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Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.

Henri Nouwen

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
We are called to be fruitful – not successful, not productive, not accomplished. Success comes from strength, stress, and human effort. Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.
HENRI NOUWEN

Accomplishment Admission Ourselves Production Success Vulnerable Weakness
The main question is not, how can we hide our wounds but how can we put our woundedness in service to others.
HENRI NOUWEN

Healing Hide Question Service Wound
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
Trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
HENRI NOUWEN

Ground Hide Stand Treasure Trust
Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.
HENRI NOUWEN

God Place Space
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
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
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
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
The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table.
HENRI NOUWEN

Community Force Hungry Institution Ourselves Rule
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
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
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
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
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

Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.

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Spiritual maturity is not knowing what to do with your whole life, but just knowing what to do next.

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