Those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. LOVE is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.
HENRI NOUWENYou don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
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You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.
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I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
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God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly but rather as thirsty people. And give me the courage and compassion to offer your Living Water, which alone quenches deep thirst.
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Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.
HENRI NOUWEN -
You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer – listening to the voice of the one who calls you “the beloved.”
HENRI NOUWEN -
Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.
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Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
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Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.
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Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.
HENRI NOUWEN -
I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
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Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.
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The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.
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Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
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What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
HENRI NOUWEN -
We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
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One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
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Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.
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Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.
HENRI NOUWEN -
We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.
HENRI NOUWEN