The Genesee Diary - Softcover

Nouwen, Henri J. M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802725007 ISBN 13: 9780802725004

Publisher: Christian Large Print, 1985

Synopsis

The joys, solitude, inner peace, and austerity of life as a monk are illuminated in the author's account of his six-month stay at the Abbey of Our Lady in upstate New York

About this title

Review

The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery is Henri Nouwen's journal of his seven-month stay in the Abbey of the Genesee in upstate New York. His reflections on daily life with the Trappists are funny, wise, and often profound--resembling Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk, but a bit less thematically structured and more down to earth. Nouwen's goal is simply to record what it's like to pass the time in a cloistered community. He spends part of his stay there reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which helps awaken a hunger for a richer experience of life that he subsequently satisfies by learning to slow down. In his first week at the monastery, Nouwen writes, "I have so many ideas I want to write about, so many books I want to read, so many skills I want to learn--motorcycle maintenance is now one of them--and so many things I want to say to others now or later, that I do not SEE that God is all around me and that I am always trying to see what is ahead, overlooking him who is so close." Then, looking forward to being planted in one place among the Trappists, he writes, "Maybe I need to get stuck," to learn to see God. He does, and he does. --Michael Joseph Gross

From the Publisher

Recorded during a seven-month stay in a Trappist monastery in Genesee, New York, Henri Nouwen's record of his spiritual journey is an insightful and compassionate inspiration to all who seek to know themselves better.

About this edition

• Publisher: Christian Large Print
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0802725007
• ISBN 13: 9780802725004
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 329