Book Review - Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World - Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen is one of the more popular Catholic writers.  His books are not difficult to read.  I would say that they are written for the everyday Catholic to have an impact on his spiritual life, rather than being books written for academics with scholarly annotations.  Several of the books that I have read lately directly address the intersection of the secular world with our spiritual lives.  Nouwen mentions that he wrote this book as a direct response to a good friends of us, about a lived life of faith in the midst of our daily journey.  This man to whom Nouwen was writing had been wanting to be a writer of novels (he had interviewed Nouwen as a reporter.) Nouwen arranged for him to have a writing sabbatical at the university where he was teaching.  However, in receiving this book, the friend thought that it was not applicable enough to what he and his circle of friends were going through in their lives.  Nouwen felt that there was still a reason to publish the book, that there would still be an audience for it.   I found the book interesting, but perhaps it did not speak to me as much as some of Nouwen's other books had.  However, I still see it as a book worth reading.