Nouwen Then: Personal Reflections On Henri

edited by Christopher de Vinck (Zondervan, 1999, p.144)

Christopher de Vinck holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University and is presently Supervisor of Humanities at Clifton High School in Clifton, New Jersey. He has spent the past twenty-two years as a high school English teacher and administrator. The author of eight books, he has received two Christopher Awards for his books, invitations to speak throughout the country and at the Vatican, and has been published in leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest and Guideposts, to mention only a partial listing.

In a humorous introductory account he relates how he met Henri Nouwen, whom he found standing in line in front of him in the spring of 1984, waiting to retrieve his coat after each had received a Christopher Award, following an awards ceremony in New York City. In a scenario not unfamiliar to Nouwen watchers, he relates how the two strangers suddenly became friends: "As the line slowly moved toward the coat-check room, Henri turned to me and said, ‘Hello, I am Henri Nouwen.'" And as Nouwen's friends would say, "The rest is history." Henri, who already had more phone calls and more mail coming in than he could handle, gave the stranger behind him his address and launched yet another correspondence.

As a tribute to his now departed friend, de Vinck approached nine people, some of whom had never met Henri personally, but like so many others, felt they knew him well through his writings. He solicited from each an essay in which each could share their best memories of Henri as they experienced him, whether directly or indirectly through the written or spoken word. The result is a collection of nine essays, plus a tenth, being de Vinck's own introductory essay. Essays vary in length and there are indeed delightful stories to be found throughout the collection. (Out of Print)

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