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Henri Nouwen Quotes

All Quotes Abundance Age Art Being Human Boundaries Brokenness Challenges Children Choices Christ Church Community Compassion Darkness Desire Discipline Effort Evil Expectations Feelings Focus Friendship Giving Glory Grace Gratitude Grief Grieving Growth Hatred Healing Heart Home Hospitality Humanity Hurt Identity Inspirational Intimacy Jesus Journey Joy Kissing Letting Go Life Listening Loneliness Love Lying Memories Opportunity Pain Past Poverty Prayer Property Quality Reading Reality Rejection Running Safety Silence Solitude Son Sorrow Soul Struggle Suffering Teaching Temptation Tragedy Transformation Unity Vocation Waiting War Weakness Writing

Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.

Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.

People, Attention, Want

Henri Nouwen (2013). “Discernment: Reading the signs of daily life”, p.97, SPCK

When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God's love within me and around me.

Letting Go, Years, Needs

Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, 'How can we hide our wounds?' so we don't have to be embarrassed, but 'How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?' When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.

Healing, People, Shame

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Lonely, Hurt, Pain

Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love?' These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will be many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.

Letting Go, Real, Healing

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. 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 and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

Life, Motivational, Friendship

"Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life". Book by Henri Nouwen, 1974.

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.

Love, War, Emotional

"You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living".

This is what life is about. It is being sent on a trip by a loving God, who is waiting at home for our return and is eager to watch the slides we took and hear about the friends we made. When we travel with the eyes and ears of the God who sent us, we will see wonderful sights, hear wonderful sounds, meet wonderful people ... and be happy to return home.

Home, Eye, Sight

Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God's guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness.

Disappointment, Hands, Darkness

Henri Nouwen (2004). “Turn My Mourning into Dancing”, p.60, Thomas Nelson Inc

What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.

Heart, Thinking, Mind

Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved.

Knowing, Joy

Henri J.M. Nouwen (2017). “You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Convergent Books

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.

Bridges, Hatred, Division

Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart.

Heart, Eye, Unique

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.

Effort, Solitude, Important

Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.

Opportunity, Deep Love, Giving

Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, Hachette UK

You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.

Inspirational, Thinking, Way

Friendship is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive. It is a bond beyond common goals, common interests, or common histories. It is a bond stronger than sexual union can create, deeper than a shared fate can solidify, and even more intimate than the bonds of marriage or community. Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot increase the joy or decrease the sorrow. It is a unity of souls that gives nobility and sincerity to love. Friendship makes all of life shine brightly.

Fate, Giving, Goal

Henri J. M. Nouwen (2009). “Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith”, p.7, Harper Collins

We seldom realize fully that we are sent to fulfill God-given tasks. We act as if we were simply dropped down in creation and have to decide to entertain ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do.

Jesus, Tasks, World

Henri Nouwen (2013). “Discernment: Reading the signs of daily life”, p.129, SPCK

Where is peace to be found? The answer is surprising but clear. In weakness. Why there? Because in our weakness, our familiar ways of controlling and manipulating our world are being stripped away, and we are forced to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency. Right there where we are most vulnerable, the peace that is not of this world is mysteriously hidden.

Letting Go, Thinking, Our World

Compassion- which means, literally, "to suffer with"- is the way to the truth that we are most ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same. Indeed the main spiritual question is not, "What difference do you make?" but "What do you have in common?" It is not "excelling" but "serving" that makes us most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation.

Spiritual, Healing, Mean

Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Let's be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.

Real, Somewhere Else, Live In The Moment

"Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith".

The only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide.

Feelings, Heal

Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being.

Jesus, Heart, Thinking

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.

Country, Jesus, Children

Henri J. M. Nouwen (2005). “Peacework: Prayer, Resistance, Community”, Edicoes Loyola

My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.

Complaining, Whole Life, Interruptions

Henri Nouwen (2013). “Reaching Out”, p.51, Image

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