Nouwen uses the cup as a metaphor to articulate the basic postures of the spiritual life: holding, lifting and drinking. The cup is a powerful image in our human experience. We use cups in our celebrations of a variety of events. Nouwen reminds us that we also use the cup as a symbolic vessel—for sorrow, joy, blessings, salvation.

Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life invites you to adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual guide. Each session was carefully prepared by Dr. Michael Christensen, an award-winning professor of Christian ministry and practice, and Dr. Rebecca Laird, who was Nouwen’s student at Yale Divinity School. Like other volumes in The Nouwen Trilogy, this audiobook collects Nouwen’s unpublished homilies, interviews, classes, and speeches, as well as excerpts from his published writings.

Masterminded by Michael Christensen, PhD, and Rebecca Laird, MA, DMin, The Nouwen Trilogy compiles Nouwen’s unpublished homilies, interviews, classes, and speeches, as well as excerpts from his published writings. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit is part of this trilogy. These convenient audio sessions move you through the five classical stages of spiritual development: Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, Dark Night, and Unification. 

"During the past few years, various friends have asked me, 'What do you mean when you speak about the spiritual life?' Every time this question has come up, I have wished I had a small and simple book which could offer the beginning of a response. I have felt that there was a place for a text that could be read within a few hours and could not only explain what the spiritual life is but also create a desire to live it. This feeling caused me to write Making All Things New..."

From the best-selling author of The Return of the Prodigal Son comes essential listening for Catholics and all spiritual seekers. These meditations by beloved author Henri Nouwen invite you to follow the traditional Stations of the Cross through the passion and suffering of the world’s poor. Inspired by the drawings of Sr. Helen David, Nouwen sees in these images the ongoing passion of Christ. 

Home Tonight follows the path of Henri Nouwen's spiritual homecoming. More than three years prior to writing his great classic, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen suffered a personal breakdown followed by a time of healing solitude when he encountered Rembrandt's famous painting. Within his solitude he reflected on and identified with the parable’s characters and experienced profound and inspiring life lessons.

This book includes correspondence (and context for understanding it) from Mother Teresa's early years in religious life and throughout her years as founder of a new religious community. This correspondence reveals Mother Teresa's struggles, doubts and her sense of abandonment by God. These revelations can encourage and strengthen us as she reveals her abiding faith despite darkness and trials.

The Wisdom of the Desert was one of Thomas Merton's favorites among his own books, surely because he had hoped to spend his last years as a hermit. The personal tones of the translations and the blend of reverence and humor so characteristic of him show how deeply Merton identified with the legendary authors of these sayings and parables, the fourth-century Christian fathers who sought solitude and contemplation in the deserts of the Near East.

“Jesus - the Jesus we might discover if we really looked,” explains Wright, “is larger, more disturbing, more urgent than we had ever imagined. We have successfully managed to hide behind other questions and to avoid the huge, world-shaking challenge of Jesus’s central claim and achievement. It is we, the churches, who have been the real reductionists. We have reduced the kingdom of God to private piety; the victory of the cross to comfort for the conscience; Easter itself to a happy, escapist ending after a sad, dark tale. Piety, conscience, and ultimate happiness are important...."

What is a monastery? A monastery is a place set apart - a place to learn the blessings of powerlessness, and that time is not ours but God’s. Our home and our duties can, just like a monastery, teach us those things. The vocation of monastic men and women is to physically withdraw from the world. But the principle is equally valid for those of us who cannot go off to monasteries. Certain vocations offer the same kind of opportunity for contemplation, and provide a desert for reflection.