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The joy at the dramatic return of the younger son in no way means that the elder son was less loved, less appreciated, less favored. The father does not compare the two sons. He loves them both with a complete love and expresses that love according to their individual journeys. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
It was hard for me to see God at work in my life when I was running from class to class and traveling from place to place. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Distance never seperates two hearts that really care, for our memories span the miles and in seconds we are there. But whenever I start feeling sad cuz I miss you I remind myself how lucky I am to have someone so special to miss. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can recognize God in each other's lives, but more because God loves them so much that they can discover each other more and more as living reminder's of God's presence. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I wonder if the greatest temptation is self-rejection. Could it be that beneath all the lures to greed, lust, and success rests a great fear of never being enough or not being lovable? -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding ...
Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When we face death with hope, we can live life with generosity. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Solitude begins with a time and a place for God, and God alone. If we really believe not only that God exists but also that God is actively present in our lives
healing, teaching and guiding
we need to set aside a time and space to give God our undivided attention. (Matt 6:6) -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
They ask only one question: "what is pleasing to the Spirit of God?" And as soon as they have heard the sound of the Spirit in the silence and solitude of their hearts, they follow its promptings even if it upsets their friends, disrupts their environment, and confuses their admirers. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Thus, discipline is the creation of boundaries that keep time and space open for God. Solitude requires discipline, worship requires discipline, caring for others requires discipline. They all ask us to set apart a time and a place where God's gracious presence can be acknowledged and responded to. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When love chooses, it chooses with a perfect sensitivity for the unique beauty of the chosen one, and it chooses without making anyone else feel excluded. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently from the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it. What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I know now that I have to speak from eternity into time, from the lasting joy into the passing realities of our short existence in this world, from the house of love into the houses of fear, from God's abode into the dwellings of human beings. I -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I witness many signs of hope. I don't have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When people show you their boundaries ("I can't do this for you") you feel rejected ... part of your struggle is to set boundaries to your own love. Only when you are able to set your own boundaries will you be able to acknowledge, respect and even be grateful for the boundaries of others. -- Henri J.m. 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 healing, not curing ... that is a friend who cares. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Let's dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
You can only seek God when you have already found God. The desire for God's unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
On the one hand the younger son realizes that he has lost the dignity of his sonship, but at the same time that sense of lost dignity makes him also aware that he is indeed the son who had dignity to lose, (pp. 49). -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides the immense sorrow that has gone before. The -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When the younger son was no longer considered a human being by the people around him, he felt the profundity of his isolation, the deepest loneliness one can experience. He was truly lost, and it was this complete lostness that brought him to his senses. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
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. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Birthdays need to be celebrated. i think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam or promotion or a victory. because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone "thank you for being you". -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God's forgiveness. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When I look through God's eyes at my lost self and discover God's joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
But human withdrawal is a very painful and lonely process, because it forces us to face directly our own condition in all its beauty as well as misery. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
It is hard for me to imagine what it means to be a complete foreigner, a person to whom no one shows any sign of recognition. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
To care for others requires an ever-increasing acceptance. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Have courage" therefore means "Let your center speak. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Prayer, which is breathing with the Spirit of Jesus, leads us to this immense knowledge. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Lifting our cup means sharing our life so we can celebrate it. When we truly believe we are called to lay down our lives for our friends, we must dare to take the risk to let others know what we are living. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God has given me - my health, my intellectual and emotional gifts - and keep using them to impress people, receive affirmation and praise, and compete for rewards, instead of developing them for the glory of God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus.. says, 'Let go of your complaints, forgive those who loved you poorly, step over your feelings of being rejected, and have the courage to trust that you won't fall into an abyss of nothingness but into the safe embrace of a God whose love will heal all your wounds. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
have seen how the fear of becoming subject to God's revenge and punishment has paralyzed the mental and emotional lives of many people, independently of their age, religion, or life-style. This paralyzing fear of God is one of the great human tragedies. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
They discover that there are people who heal each other's wounds, forgive each other's offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God's glory. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Unlike a fairy tale, the parable provides no happy ending. Instead, it leaves us face to face with one of life's hardest spiritual choices: to trust or not to trust in God's all-forgiving love. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Every time you do something that comes from your needs for acceptance, affirmation, or affection, and every time you do something that makes these needs grow, you know that you are not with God. These needs will never be satisfied; they will only increase when you yield to them. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
We want to live as people chosen, blessed, and broken, and thus become food for the world. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Ministry means the ongoing attempt to put one's own search for God, with all the moments of pain and joy, despair and hope, at the disposal of those who want to join this search but do not know how. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Solitude is the furnace in which transformation takes place. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
