We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
HENRI NOUWENWe 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.
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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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.
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Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.
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You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
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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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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.
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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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Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
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I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
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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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We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
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I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.
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We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day.
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Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved.
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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.
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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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The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide.
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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.
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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.
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Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.
HENRI NOUWEN