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Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.

Henri Nouwen

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing that is a friend who cares.
HENRI NOUWEN

Care Friendship Grief Moments Silence Time Tolerance
The main question is not, how can we hide our wounds but how can we put our woundedness in service to others.
HENRI NOUWEN

Healing Hide Question Service Wound
Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know I am moving from fear to love.
HENRI NOUWEN

Direction Fear Generosity Love Time
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
HENRI NOUWEN

Greatness Life Popularity Power Rejection Success Trap
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.
HENRI NOUWEN

Enemy Life Rejection Sacred Spiritual Voice
We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
HENRI NOUWEN

Healing Health Help Offering Reach
You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
HENRI NOUWEN

Kind Live Thinking Way Yourself
Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.
HENRI NOUWEN

Afraid God Guide Hands Love See Trust
The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.
HENRI NOUWEN

Beyond Depression Feeling Happiness Joy Life Mood Ourselves Spiritual Victim
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

Accomplishment Admission Ourselves Production Success Vulnerable Weakness
The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.
HENRI NOUWEN

Greatness Illusion Leadership Man Thinking
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

Himself Impossible Listening Live Serious Solitude Spiritual
Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.
HENRI NOUWEN

Give Up Humanity Kiss Life Love Ourselves Smile Word
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

Call Listening Prayer Voice Yourself
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.
HENRI NOUWEN

Compassionate Human Power Weakness
Forgiveness changes the way we remember.
HENRI NOUWEN

Change Forgiveness Remember Way

Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.

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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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