Henri Nouwen Quotes.
The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us.
The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.
I have an increasing sense that the most important crisis of our time is spiritual and that we need places where people can grow stronger in the spirit and be able to integrate the emotional struggles in their spiritual journeys.
The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don’t see the results.
Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.
What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.
Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy.
To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer.
To be a Christian who is willing to travel with Christ on his downward road requires being willing to detach oneself constantly from any need to be relevant, and to trust ever more deeply the Word of God.
‘How much longer will I live?’… Only one thing seems clear to me. Every day should be well-lived. What a simple truth! Still, it is worthy of my attention.
God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well.
People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained – through prayer, study, and careful analysis – to manifest the divine event of God’s saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.
