Henri Nouwen was an author, Dutch Catholic priest, and academic. He was a professor at Yale among other places. In 1974 he went to live as a monk at the Trappist Abbey of the Genesee near Rochester, New York. He did not join the the Trappists and stay as a professed monk but came to spend 7 months living as a monk and reflecting on his life. The diary he kept during those seven months was published later at the urging of some of his fiends. While at the Abbey Nouwen entered into the balanced monastic life of prayer, contemplation and work. Whole I have never visited the Abbey of the Genesee I have known about it since I first came to Rochester over 20 years ago. The monks are best known for their line of Monk's Bread which is sold in Rochester Area groceries. I am a fan of the Monk's Raisin Bread. In the book the author writes about attending the daily prayers in the chapel with the monks and his regular sessions with the Prior, Fr. John Eudes. I was surprised with his willingness to write about the personal struggles he shared with the Prior. In spite of his wide reputation as an author and authority on Christian Spirituality Nouwen struggled with a strong need for attention and recognition. He tried to stop needing to always be the center of attention and found it very hard. I enjoyed his writing about the work he did while living as a monk. He gathered large rocks for the building of a new chapel. After moving some of these rocks several times, some weighted hundreds of pounds, he began to recognize them almost as friends. He also worked in the bakery and often got the job of washing the raisins for the raisin bread. This is a worthwhile book but not easy to read. Though it is only a bit over 200 pages it takes effort. In the book Henri Nouwen wrote about placing the price tags on the bread bags. The price in 1974 went from 54 to 59 cents a loaf. It is quite a big more than that now in 2020. ( )

"This is an extraordinary account of a man seeking inner peace and total commitment to God... a fine portrait of cloistered life, a beautifully written account of one man's soul-searching."
--Publisher's Weekly

Before writing about the book, a couple of disclaimers as my reasons for reading it have less to do with matters of Christian faith and more to do with curiousity albeit both secular and spiritual. I grew up about a mile as a crow flies from this monastery and many times, especially during the 1970's, attended the midnight mass at Christmas in the company of a Catholic friend. (I also grew up eating Monk's bread--the raisin-cinnamon was the best) so I could well have been at the midnight mass Nouwen writes of on his last night at the monastery in 1974. I put the book on my wishlist long ago, the "Genesee" having caught my eye. A friend here gave it to me. The river was less than a quarter mile from our farmhouse. The idea of my own large, messy, noisy and complicated family being so close by to a place of such quietude and contemplation bemused me.

So the book. Henri Nouwen, Dutch, and a devout Catholic, Jesuit-trained but also a restless man (and troubled) with an interest in the places where spirituality and psychology meet, asks to stay at the monastery and is granted the unique gift of a seven-month long residency. Henri, a teacher, writer, speaker, arrives in a burnt-out state, feeling that he is losing sight of his relationship to the core matter of his life, his relationship to God. Every week he spends an hour with the Abbot, John Eudes, a remarkable person in which they discuss his "progress".

Two compulsions form his efforts of the first few months, dealing with restlessness and anger, finding the source of each and ways to move beyond both. In the former it is, he realizes, his competitiveness, a constant measuring of himself versus others that causes him, when he is with people, to exhaust himself. Conversely being alone makes him feel crazily bored and even more so if it involves spending half a day hauling rocks out of a creek for the walls of the new chapel or washing raisins or bread pans. When he is alone he craves people, when with people, he craves being alone. He is not comfortable in himself in the moment. Eudes says "Without solitude there can be no real people. The more you discover what a person is, and experience what a human relationship requires in order to remain profound, fruitful, and a source of growth and development, the more you discover that you are alone--..." Nouwen also experiences flashes of anger (and longer bouts of resentment) when, say, he realizes that one monk is simply "nice" to everyone, not just him. Nouwen grapples with his need to be special, to stand out, to garner praise and not to resent it when others receive more praise than he. These first concerns gradually ease during the months of his stay and he has genuine insights into the underlying causes too which helps a shift and ebbing of turmoil as, gradually, the emotions subside. After six months he finds he can spend the day messing with the rocks or mucking about in the bakery if not quite happily, then contentedly and it feels wonderful. He knows he does not have a vocation to be a monk, so now Henri's hopes begin to turn toward taking what he has learned here with him when he returns to his regular life in the secular world. While in his epilogue he says he didn't do so well with it, I doubt that. I can say unequivocally that there is much here for the secular seeker and that my curiousity was satisfied. I'm happy to think of these good people being nearby, especially during my tumultuous adolescence. I have spent several hours all told in the "new" chapel, built in that year, and it is a lovely tranquil place. I love knowing that Henri Nouwen had a hand in it. ****1/2 ( )

Finished July 2016. Excellent ( )

Interesting and a little depressing. But, worthwhile nonetheless. ( )