By Way of Paint and Pen:
The Arts as a Medium for Spiritual Formation
Guest Speaker: Enuma Okoro
Craig Chapel, Seminary Hall
7:30 p.m. Taize Service
7:45 p.m. Lecture
8:45 p.m. Book Signing and Refreshments
Henri Nouwen’s life witnessed to a constant effort to hear God’s reverberating voice amidst the noise of a broken world. Honest and open with his challenges, humbly perceptive in his discernment of spirits, and a lover of knowledge that leads to life, Nouwen continues to challenge us to seek after the holy in ways that
stretch out hearts, minds and imaginations, quite often in ways that seem both subversive and irrelevant. This lecture seeks to honor Nouwen’s love of the arts by exploring ways in which the artist, both in the struggle and the beauty of mimicking God’s creative work, serves as a medium for a deepening encounter with the holy, and an expanding invitation to know God in the most mundane of rhythms and circumstance.
Enuma Okoro is the author of the spiritual memoir, Reluctant Pilgrim, an award winning finalist for the 2010 USA Book News and the 2011 National Indie Excellence Book Awards. She is also co-author of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (with Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.) Okoro received her MDiv from Duke University Divinity School where she worked as Director for the Center for Theological Writing. Based in Durham, NC she currently writes, lectures and teaches full-time across the nation. She has been interviewed by NPR and the Michael Eric Dyson Show, amongst others. Her writing has been featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, The Christian Century,
Christianity Today, Faith and Leadership and several other print and online publications. Visit her website at enumaokoro.com.
A short Taize Service will begin at 7:30 p.m. led by Rev. Jeff Markay, Senior Pastor of the Caldwell United Methodist Church and frequent visitor to the Taize community in France. Henri Nouwen often began lectures by inviting his students to join him in singing a Taize chant. After the lecture, Enuma Okoro will sign her books and many of Henri Nouwen’s books will be available at the book table.
The Henri J.M. Nouwen Lecture in Classical Christian Spirituality at Drew was established in 2000 by an initial gift from Marilynn Foss Anderson C’77 and her husband, Vernon.