I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
HENRI NOUWENCompassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
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Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.
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.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 NOUWEN -
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 -
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.
HENRI NOUWEN -
For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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






