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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

Henri Nouwen

You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer – listening to the voice of the one who calls you “the beloved.”
HENRI NOUWEN

Call Listening Prayer Voice Yourself
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
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
Keep a space where God can let something totally new take place.
HENRI NOUWEN

God Place Space
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
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
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.
HENRI NOUWEN

Beautiful Flower Joy Ourselves Pain Power Water
Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.
HENRI NOUWEN

Change Offering People Space
Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.
HENRI NOUWEN

Compassionate Distinct Judgement Prevent Togetherness
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
Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
HENRI NOUWEN

Human Learning Morning Patience Wait
Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
HENRI NOUWEN

Fake Illusion Solitude Transformation
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
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
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
HENRI NOUWEN

Life Ourselves Source Wound
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
HENRI NOUWEN

Greatness Life Popularity Power Rejection Success Trap

The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

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