Item 1759 - The necessity for mourning

2 p. of textual records

This item consists of 3 x 1 page excerpts on death by Henri Nouwen published in ‘Alive Now!: Death, by Upper Room Books, September/October, 1990, pp. 10, 30, 60. In ‘A Letter to my Father’ Nouwen begins, ‘The death of husband, wife, child or friend can cause people to stop living toward the unknown future and make them withdraw into the familiar past’. Nouwen goes on to suggest a better way, which he states that we ‘evaluate the past as a continuing challenge to surrender ourselves to an unknown future’. (from a Letter of Consolation). In the second excerpt entitled ‘The Necessity for Mourning’ Nouwen suggests that in our society we have to make a conscious effort to mourn. ‘I know that I must not forget, that I must remember her [Nouwen’s mother] even if remembering brings with it pain, sorrow and sadness’. (from In Memoriam). In the third excerpt, entitled, ‘Consolation’, Nouwen again writing of his mother’s death, ‘Where do we see the harvest of mother’s death?’…and ends by stating, ‘the pain mother’s death caused us has led us to a new way of being…’(from A Letter of Consolation).

Published in Alive Now! (September - October 1990): 30-31.

Added by L Joson, 15 November 2017