: Carol A. Berry
: Learning from Henri Nouwen and Vincent van Gogh A Portrait of the Compassionate Life
: IVP Formatio
: 9780830872725
: 1
: CHF 18.10
:
: Christentum
: English
: 144
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Carol Berry and her husband met and befriended Henri Nouwen when she sat in his course on compassion at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s. At the request of Henri Nouwen's literary estate, she has written this book, which includes unpublished material recorded from Nouwen's lectures. As an art educator, Berry is uniquely situated to develop Nouwen's work on Vincent van Gogh and to add her own research. She fills in background on the much misunderstood spiritual context of van Gogh's work, and reinterprets van Gogh's art (presented here in full color) in light of Nouwen's lectures. Berry also brings in her own experience in ministry, sharing how Nouwen and van Gogh, each in his own way, led her to the richness and beauty of the compassionate life.

Carol A. Berry is an artist, art educator, and lecturer. She is also the author of Vincent van Gogh: His Spiritual Vision in Life and Art. She has been studying Vincent van Gogh since 1979, and spent years under the instruction of Henri J. M. Nouwen. She has traveled throughout Europe retracing van Gogh's life, visiting the towns and villages in The Netherlands, Belgium, and France, where van Gogh lived and worked.

Introduction


Encountering
Henri and Vincent


e almost didn’t go to New Haven, Connecticut, in autumn 1976. My husband, Steve, was sitting at the kitchen table in our little parsonage in northern Vermont one late summer day that year when he opened the anticipated envelope from Yale Divinity School. The first sentence began, “We regret to inform you . . .” Without reading any further, he tossed the rejection letter into the empty fruit bowl.

While working toward his undergraduate degree, Steve had served as a licensed student pastor for three years in two rural parishes in northern Vermont. At the insistent encouragement of a retired clergy friend, a Yale alumnus, Steve had applied to Yale Divinity School. It was the only application he sent. Expecting to move by the fall after his graduation from Johnson State College, he informed the two parishes of our intention to leave. When the letter arrived, we had just a few more weeks of parish ministry left with no plan B. And on top of that, I was entering my ninth month of pregnancy with our first child.

A week went by before Steve finally did retrieve that missive from the fruit bowl and read it through to the end. And there it was—the chance that we had almost missed. The concluding paragraph stated that Steve should inform the Yale Admittance Committee by return mail if anything in his application had been overlooked or misunderstood. Steve immediately contacted Yale Divinity School again. This time he submitted examples of sermons he had preached, including a detailed account of our three years’ parish experience. For good measure he added a list of all the books he had read while preparing his sermons. Within another week and a half Steve received an acceptance letter. A few days later he was on his way south with a U-Haul, transporting our few belongings to student housing on the Yale Divinity School campus in New Haven.

Life during the initial months on campus couldn’t have been more different from our parish life with the rural folks up north. For me the days were filled with the wonders and challenges of caring for our baby boy, Andris. Meanwhile, Steve couldn’t seem to find his bearings in the competitive atmosphere of academia. Further, he felt that after his experience of a hands-on ministry, the academic setting seemed artificial and not in touch with reality. He could barely open his books and was falling drastically behind in his course work. He began questioning whether he had made the right choice to enroll in divinity school—until he met Henri Nouwen, who was at that time a professor at the Yale Divinity School.

My first meeting with Henri Nouwen is still very vivid in my mind. Stepping into the Yale Divinity School bookstore one day, my ears immediately picked up an unmistakably Dutch accent spoken by someone on the other side of the bookshelves. Following the sound, I saw a man dressed in a well-worn, baggy, moth-eaten sweater with a woolen scarf around his neck. His hair was disheveled. He had thick glasses perched on the tip of his nose and was carrying an armload of books. He looked like the typical student, somewhat older than the rest maybe, but definitely one of those studious types who neglect everything else except their studies. Eager to meet a fellow European (I grew up in Holland and Switzerland), I approached him and asked,Studeert U hier (Do you study here)?

Without letting me know that I just made a faux pas, he simply said,Nee, ik geef hier les (No, I give lessons here).

Thankfully, this short dialogue had been spoken in a language no one else likely understood, so my mistaking one of Yale Divinity School’s