As we embark on this season of connection and light at Retreat House Spirituality Center , join our co-founder Rev. Dr. Lil Smith. for a four-week book study and discussion with Henri Nouwen’s never-before-published story of his surprising friendship with a traveling trapeze troupe Flying, Falling, Catching: An Unlikely Story of Finding Freedom.

Rhythm of offering:

• Tuesday, November 29 from 6:30 - 8 p.m.

• Tuesday, December 6 from 6:30 - 8 p.m.

• Tuesday, December 13 from 6:30 - 8 p.m.

• Tuesday, December 20 from 6:30 - 8 p.m.

All discussion will be hosted virtually via ZOOM. You do not have to read the book to attend, and you do not have to attend every session of this study. Questions? Send us a note!

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In Flying, Falling, Catching, Nouwen's colleague and friend Carolyn Whitney-Brown presents his unpublished trapeze writings framed by the true story of his rescue through a hotel window by paramedics during his first heart attack.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 personal growth through friendships during the 1990s AIDS pandemic, and other unexpected encounters.

What will we do with our lives, and with whom will we do it? In this story of flying and catching, Nouwen invites us all to let go and fly, even when we are afraid of falling.