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A Spirituality of Caregiving: The Henri Nouwen Spirituality Series
If you provide care for another person, whether you are a family member or a professional caregiver, you know that caregiving is hard, sometimes unappreciated work. But have you ever considered that it isn't easy to be the care receiver?
"Caregiving is … about forming a relationship with another whom we might never have chosen to know. It is about doing all we do practically with the intention of growing into a relationship of respect, listening, presence, and truthfulness," Henri Nouwen writes.
From the heart of Henri Nouwen comes wisdom for the caregiver about the transformational power of relationship in the unique bond between caregiver and care receiver. Interlacing stories from his own life and the lives of friends, Nouwen communicates warmth and compassion as he shares insights on what it means to be a caregiver and to be cared for.
Whether you have chosen to be a caregiver or were thrust into the role by circumstances, you'll see how important and life-changing your work is. You'll also be encouraged by this beloved author who has been called one of the most influential spiritual writers of our time.
"Caregiving is … about forming a relationship with another whom we might never have chosen to know. It is about doing all we do practically with the intention of growing into a relationship of respect, listening, presence, and truthfulness," Henri Nouwen writes.
From the heart of Henri Nouwen comes wisdom for the caregiver about the transformational power of relationship in the unique bond between caregiver and care receiver. Interlacing stories from his own life and the lives of friends, Nouwen communicates warmth and compassion as he shares insights on what it means to be a caregiver and to be cared for.
Whether you have chosen to be a caregiver or were thrust into the role by circumstances, you'll see how important and life-changing your work is. You'll also be encouraged by this beloved author who has been called one of the most influential spiritual writers of our time.
72 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2011
10 people are currently reading
252 people want to read
About the author
Henri J.M. Nouwen
453 books2,152 followersHenri Jozef Machiel Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest, theologian, psychologist, professor, and spiritual writer whose work profoundly shaped contemporary Christian spirituality. Born in Nijkerk, the Netherlands, in 1932, Nouwen pursued religious studies and was ordained a priest in 1957. His intellectual curiosity led him to study psychology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen and later at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, where he explored the connection between faith and mental health. Throughout his life, Nouwen remained committed to integrating pastoral care, psychology, and spiritual theology in a way that addressed the emotional and existential needs of believers.
Nouwen held teaching positions at prestigious institutions including the University of Notre Dame, Yale Divinity School, and Harvard Divinity School. He authored over three dozen books and hundreds of articles, with notable works such as The Wounded Healer, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Life of the Beloved, and The Inner Voice of Love. His writing, often rooted in personal vulnerability and spiritual struggle, resonated with readers across denominations. Nouwen openly explored themes of loneliness, identity, intimacy, and the human desire for love and belonging, making his voice especially relatable and influential.
Though he was a gifted academic and popular speaker, Nouwen found his deepest calling later in life through his involvement with L’Arche, a network of communities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. After a transformative stay at the original L’Arche community in France, Nouwen accepted an invitation to become the pastor of L’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill, Ontario. There he developed a close bond with Adam Arnett, a core member with severe disabilities, which inspired the book Adam: God’s Beloved. At Daybreak, Nouwen discovered a deep spiritual home and a community that helped him embrace his humanity in profound ways.
Throughout his life, Nouwen wrestled with issues of identity, including his sexuality and his longing for connection, though he remained faithful to his vows. His openness about depression and inner conflict gave depth to his pastoral message, and his ability to turn personal struggle into shared spiritual insight made him one of the most beloved spiritual writers of the 20th century.
Henri Nouwen died in 1996 of a sudden heart attack, but his legacy endures through his writings, the Henri Nouwen Society, and the continued global reach of his message of belovedness, vulnerability, and compassionate community. His books remain bestsellers, widely read in seminaries, churches, and among individuals seeking a more intimate walk with God.
Nouwen held teaching positions at prestigious institutions including the University of Notre Dame, Yale Divinity School, and Harvard Divinity School. He authored over three dozen books and hundreds of articles, with notable works such as The Wounded Healer, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Life of the Beloved, and The Inner Voice of Love. His writing, often rooted in personal vulnerability and spiritual struggle, resonated with readers across denominations. Nouwen openly explored themes of loneliness, identity, intimacy, and the human desire for love and belonging, making his voice especially relatable and influential.
Though he was a gifted academic and popular speaker, Nouwen found his deepest calling later in life through his involvement with L’Arche, a network of communities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. After a transformative stay at the original L’Arche community in France, Nouwen accepted an invitation to become the pastor of L’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill, Ontario. There he developed a close bond with Adam Arnett, a core member with severe disabilities, which inspired the book Adam: God’s Beloved. At Daybreak, Nouwen discovered a deep spiritual home and a community that helped him embrace his humanity in profound ways.
