During the last five years of his life, best-selling spiritual author Henri J. M. 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In Flying, Falling, Catching, Nouwen's colleague and friend Carolyn Whitney-Brown presents his unpublished trapeze writings framed by the true story of his rescue through a hotel window by paramedics during his first heart attack.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...