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160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice that he heard at the River Jordan and on Mount Tabor can also be heard by me. He has made it clear to me that just as he has his home with the Father, so do I.And yet, if this were a novel about a man struggling with major decisions in his inner life, I would lap it up, much like Marilynne Robinson's Home. Even more so, perhaps, if the religion were Judaism, Buddhism, or Islam, since I would accept it as a belief that I personally have never shared, rather than seeing it as a reproach to the young man I no longer am. And Nouwen writes very personally indeed. He is always there as a human being, as a man given to anger, arrogance, friendship, and devotion, and as a son in real life who has missed opportunities to tell his own father of his love.
…lived a life marked by great self-confidence, success, and fame, followed by many losses, disappointments, and failures. Through it all he had moved from the exterior light to the interior light, from the portrayal of external events to the portrayal of inner meanings, from a life full of things and people to a life marked by solitude and silence. With age, he grew more interior and still. It was a spiritual homecoming,What Nouwen says about Rembrandt's interior light is not merely poetic whimsy; it can be seen quite clearly in his late paintings. He is also implying that while the artist may have started out as the prodigal son, he ended up as the father. The old man in the picture is one of the artist's great studies of old age, on a par with his own late self-portraits, such as the one in London's National Gallery below, painted in the year of his death. But what I find so moving is that while the artist looks out with enquiring eyes, as though the world still hold mysteries that he has not solved, the father in the Prodigal Son painting is at least partially blind; he now sees with the inner eye.
When, four years ago, I went to Saint Petersburg to see Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son, I had little idea how much I would have to live what I then saw. I stand with awe at the place where Rembrandt brought me. He led me from the kneeling, disheveled young son to the standing, bent-over old father, from the place of being blessed to the place of blessing. As I look at my own aging hands, I know that they have been given to me to stretch out toward all who suffer, to rest upon the shoulders of all who come, and to offer the blessing that emerges from the immensity of God's love.The book is dedicated to the author's own father, for his ninetieth birthday.
"Cuando eras joven ibas adonde querías, pero cuando envejezcas te ceñirán y te llevarán adonde no quieras."Si sientes la angustia del paso del tiempo, este libro te calmará. Tu rol de hijo ha terminado, quizás sea hora de asumir un tipo de "paternidad espiritual" que dé sentido a una soledad asfixiante. Lo que pierdes en salud y libertad, lo ganarás - con la ayuda de Dios - en experiencia, compasión, generosidad y amor incondicional. Y siendo así, perderás el miedo a la muerte y vivirás.