Throughout his life, Nouwen wrestled with issues of identity, including his sexuality and his longing for connection, though he remained faithful to his vows. His openness about depression and inner conflict gave depth to his pastoral message, and his ability to turn personal struggle into shared spiritual insight made him one of the most beloved spiritual writers of the 20th century.
Henri Nouwen died in 1996 of a sudden heart attack, but his legacy endures through his writings, the Henri Nouwen Society, and the continued global reach of his message of belovedness, vulnerability, and compassionate community. His books remain bestsellers, widely read in seminaries, churches, and among individuals seeking a more intimate walk with God.
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January 5, 2015
A Spirituality of Caregiving
The Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust has given caregivers a treasured gift by gathering Nouwen's writings in one volume on the subject "The Spirituality of Caregiving."
After nearly two decades of teaching at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, Nouwen began to work with mentally and physically handicapped people at the L'Arche Daybreak community in Ontario.
So, this little volume does not come from the pen of the theorist. Instead, it comes from a practitioner. It is full of inspiring insight expressed in a prose that's almost poetic.
Having been a caregiver with my wife for my invalid mother for almost 4 years, it seems freeing and affirming to read of Nouwen's joys and struggles as a caregiver. He gets caregiving because he lived it and has thought deeply about it. "It is helpful for us to risk allowing a few others to know us in our real experience of caregiving: feelings of being overworked, of being ashamed of secretly willing the one we care for to either get well or die, of living with the high expectations of others or feeling marginalized by professionals, of struggling under the weight of our never-ending fatigue" (pp. 661-62). "If the one we care for is a family member, we also may bear all the conflicting emotions of trying to support a loved one. On the one hand, there is the desire and willingness springing from our love for this person. On the other hand, our desire and willingness may be woven together with the loneliness, resentment, guilt, and shame for unwanted thoughts and dreams of being free once more from the burden of care"(p. 33).
Nouwen doesn't want caregivers to squelch their negative emotions and anxieties. He doesn't want caregivers to plow ahead to fulfill the unending tasks of daily caregiving. Instead he wants the caregiver to grow spiritually as a result of the caregiving. "Right at the heart of this deeply human exchange of caring and being cared for is the opportunity to claim more fully, with all our human strengths and vulnerabilities, our identity as beloved daughters and sons of God" (p. 42).
As I read the book, I made some notes and have come up with a list of Commandments for caregivers that I think might be helpful to me in my role as a caregiver for my own mother. Perhaps they might be helpful to other caregivers, too.
10 Commandments for Caregivers
1. Embrace fully your present reality as a caregiver as the call of God, believing that your caregiving will be ultimately fulfilling for your life.
2. Recognize the face of Jesus in the one who is receiving your care, not allowing the other to live with their grief and pain alone.
3. Be truly aware of the deep and fragile beauty of the person receiving your care, believing that their existence is more important than their accomplishments - their being is more important than their doing.
4. Focus less on the task of caregiving and more on your connection with the person who's receiving your care, seeing the time together as an opportunity to get to know the care-getter.
5. Be with the other person unhurriedly and gently as a gift, following the other person's pace and rhythms.
6. Connect with the care-getter's pain, seeking to feel their powerlessness, loneliness, confusion, anxiety, isolation, fear, depression, shame, sorrow, embarrassment, and sense of being forgotten.
7. Experience the loneliness, resentment, guilt, and shame of caregiving as normal, admitting that you struggle under the weight of seemingly never-ending fatigue, the unavailability or unwillingness of family members to help, the high expectations of others, and the feeling of being overworked.
8. Remember that the care-getter may not always see the care you give as a gift, knowing that your service may not always be appreciated.
9. Allow the care you give to make you better, not bitter, seeing your caregiving as a chance to discover your yet unopened gifts – beauty, tenderness, service, kindness, patience, and compassion.
10. Connect daily with Christ, the loving Source of your true identity - a beloved child of God, believing that His grace will lead you to greater depths of love, joy, peace, and hope.
The Henri Nouwen Legacy Trust has given caregivers a treasured gift by gathering Nouwen's writings in one volume on the subject "The Spirituality of Caregiving."
After nearly two decades of teaching at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, Nouwen began to work with mentally and physically handicapped people at the L'Arche Daybreak community in Ontario.
So, this little volume does not come from the pen of the theorist. Instead, it comes from a practitioner. It is full of inspiring insight expressed in a prose that's almost poetic.
