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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.

Henri Nouwen

We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
HENRI NOUWEN

Fall Preparation Rain See
I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.
HENRI NOUWEN

God Knowledge Myself Wonder
Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.
HENRI NOUWEN

Life Maturity Spiritual Yourself
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
Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.
HENRI NOUWEN

Prayer Religious Spirit
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
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
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
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
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
HENRI NOUWEN

Greatness Life Popularity Power Rejection Success Trap
Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something.
HENRI NOUWEN

God Himself Listening Open Prayer
It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having and that we are worth more than the results of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended but a gift to be shared.
HENRI NOUWEN

Discover Effort Gift Possession Result Share Solitude Worth
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
Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.
HENRI NOUWEN

Darkness Desperate Hope Live
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
Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.
HENRI NOUWEN

Angry Blame Choice Hate Live Loss Time Wide
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
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
HENRI NOUWEN

Ability Heart Human Mindset Ourselves Thinking
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
HENRI NOUWEN

Life Ourselves Source Wound
My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.
HENRI NOUWEN

Complain Discover Interrupt Life Myself Work
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.
HENRI NOUWEN

Hard Time Inspirational Rejection Thinking
Forgiveness changes the way we remember.
HENRI NOUWEN

Change Forgiveness Remember Way
Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day.
HENRI NOUWEN

Day Hope Ourselves Sun Talk True Walk
One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are.
HENRI NOUWEN

Forget Life Ourselves Tragedy Worth
Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.
HENRI NOUWEN

Community Food Mindset People Relationship Togetherness
Your heart is greater than your wounds.
HENRI NOUWEN

Greatness Heart Wound Yourself
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.
HENRI NOUWEN

Alone Compassionate Courage God Help People See Sight

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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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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