Flying, Falling, Catching

Shortly before his death, the Dutch-born Catholic priest Henri Nouwen spent five years getting to know The Flying Rodleighs, a trapeze troupe performing with a traveling circus. This book collects his previously unpublished writings about that friendship. Nouwen, a widely read spiritual writer, chose to record the experience in creative nonfiction, a form that was new to him.

His colleague and friend Carolyn Whitney-Brown assembled these trapeze pieces and framed them with a true story: paramedics pulling Nouwen through a hotel window during his first heart attack. He saw a trapeze act as a mirror of life, with its skill, thrilling triumphs, painful failures, and the forgiveness that has to keep coming.

The book follows Nouwen as a spiritual risk-taker changed by his time with these performers. It also covers his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, his years living in community with people with intellectual disabilities, his growth through friendships during the AIDS epidemic of the 1990s, and a range of other unexpected encounters.

Nouwen asks how we should spend our lives and who we should spend them with. Through the image of flying and catching, he encourages readers to let go and fly, even when the fear of falling is strong.