Having been a caregiver with my wife for my invalid mother for almost 4 years, it seems freeing and affirming to read of Nouwen's joys and struggles as a caregiver. He gets caregiving because he lived it and has thought deeply about it. "It is helpful for us to risk allowing a few others to know us in our real experience of caregiving: feelings of being overworked, of being ashamed of secretly willing the one we care for to either get well or die, of living with the high expectations of others or feeling marginalized by professionals, of struggling under the weight of our never-ending fatigue" (pp. 661-62). "If the one we care for is a family member, we also may bear all the conflicting emotions of trying to support a loved one. On the one hand, there is the desire and willingness springing from our love for this person. On the other hand, our desire and willingness may be woven together with the loneliness, resentment, guilt, and shame for unwanted thoughts and dreams of being free once more from the burden of care"(p. 33).
Nouwen doesn't want caregivers to squelch their negative emotions and anxieties. He doesn't want caregivers to plow ahead to fulfill the unending tasks of daily caregiving. Instead he wants the caregiver to grow spiritually as a result of the caregiving. "Right at the heart of this deeply human exchange of caring and being cared for is the opportunity to claim more fully, with all our human strengths and vulnerabilities, our identity as beloved daughters and sons of God" (p. 42).
As I read the book, I made some notes and have come up with a list of Commandments for caregivers that I think might be helpful to me in my role as a caregiver for my own mother. Perhaps they might be helpful to other caregivers, too.
10 Commandments for Caregivers
1. Embrace fully your present reality as a caregiver as the call of God, believing that your caregiving will be ultimately fulfilling for your life.
2. Recognize the face of Jesus in the one who is receiving your care, not allowing the other to live with their grief and pain alone.
3. Be truly aware of the deep and fragile beauty of the person receiving your care, believing that their existence is more important than their accomplishments - their being is more important than their doing.
4. Focus less on the task of caregiving and more on your connection with the person who's receiving your care, seeing the time together as an opportunity to get to know the care-getter.
5. Be with the other person unhurriedly and gently as a gift, following the other person's pace and rhythms.
6. Connect with the care-getter's pain, seeking to feel their powerlessness, loneliness, confusion, anxiety, isolation, fear, depression, shame, sorrow, embarrassment, and sense of being forgotten.
7. Experience the loneliness, resentment, guilt, and shame of caregiving as normal, admitting that you struggle under the weight of seemingly never-ending fatigue, the unavailability or unwillingness of family members to help, the high expectations of others, and the feeling of being overworked.
8. Remember that the care-getter may not always see the care you give as a gift, knowing that your service may not always be appreciated.
9. Allow the care you give to make you better, not bitter, seeing your caregiving as a chance to discover your yet unopened gifts – beauty, tenderness, service, kindness, patience, and compassion.
10. Connect daily with Christ, the loving Source of your true identity - a beloved child of God, believing that His grace will lead you to greater depths of love, joy, peace, and hope.
May 15, 2024
A short little book. But beautiful and convicting. Is it harder to be the caregiver or care receiver? How to have empathy for them (and you) and listen and care rightly (not cure) and take care of yourself because burnout is a very real (hard) thing.
August 31, 2021
This is a lovely short book on how to think about caregiving differently. I felt challenged to see what I was receiving from the caregiving relationship, instead of just what it costs me. It is a short read for people already overwhelmed by caring responsibilities. There is something in it for every caregiver.
March 21, 2015
I have already read this book twice as I care for my husband with dementia. I so appreciate Richards review. Unless you have been a caregiver at this level it is hard to understand.
January 1, 2026
What is exactly is care? It is to lament, to participate in suffering, to share in pain. To cry out with those who are hurting, and to recognize their pains in our own heart! Together, we are a fellowship of the weak. We don’t walk alone, that is the gift of compassion!
Compassion is hard because it requires your inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. It is to say to the other: “I will hold on to you as long as I can.” This is not our natural response!
Caregiving is an opportunity for healing and liberation, for the one being cared for AND for the one who cares.
Here’s the central idea: being is more important than doing! If we put all the focus on doing this or that, the care we give will most likely spring not from a well of love and altruism, but from a bitter sea of resentful duty and obligation.
Let us then just “be” in the presence of the other, which requires listening. To listen is to become a student of the one speaking to you. Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of two lives. You listen to a story WITH a story.
All human relationships are meant to be signs of God’s love for humanity as a whole and each person in particular. We are all His chief handiwork, the beloved.
Self-awareness and discernment are integral for quality caregiving. Learn to listen to your own needs and wants, or else you will burn out! We can only care to the degree that we are in touch with our own doubts and fears. Do things that bring you joy! To be connected to the arts is to be in a caring relationship with your spirit.
We live in a society more occupied with “cure” than with “care.” With this mentality comes the tendency to link our identity more to what we do than to who we are. We cannot cure everything, and even when we are fortunate enough to be able to cure something, it must grow out of care, or else it could be destructive. Care is the act of claiming the truth that the other is our brother or sister, human, mortal, and vulnerable.
