Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers - Review

Commonweal, Sept 28, 2001 by Lawrence S. Cunningham

Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers
Translation and art by Yushi Nomura
Orbis, $15, 122 pp.

Yushi Nomura is a Japanese artist and theologian who was introduced to the wisdom of the desert monks by the late Henri Nouwen while studying at Yale Divinity School on a World Council of Churches fellowship. Inspired by the course Nouwen taught, Nomura selected a series of desert "sayings" and illustrated them with Japanese ink brush drawings. The resulting book, originally published in 1982, has been reproduced by Orbis with Nouwen's original introduction and new epilogue based on Nouwen's course notes.

The sayings collected by Nomura make up only a small part of what has come down to us. The best overall desert collections remain Benedicta Ward's (Cistercian Publications, o.p.) and Thomas Merton's (Norton), both titled The Wisdom of the Desert. While Nomura's selections will be familiar to readers of those anthologies, what are new and striking are Nomura's pictures. I was so taken by his illustrations, I spent more time on them than on the sayings themselves.

Especially intriguing is the economy with which Nomura turns a few brush strokes into a fully realized figure. I even took to counting those strokes by which a monk (always depicted in Zen robes), a flower, a broom, or a mountain come to life. Such economy, of course, testifies to the tremendous discipline of the Japanese calligrapher, whose very art is considered contemplative. The illustrations are a fine match for the sayings, which are also spare and designed to make a deeply meditative point.

In the sayings of the desert fathers, Thomas Merton saw an analogue of the world of the Zen mondo and koan. His original intention, when he made his collection, was to have the eminent Buddhist D. T. Suzuki write the introduction. Alas, the unecumenical spirit of the 1950s made that impossible. Nomura, by contrast, grasps the connection easily. The result is a handsome volume which well repays quiet attention. It is a book worth having and giving as a gift to a prayerful friend.