With Open Hands

HENRI J.M. NOUWEN

foreword by Sue Monk Kidd

First printing, February 1972

First revised edition, January 1995

Second revised edition, January 2006

© 1972, 1995, 2005 by Ave Maria Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press®, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556-0428.

www.avemariapress.com

ISBN-10 1-59471-064-3

ISBN-13 978-1-59471-064-3

Cover design by John Carson

Cover and interior photos © Photos.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nouwen, Henri J. M.

With open hands / Henri J.M. Nouwen ; foreword by Sue Monk Kidd.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59471-064-3 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 1-59471-064-3 (pbk.)

1. Prayer--Christianity. I. Title.

BV210.3.N68 2006

248.3'2--dc22

2005031893

contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction: With Clenched Fists

1. Prayer and Silence

2. Prayer and Acceptance

3. Prayer and Hope

4. Prayer and Compassion

5. Prayer and Prophetic Criticism

Conclusion: With Open Hands

foreword

by Sue Monk Kidd

It is not surprising to me that I still recall my first encounter with this book, even though it occurred in 1978. I stumbled upon it in a small bookstore, where it was tucked among the photography books along with Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz. As I flipped through the black and white photos inside, I didn’t realize With Open Hands was actually a book on prayer. At that point, I’d never heard of Henri Nouwen; I assumed he was a renowned photographer.

It turned out, of course, that Nouwen was a writer. In fact, he was one of those rare writers whose words surfaced from the depths of his own spiritual life in much the same way photographic images floated up from the developing solution of those old masters, Adams and Stieglitz. With Open Hands is filled with wisdom from a soul deeply engaged in the experience of prayer.

I took the book home that day and read it. I was twenty-nine year-old, struggling to keep up with the demands of being a young wife, mother, and writer, dashing about at times like a circus performer spinning plates. There seemed little, if any, time for prayer.

To be perfectly honest, I’d come to think of prayer as a fairly boring mental activity, the recitation of predictable words, an external and somewhat fruitless act. I’d had a solid Protestant upbringing, but I was clueless about the passionate landscape of the interior life, about the deep and forgotten art of tending the soul and transforming the mind and heart—the very stuff of prayer.

I found unexpected sentences in Nouwen’s book: “When you want to pray, the first question is: How do I open my closed hands?” Was he suggesting that prayer was about opening something clenched and frightened in the human spirit?

He wrote that prayer created an “openness in which God is given to us.” This struck me as a remarkable assertion. If such a portal for the Divine could be created, then ...