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My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.

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

Dare Form Invitation Listening Silence Spiritual Stranger Yourself
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
HENRI NOUWEN

Life Ourselves Source Wound
I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
HENRI NOUWEN

Community Feeling Solitude Strong
Your life is not going to be easy, and it should not be easy. It ought to be hard. It ought to be radical; it ought to be restless; it ought to lead you to places you’d rather not go.
HENRI NOUWEN

Easy Hard Life Radical 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
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
Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.
HENRI NOUWEN

Compassionate Distinct Judgement Prevent Togetherness
Waiting time is not wasting time. Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.
HENRI NOUWEN

Foundation Life Patience Spiritual Time
Our life is a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.
HENRI NOUWEN

Joy Kiss Life Moments Ourselves Sadness Time
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
Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
HENRI NOUWEN

Close Distance Lose Silence Word
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

Alive Community Growth Heart Oneself Quality
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
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

Dare Friendship God Love Reality Yourself
Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you, too.”
HENRI NOUWEN

I Love You Life Opportunity
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

Essential Life Myself

My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.

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My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.

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