Top 100 Quotes About Henri Nouwen
#1. 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. HENRI NOUWEN
Laura Petherbridge
#2. Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this and you'll be fine.
John Eldredge
#3. True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who 'have found the center of their lives in their own hearts'.
Kathleen Norris
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#7. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer.
Henri Nouwen
#8. Henri J.M. Nouwen wrote about 'wounded healers.' I've come to see that there's no other kind. We are all wounded, and we are all called to take part in what God is doing to bring healing to those around us.
Mary Lou Redding
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. I have always felt that if I am very personal and connected with what I myself am living, my writing will transcend ecclesial boundaries.
Henri Nouwen
#12. Television is obviously an enormous intruder. Quite often people say they have no time, but in fact they waste a lot of time on things that are not healthy.
Henri Nouwen
#13. 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
#14. In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel.
Henri Nouwen
#15. 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
#16. Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry.
Henri Nouwen
#17. 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
#18. I am deeply convince that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God's desire for us. It is God's passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.
Henri Nouwen
#19. Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are a Devine choice.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. It is precisely in times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.
Henri Nouwen
#23. It is precisely when you are loved a lot that you might realize a second loneliness which is not to be solved but lived. This second loneliness is an existential loneliness that belongs to the basis of our being. It's where we are unfulfilled because only God can fill us.
Henri Nouwen
#24. Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.
Henri Nouwen
#25. You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo, and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.
Henri Nouwen
#26. 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
#27. Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us.
Henri Nouwen
#28. 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
#29. A sense of solitude is one of the most beautiful things that parents can give a child. It doesn't mean leaving the child alone, but it does mean creating safe spaces where the child can be with other people. It does mean directing their attention to God.
Henri Nouwen
#30. 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
#31. Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering end up disconnecting our suffering from God's suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through.
Henri Nouwen
#33. Precisely where I feel my poverty is where I discover God's blessing.
Henri Nouwen
#34. The great # conversion called for by Jesus is to move from belonging to the world to belonging to God.
Henri Nouwen
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.
Henri Nouwen
#38. Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#39. What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.
Henri Nouwen
#40. I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.
Henri Nouwen
#41. As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God's voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through our words.
Henri Nouwen
#42. 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
#43. 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.
Henri Nouwen
#44. 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
#45. As long as we relate to the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the fields and the oceans as properties which we can manipulate according to our real or fabricated needs, nature remains opaque, and does not reveal to us its true being.
Henri Nouwen
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. Real loneliness comes when we have lost all sense of having things in common. When
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#49. Joy and laughter are the gifts of living in the presence of God and trusting that tomorrow is not worth worrying about.
Henri Nouwen
#50. 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
#51. The spiritual life is a life beyond moods. It is a life in which we choose joy and do not allow ourselves to become victims of passing feelings of happiness or depression.
Henri Nouwen
#52. Trust in God allows us to live with active expectation, not cynicism.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. Prayer is not what is done by us, but rather what is done by the Holy Spirit in us.
Henri Nouwen
#56. 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
#57. 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
#59. 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
#60. The friend who cares makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters. In fact, it matters more than pain, illness, or even death.
Henri Nouwen
#61. Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.
Henri Nouwen
#62. This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.
Henri Nouwen
#63. I want my work to create space where people can meet God, rather than give them something they can "apply" to their daily life.
Henri Nouwen
#64. We must ask ourselves how many times others would benefit more from our silence than from our words.
Henri Nouwen
#65. We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
Henri Nouwen
#66. As Father, the only authority he claims for himself is the authority of compassion.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#67. Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.
Henri Nouwen
#68. In community, where you have all the affection you could ever dream of, you feel that there is a place where even community cannot reach. That's a very important experience. In that loneliness, which is like a dark night of the soul, you learn that God is greater than community.
Henri Nouwen
#69. Everything changes radically from the moment you know yourself as being sent into this world.
Henri Nouwen
#70. If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.
Henri Nouwen
#71. 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
#72. Life is a gift to be grateful for and not a property to cling to.
Henri Nouwen
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. Ministry in no way is a privilege ... it is the core of the Christian life. No Christian is a Christian without being a minister.
Henri Nouwen
#77. Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are those who care for the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken.' It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself.
Henri Nouwen
#78. Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#79. One of the main tasks of theology is to find words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal.
Henri Nouwen
#80. I really believe that what we finally want is to know God, as God has come to be known through Jesus. Knowledge is knowledge of the heart - the Spirit - I would say. It is the Spirit in us who reveals God.
Henri Nouwen
#81. Active waiting means present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it.
Henri Nouwen
#82. 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
#83. Aging does not need to be hidden or denied, but can be understood, affirmed and experienced as a process of growth by which the mystery of life is slowly revealed to us.
Henri Nouwen
#84. Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say to God: 'I love you, too.'
Henri Nouwen
#85. So I am praying while not knowing how to pray. I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting.
Henri Nouwen
#86. 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
#87. Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking.
Henri Nouwen
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.
Henri Nouwen
#91. 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
#92. Good families always ritualize the table. You can say, "This is a Christmas meal; this is a birthday meal."
Henri Nouwen
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. We all want to hear stories, from the moment we are born to the moment we die. Stories connect our little lives with the world around us and help us discover who we are.
Henri Nouwen
#96. It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.
Henri Nouwen
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God's forgiveness.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#100. We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
Henri Nouwen
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