Flying, Falling, Catching: Carolyn Whitney-Brown and Henri Nouwen

One of the last projects of the late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen was an unexpected and enthusiastic appreciation of a family of trapeze artists. Our guest, Carolyn Whitney-Brown, talks about her work to bring this unfinished manuscript to publication, and what it tells us about Nouwen as a believer and as a person.

During the last five years of his life, Nouwen became close to The Flying Rodleighs, a trapeze troupe in a traveling circus. Like Nouwen's own life, a trapeze act is full of artistry, exhilarating successes, crushing failures and continual forgiveness. He wrote about his experience in a genre new to him: creative non-fiction.

In Flying, Falling, Catching, Nouwen's colleague and friend Carolyn Whitney-Brown presents his unpublished trapeze writings framed by the true story of his rescue through a hotel window by paramedics during his first heart attack. Readers will meet Nouwen as a spiritual risk-taker who was transformed through his engagement with these trapeze artists, as well as his participation in the Civil Rights movement, his life in community with people with intellectual disabilities, his personal growth through friendships during the 1990s AIDS pandemic, and other unexpected encounters.

Carolyn Whitney-Brown is a Canadian writer, speaker, illustrator and university teacher who earned a PhD in English literature. She knew Henri Nouwen well when she and her family lived in the L'Arche Daybreak community from 1990 until Henri's death in 1996. She lives on Vancouver Island with her husband.

Henri J.M. Nouwen was a world-renowned spiritual guide, counselor, and bestselling author of over forty books that many today consider spiritual classics. He taught at the universities of Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame before becoming the senior pastor of L'Arche Daybreak in Toronto, Canada, a community where men and women with intellectual disabilities and their assistants create a home for one another.