Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.
HENRI NOUWENThe greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
More Henri Nouwen Quotes
-
-
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.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
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.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something.
HENRI NOUWEN -
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
HENRI NOUWEN -
The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide.
HENRI NOUWEN -
This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.
HENRI NOUWEN -
One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
HENRI NOUWEN -
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
HENRI NOUWEN -
I trust in you, Lord, but keep helping me in my moments of distrust and doubt.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Forgiveness changes the way we remember.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Waiting time is not wasting time. Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
If you feel loved, you can do a thousand things. If you feel rejected, everything becomes a problem.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
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 -
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 -
Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.
HENRI NOUWEN -
Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.
HENRI NOUWEN -
My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.
HENRI NOUWEN -
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 -
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