus embarking on one of my first interfaith adventures—a Presbyterian joining the Methodists to visit a Catholic.

After our week at L’Arche, the group nominated me to write a thank you note to Nouwen. I was amazed when he wrote back, thanking me for my thank you note, and sending me a small booklet that he had written.

Nouwen died unexpectedly the following year. Unbeknownst to me, my thank you note remained in his office at the time of his death and was catalogued into the Nouwen archives.

Twenty-four years later, I received a surprising invitation from an editor at Penguin Random House. Someone had discovered unpublished lectures by Nouwen, and Penguin was publishing them in what would now be Nouwen’s last book, Following Jesus. The book covers many themes familiar to Nouwen’s readers, including the importance of compassion and vulnerability in the Christian life.

As best I can tell, either one of the book’s editors or curators of the Nouwen archives had come across my thank you note—at the time, there was no other public connection between Nouwen and me. This led to the publisher reaching out to me to offer an endorsement for the book, which I gladly submitted:

Few writers have influenced me more than Henri Nouwen. These newly published lectures offer fresh and timely insights amidst the familiar cadences of Nouwen’s prose, written from a place of deep anxiety but even deeper hope.

I remain deeply grateful for Nouwen’s life and writing—and for the surprising connection that emerged from a thank you note written long ago.