Finding My Way Home: Pathways To Life And The Spirit

(Crossroad, 2001, Hardcover, pp. 157), Foreword by Wendy Wilson Greer,  Edited with Preface by Sue Mosteller

Faithful Nouwen readers will recognize in this compilation basically a collection under one cover of three previously published booklets entitled Path of Power, Path of Peace, and Path of Waiting, along with a new entry entitled “The Path of Living and Dying.” In her preface, Sue Mosteller explains the content of the latter: "(It) is taken from the talk Henri gave to the National Catholic HIV/AIDS Conference in Chicago and an interview that Henri gave to Crosspoint magazine." She adds: "Because the material for “The Path of Living and Dying” was not Henri's written word, I confess, as editor, to taking some liberties with it in an effort to make it more coherent.  As I did so, I read other texts of Henri's written word and I drew on them as well.  I believe that the text is true to Henri's thought."

Mosteller sums up the content of the book: Finding My Way Home is an inspiration for the spiritual journey. It names the powers that seduce us to a life of unfulfilled self-seeking, as well as describing some practical choices to keep us on the path of meaning and faithfulness.  To read it is to experience what Henri would call, "finding home on the way home." 

A sampling to catch the flavor of the fourth and final chapter on "Living and Dying":

One of the most radical demands for you and me is the discovery of our lives as a series of movements or passages’. Your whole life is filled with losses, endless losses.  And every time there are losses there are choices to be made.  You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression, and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.  The question is not how to avoid loss and make it not happen, but how to choose it as a passage, as an exodus to greater life and freedom.

Finding My Way Home aptly describes the themes to be found in this slim, handy volume. The book is attractively designed with graphics and short quotes that capture the imagination and invite prayerful reflection. 

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