Who Should Attend

This gathering is for all who carry a longing for healing, connection, and hope in a hurting world. Whether you are a pastor, spiritual director, therapist, caregiver, educator, parent, artist, concerned citizen, or spiritual seeker, you are invited to join a community of fellow travelers inspired by Henri Nouwen’s prophetic witness. Together, we will explore what it means to create “home” — places of belonging, compassion, and courage — in our lives, ministries, and communities. If you are drawn to Nouwen’s vision of vulnerability, hospitality, and the transformative power of love, this conference will offer space for reflection, renewal, and deep conversation with others who share your longing to be a healing presence in the world.

Inside the Longing for Home Experience

1. Contemplative Spirituality and Prophetic Theology

Exploring Nouwen’s deep integration of spiritual life and theological reflection; the role of prayer, silence, vulnerability, and resistance in today’s world.

  • Spiritual formation in a restless age

  • The wounded healer: spiritual leadership from a place of weakness

  • Theology of the heart: Nouwen’s integration of intellect and intimacy with God

2. The Arts, Imagination, and the Inner Life

Honoring Nouwen’s appreciation for art, beauty, and creativity as pathways to God.

  • Art as sacred expression in a fractured world

  • Visio Divina and the visual language of the soul

  • Writing and storytelling as healing and witness

3. Compassionate Presence: Ministry, Caregiving, and Mental Health

Nouwen’s embodiment of ministry through vulnerability, caregiving, and accompaniment.

  • Embracing fragility in caregiving and pastoral ministry

  • Compassion fatigue and the spiritual care of caregivers

  • The intersection of spirituality and mental health

  • Engaging children; parenting wisdom; support for educators

4. Justice, Peace, and Global Solidarity

Addressing the prophetic edge of Nouwen’s witness to injustice, war, and displacement.

  • Longing for home: exile, migration, and belonging

  • Henri Nouwen’s global legacy and cross-cultural ministry

  • Hospitality as resistance: building communities of peace

5. Community, Belonging, and the Human Heart

Nouwen’s lifelong yearning for authentic connection and his critique of individualism.

  • Creating communities of tenderness and truth

  • Friendship, loneliness, and the search for home

  • The sacredness of ordinary relationships

6. The Prophetic Voice in a Wounded World

A focus on Nouwen’s challenge to systems of exclusion, and his call to live as witnesses of love and mercy.

  • The call to be prophetic in divided times

  • Nouwen and the politics of empathy

  • Bearing witness: hope, suffering, and reconciliation

Contact us

Questions? Interested in exhibiting at the conference? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!