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 NOUWENYou don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
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Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.
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I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
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If you feel loved, you can do a thousand things. If you feel rejected, everything becomes a problem.
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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
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This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.
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Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know I am moving from fear to love.
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Your heart is greater than your wounds.
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Our life is a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.
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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.
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Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.
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Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.
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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.
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What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
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Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.
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Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you, too.”
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We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
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In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
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Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
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Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
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Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
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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.
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Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
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Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something.
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Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.
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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.
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The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results.
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