Caregiving is bringing people into touch with their most precious self, infinitely loved and cared for. It is a preparation for eternal life. Let us then make the effort to be present to the sufferings of others. Not posing as someone who can take their pain away, but rather someone who is willing to share in it.
The call to compassion is at the center of the Christian life. We must remember God’s blessing is coming to us from those we want to serve. Put simply, caregiving is receiving God’s blessing from those to whom we give care.
Compassion is hard because it requires your inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. It is to say to the other: “I will hold on to you as long as I can.” This is not our natural response!
Caregiving is an opportunity for healing and liberation, for the one being cared for AND for the one who cares.
Here’s the central idea: being is more important than doing! If we put all the focus on doing this or that, the care we give will most likely spring not from a well of love and altruism, but from a bitter sea of resentful duty and obligation.
Let us then just “be” in the presence of the other, which requires listening. To listen is to become a student of the one speaking to you. Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of two lives. You listen to a story WITH a story.
All human relationships are meant to be signs of God’s love for humanity as a whole and each person in particular. We are all His chief handiwork, the beloved.
Self-awareness and discernment are integral for quality caregiving. Learn to listen to your own needs and wants, or else you will burn out! We can only care to the degree that we are in touch with our own doubts and fears. Do things that bring you joy! To be connected to the arts is to be in a caring relationship with your spirit.
We live in a society more occupied with “cure” than with “care.” With this mentality comes the tendency to link our identity more to what we do than to who we are. We cannot cure everything, and even when we are fortunate enough to be able to cure something, it must grow out of care, or else it could be destructive. Care is the act of claiming the truth that the other is our brother or sister, human, mortal, and vulnerable.
Caregiving is bringing people into touch with their most precious self, infinitely loved and cared for. It is a preparation for eternal life. Let us then make the effort to be present to the sufferings of others. Not posing as someone who can take their pain away, but rather someone who is willing to share in it.
The call to compassion is at the center of the Christian life. We must remember God’s blessing is coming to us from those we want to serve. Put simply, caregiving is receiving God’s blessing from those to whom we give care.
February 26, 2020
An amazingly powerful small book...a grace and a blessing!
As a professional caregiver, a physician, who cares for many who will never be fully cured or who are dying, this book and Henri Nouwen’s words spoke not only to my mind, but to my heart and my soul.
Many of his quotes spoke to me but this one in particular stands out:
“To care is to be human. To be a caregiver means to allow those for whom we care to unveil our own illusions of immortality and to claim a much wider and richer understanding of life.”
As a professional caregiver, a physician, who cares for many who will never be fully cured or who are dying, this book and Henri Nouwen’s words spoke not only to my mind, but to my heart and my soul.
Many of his quotes spoke to me but this one in particular stands out:
“To care is to be human. To be a caregiver means to allow those for whom we care to unveil our own illusions of immortality and to claim a much wider and richer understanding of life.”
October 17, 2017
Sixty-six pages of compiled wisdom for those with a bent to empathy. Compassion, caregiving as a human response. Listening to someone's pain. Real care as lamenting with others and identifying with the vulnerable. Allowing others to care for us. A quick one hour read, worth it if you've read other Nouwen books and just need a little bit of his tone in your life.
January 28, 2019
Read this beautiful book in a matter of hours. An excellent read for all caregivers and those being cared for - encouraging each of us to 'care' with compassion.
July 22, 2023
Short and sweet
October 31, 2025
grad school yay
July 18, 2025
This book is very short and sweet. It pulls together the different things Henri Nouwen wrote on caregiving and spirituality. While being a compilation, this book does not feel disjointed or crudely stitched together. It blends and feels natural as if it was written intentionally by Nouwen’s hand. The only sadness is that there is not more of it. This is an easy and thought provoking read for anyone who is a caregiver and interested in Christian spiritual meditation around that topic. There are some parts from this book that I think I’ll find myself returning to over and over again.
February 27, 2017
For a paper at Brite Divinity on Caregiving for Alzheimer's Disease patient carers - Henri Nouwen shares heartfelt insights on what it means to be a caregiver and to be cared for and how the caregiving relationship can lead to spiritual growth
July 3, 2012
A great book with great insight on the task and blessing of caregiving.
June 7, 2014
This delightful book was so short. When I got to the end I was saying - wait, what? Regardless, there are many gems and insights from this true servant minded man.
May 7, 2016
This book should be a required reading for all Christian caregivers.
July 12, 2019
Very brief book but a lot is said about our calling to compassionate care. Offers great encouragement in the context of an honest assessment of the difficulty in both giving and receiving care.
May 27, 2020
Wonderful, small book for anyone that provides care for another. Thought- provoking, poignant, inspiring!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews