Welcome to the Blog Blitz for Turn My Mourning Into Dancing by Henri Nouwen, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Title: Turn My Mourning Into Dancing
Author: Henri Nouwen
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Release Date: March 8, 2022
Genre: Christian, Spiritual Growth, Grief
How do you find hope in hard times? Why is it important to have hope during difficult times? Turn My Mourning into Dancing will help you survive the difficult seasons and learn how to live a full life in the midst of them and beyond. With practical advice, Henri Nouwen will gently point you towards a way of life that is grounded in God’s constancy and rooted within eternal hope.
In this updated edition, Turn My Mourning into Dancing discusses five movements we experience during hard times:
• From Our Little Selves to a Larger World
• From Holding Tight to Letting Go
• From Fatalism to Hope
• From Manipulation to Love
• From a Fearful Death to a Joyous Life
Healing begins with taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing our sufferings in communion with all humanity, and all creation. Nouwen teaches us that our little lives participate in something much larger. Turn My Mourning into Dancing is a must read for:
• men and women looking for growth and insight on life
• anyone going through the grief process and searching for real solutions
• anyone who has experienced a loss, betrayal, or hard times
Everyone grieves differently. It is a process, not a science experiment. Mourning shouldn’t last forever. Do you want the kind of life that allows you to dance even in the middle of the darkest night? Get the answers and find hope within your hard times with Nouwen’s works on spiritual growth.
PURCHASE LINKS*: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | IndieBound | Christianbook | BookBub
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996) was the author of With Open Hands, Reaching Out, The Wounded Healer, Making All Things New, and many other bestsellers. He was the senior pastor of L’Arche Daybreak in Toronto, Canada, a community where men and women with mental disabilities and their assistants create a home for one another.
Excerpt 1
Joining in the Larger Dance
Mourning makes us poor; it powerfully reminds us of our smallness. But it is precisely here, in that pain
or poverty or awkwardness, that the Dancer invites us to rise up and take the first steps. For in our
suffering, not apart from it, Jesus enters our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently up to stand,
and invites us to dance. We find the way to pray, as the psalmist did, “You have turned my mourning
into dancing” (Ps. 30:11), because at the center of our grief we find the grace of God.
And as we dance, we realize that we don’t have to stay on the little spot of our grief but can step beyond
it. We stop centering our lives on ourselves. We pull others along with us and invite them into the larger
dance. We learn to make room for others— and the Gracious Other in our midst. And when we become
present to God and God’s people, we find our lives richer. We come to know that all the world is our
dance floor. Our step grows lighter because God has called out others to dance as well.
A friend wrote me a letter to recount his discovery. He had decided to spend the week following
Christmas with his father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. One morning, when he met his father
at the day program in which he takes part, he found him very anxious and agitated. His father was
worrying that his own mother, who had died long before my friend was born, needed his help. The
worries were clearly an expression of a deep anguish that he could not express directly.
My friend took his father for a drive for more than an hour through the countryside. Very few words
were spoken between them, but my friend noticed how his father’s anxiety diminished, and he became
more relaxed. After not speaking for nearly an hour, the father turned, looked directly at his son, and
said, “Well, we haven’t had such a good visit in a long time.” The son laughed and realized that his father
was right. Anguish had become peace; loss had become gain. Even the silence between them held
healing. So much of our movement through suffering has to do with such unexpected moments.
Moments that come as gifts amid our waiting or struggling. Moments that often have much to do with
the people God puts in our path.
We do not, then, attempt our movement from our little lives into God’s larger grace by simple resolve or
lonely effort. When our needs lead us to grab desperately for a place, when our unhealed wounds
determine the atmosphere around us, we become anxious. But then we let our hurt remind us of our
need for healing. As we dance and walk forward, grace provides the ground on which our steps fall.
Prayer puts us in touch with the God of the Dance. We look beyond our experience of sadness or loss by
learning to receive an all-embracing love, a love that meets us in everyday moments.
Taken from “Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope During Hard Times” by Henri Nouwen.
Copyright 2001 Estate of Henri Nouwen. Preface Copyright 2001 Timothy Jones. Used with permission
from Thomas Nelson Publishing. www.thomasnelson.com
TOUR GIVEAWAY
(1) winner will receive two print copies of Turn My Mourning into Dancing (one to keep, one to give!)!
Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway began at midnight April 26, 2022 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on May 3, 2022. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.
Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.
Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!
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Sounds like a lovely and uplifting book.
ReplyDeleteThanks Wendy!
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