But when I forget that voice of the first unconditional love, then these innocent suggestions can easily start dominating my life and pull me into the "distant country." It -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Just as a whole world of beauty can be discovered in one flower, so the great grace of God can be tasted in one small moment Just as no great travels are necessary to see the beauty of creation, so no great ecstasies are needed to discover the love of God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
While my friend always spoke about the sun, I kept speaking about the clouds, until one day I realized that it was the sun that allowed me to see the clouds. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Our God is a God who cares, heals, guides, directs, challenges, confronts, corrects. To discern means first of all to listen to God, to pay attention to God's active presence, and to obey God's prompting, direction, leadings, and guidance. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation ... -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
God loves us before any human person can show love to us. He loves us with a "first" love, an unlimited, unconditional love, wants us to be his beloved children, and tells us to become as loving as himself. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God's house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, nonhearing life to a life of listening. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Dorotheus writes: Don't look for the affection of your neighbor. He who looks for it is troubled when he does not get it. You yourself, however, have to give witness to the love for your neighbor and to offer him rest, and thus you will bring your neighbor to love. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Our individual as well as communal lives are so deeply molded by our worries about tomorrow that today hardly can be experienced. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
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 J.m. Nouwen
Every time I take a step in the direction of generosity, I know that I am moving from fear to love. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8 NRSV). To be born of the Spirit is to step into a freedom that we never imagined before. It is to trust that the Spirit -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
By prayer, community is created as well as expressed. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Because life is very small, you can never see it happening. Have you ever seen a tree actually grow? Can you see a child grow? Growth is too gentle, too tender. Life is basically hidden. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
What matters here is that the moment Cleopas and his friend recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread, his bodily presence was no longer required as a condition for their new hope. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Joy and resentment cannot coexist. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
We are not what we do, we are not what we have, we are not what others think of us. Coming home is claiming the truth. I am the beloved child of a loving creator. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
God wants to bring joy not pain, peace not war, healing not suffering. Therefore, instead of declaring anything and everything to be the will of God, we must be willing to ask ourselves where in the midst of our pains and sufferings we can discern the loving presence of God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Radical servanthood challenges us, while attempting persistently to overcome poverty, hunger, illness, and any other form of human misery, to reveal the gentle presence of our compassionate God in the midst of our broken world. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Still, as long as you keep pointing to the specifics, you will miss the full meaning of your pain. You will deceive yourself into believing that if the people, circumstances, and events had been different, your pain would not exist. This might be partly true, but -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
We need you to be a father who can claim for himself the authority of true compassion. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When you can look into the face of another human being and you have enough light in you to recognize your brother or you sister. Until then it is night, and darkness is still with us. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The spiritual life is a gift. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who lifts us up into the kingdom of God's love. But to say that being lifted up into the kingdom of love is a divine gift does not mean that we wait passively until the gift is offered to us. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Coming home and staying there where God dwells, listening to the voice of truth and love, that was, indeed, the journey I most feared because I knew that God was a jealous lover who wanted every part of me all the time. When would I be ready to accept that kind of love? -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When we see ourselves in a relationship of love with God, there is always something of a lover's dilemma, a struggle to give and receive, to trust and obey the call. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence
priceless and irreplaceable. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Those who do not run away from our pains but touch them with compassion bring healing and new strength. The paradox indeed is that the beginning of healing is in the solidarity with the pain. In -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When we are alone with God, the Spirit prays in us. The challenge is to develop a simple discipline or spiritual practice to embrace some empty time and empty space every day. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I also learned afresh that friendship requires a constant willingness to forgive each other for not being Christ, and a willingness to ask Christ himself to be the true center of the relationship. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The "distant country" is the world in which everything considered holy at home is disregarded. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Whether I am the younger son or the elder son, God's only desire is to bring me home. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
If you look at every flower individually, they look quite miserable. Put them together in a vase and they become a bouquet and that's quite attractive. I think about our community often in that way -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this. It is the deep-seated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus, of course, had this capacity to see truly. For example, Saint John tells us, "Jesus did not want to entrust himself to them because he knew what was in every heart" (John 2:24). Such intuitive and perceptive knowledge is the nature of discernment. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Often love is offered to you, but you do not recognize it. You discard it because you are fixed on receiving it from the same person to whom you gave it. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face, and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I reached a healthy place in which I was able to stop projecting my needs on another human being. We both came to understand that each of us is limited in our capacity to be for another what is needed, and learned to forgive each other for not being God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I am beginning to experience that an unconditional, total love of God makes a very articulate, alert, and attentive love for the neighbor possible. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are a Devine choice. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
