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 NOUWENSolitude 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.
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
-
-
This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.
HENRI NOUWEN -
If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.
HENRI NOUWEN -
I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
HENRI NOUWEN -
If you feel loved, you can do a thousand things. If you feel rejected, everything becomes a problem.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The main question is not, how can we hide our wounds but how can we put our woundedness in service to others.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you, too.”
HENRI NOUWEN -
Trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Your heart is greater than your wounds.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
HENRI NOUWEN -
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.
HENRI NOUWEN -
My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.
HENRI NOUWEN -
I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
HENRI NOUWEN