we are usually surrounded by so much inner and outer noise that it is hard to truly hear our God when he is speaking to us. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Whatever happens to me in life, I must believe that somewhere, In the mess or madness of it all, There is a sacred potential - -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Trust in God allows us to live with active expectation, not cynicism. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Many consumerist economies stay afloat by manipulating the low self-esteem of their consumers and by creating spiritual expectations through material means. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Getting answers to my questions is not the goal of the spiritual life. Living in the presence of God is the greater call. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
coming home" meant, for me, walking step by step toward the One who awaits me with open arms and wants to hold me in an eternal embrace. I -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Spiritual formation is not about steps or stages on the way to perfection. It's about the movements from the mind to the heart through prayer in its many forms that reunite us with God, each other, and our truest selves. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Mourning our losses is the first step away from resentment and toward gratitude. The tears of our grief can soften our hardened hearts and open us to the possibility to say thanks. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
To become like the Father whose only authority is compassion, I have to shed countless tears and so prepare my heart to receive anyone, whatever their journey has been, and forgive them from that heart. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Peace is first of all the art of being. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
It is hard to bear with people who stand still along the way, lose heart, and seek their happiness in little pleasures which they cling to ... You feel sad about all that self-indulgence and self-satisfaction, for you know with an indestructible certainty that something greater is coming. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Both trust and gratitude require the courage to take risks because distrust and resentment, in their need to keep their claim on me, keep warning me how dangerous it is to let go of my careful calculations and guarded predictions. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Spiritual reading, therefore, is slow, deliberate, meditative reading in which we allow the words to penetrate our heart and question our spirit. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
What I do know with unwavering certainty is the heart of the father. It is a heart of limitless mercy. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Christ invites us to remain in touch with the many sufferings of every day and to taste the beginning of hope and new life right there, where we live amid our hurts and pains and brokenness. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
This man welcomes sinners and eats with them," Jesus confronted the Pharisees and scribes not only with the return of the prodigal son, but also with the resentful elder son. It must have come as a shock to these dutiful religious people. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Often we come home from a sharing session with a feeling that something precious has been taken away from us or that holy ground has been trodden upon. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, You are not alone, I am with you. Together -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
God is there. God's light is there. God's forgiveness is there. God's boundless love is there. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Thus the authority of compassion is the possibility of man to forgive his brother, because forgiveness is only real for him who has discovered the -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Preaching means more than handing over a tradition; it is rather the careful and sensitive articulation of what is happening in the community -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Whereas discipline without discipleship leads to rigid formalism, discipleship without discipline ends in sentimental romanticism. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I will see great things when I am willing to be seen. I will receive new eyes that see the mysteries of GOd's own life, but only when I allow God to see me, all of me, even those parts that I myself do not want to see. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
[Praying] demands that you take to the road again and again, leaving your house and looking forward to a new land for yourself and your [fellow human]. This is why praying demands poverty, that is, the readiness to live a life in which you have nothing to lose so that you always begin afresh. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Emit gratitude as though it was done -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus, the Son of God, is the man of sorrows, but also the man of complete joy. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Becoming a child is living toward a second innocence: not the innocence of the newborn infant, but the innocence that is reached through conscious choices. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Becoming like the heavenly Father is not just one important aspect of Jesus' teaching, it is the very heart of his message. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
No matter the life-shattering circumstance that delivers the devastating blow to our spirit, God is bigger. He is faithful and unchanging, merciful and consistent with His offer to us, that through it all, we will be comforted, we will be loved, we will be HELD. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their "right" place. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
when God created man and woman in his own image, he saw that "it was very good," and, despite the dark voices, no man or woman can ever change that. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
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. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
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. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The soul of the artist cannot remain hidden. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Every time you close another door - be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection - you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
God looks at his people as children of a family who are happy that those who have done only a little bit are as much loved as those who accomplish much. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
To the degree that we embrace the truth that our identity is not rooted in our success, power, or popularity, but in God's infinite love, to that degree can we let go of our need to judge. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
There is within you a lamb and a lion. Spiritual maturity is the ability to let lamb and lion lie down together. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: Who can take away suffering without entering it? -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Real loneliness comes when we have lost all sense of having things in common. When -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
By inviting God into our difficulties we ground life - even its sad moments - in joy and hope. When we stop grasping our lives we can finally be given more than we could ever grab for ourselves. And we learn the way to a deeper love for others. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Loneliness is painful; Solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community ... -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to joy. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
You are the heir to the Kingdom. Prosperity is your birth right and you hold the key to more abundance in every area of your life then you can possibly imagine. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The real "work" of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear the voice of blessing
that demands real effort. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I know that I have to move from speaking about Jesus to letting him speak within me, from thinking about Jesus to letting him think within me, from acting for and with Jesus to letting him act through me. I know the only way for me to see the world is to see it through his eyes. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The practice of a spiritual discipline makes us more sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Here is a home for you; maybe you need us. All my desires to be useful, successful, and productive revolted. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
It is as if we have been wandering in a foreign land looking for peace and purpose in our lives and a true sense of who we are. Jesus stands in our midst and beckons us home so that we can be restored to our true selves. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Community thus is obedience practiced together. The question is not simply, "Where does God lead me as an individual person who tries to do his will?" More basic and more significant is the question, "Where does God lead us as a people?" This -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Grateful people learn to celebrate even amid life's hard and harrowing memories because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Action with and for those who suffer is the concrete expression of the compassionate life and the final criterion of being a Christian. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Remember, you are held safe. You are loved. You are protected. You are in communion with God and with those whom God has sent you. What is of God will last. It belongs to the eternal life. Choose it, and it will be yours. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home) -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
In Christ we live as God's beloved before we were born and after we have died; all the circumstances in between will not negate that. Jean -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
It wasn't that the Gospel proved useful for my many worries but that the Gospel proved the uselessness of my worries and so refocused my whole attention. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus changes our history from a random series of sad incidents and accidents into a constant opportunity for a change of heart. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we don't want to know the pain. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God in the here and now. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
it became increasingly clear to me that I know quite well the difference between darkness and light but do not always have the courage to name them by their true names. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When we worry, we have our hearts in the wrong place. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others. -- Henri J.m. 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 J.m. Nouwen
...when we listen to the Spirit, we hear a deeper sound, a different beat. ...Living a spiritually mature life requires listening to God's voice within and among us. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus lived this joy of the Father's house to the full. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
As Father, the only authority he claims for himself is the authority of compassion. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Every Christian is constantly invited to overcome his neighbor's fear by entering into it with him, and to find in the fellowship of suffering the way to freedom. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
It is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
If the urge to be entertained so much, to travel so much, to buy so much, and to arm ourselves so much no longer motivated our behavior, could our society as it is today still function? -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
I now see that the hands that forgive, console, heal, and offer a festive meal must become my own. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Our clinging to the opinions of others reveals how superficial we are. We have little to stand on. We have to be kept alive by adulation and praise. Those who are deeply rooted in the love of God can enjoy human praise without being attached to it. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led into places where we would rather not go. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Jesus wants to make it clear that the God of whom he speaks is a God of compassion who joyously welcomes repentant sinners into his house. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
A large part of the father's life had been spent waiting. He could not force his younger son to come home or his older son to let go of his resentments. Only they themselves could take the initiative to return. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Becoming a child is living the Beatitudes and so finding the narrow gate into the Kingdom. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
A good death is a death in solidarity with others. To prepare ourselves for a good death, we must develop or deepen this sense of solidarity. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Thus, our brokenness can become a gateway to new life. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The Christian leader cannot simply be persons who have well informed opinions about the burning issues of our time. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
His (Christ's) appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When I fail, I feel jealous or resentful of these others. When I succeed, I worry that others will be jealous or resentful of me. I become suspicious or defensive and increasingly afraid that I won't get what I so much desire or will lose what I already have. Caught -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
truly accepting love, forgiveness, and healing is often much harder than giving it. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The world is evil only when you become its slave. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
If God is compassionate, then certainly those who love God should be compassionate as well. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Today worrying means to be occupied and preoccupied with many things, while at the same time being bored, resentful, depressed, and very lonely. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
A spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Christian leadership is a dead-end street when nothing new is expected, when everything sounds familiar and when ministry has regressed to the level of routine. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The Father's love does not force itself on the beloved. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing. The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
The journey of the younger son cannot be separated from that of his elder brother. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Healing begins when, in the face of our own darkness, we recognize our helplessness and surrender our need for control ... we face what is, and we ask for mercy. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Where does my complete flowering as a human being connect with the needs of the world? -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
God should be sought, but we cannot find God. We can only be found by him. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen
Death is not the total dissolution or our identity but the way to its fullest revelation. -- Henri J.m. Nouwen