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" 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. "

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" 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 bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come. "

Henri Nouwen

Smile

Life

Love

" If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend. "

" The resistance to praying is like the resistance of tightly clenched fists. This image shows a tension, a desire to cling tightly to yourself, a greediness which betrays fear. "

Henri Nouwen

Desire

Fear

" Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey. "

" Living in a community with very wounded people, I came to see that I had lived most of my life as a tightrope artist trying to walk on a high, thin cable from one tower to the other, always waiting for the applause when I had not fallen off and broken my leg. "

" One of the most beautiful ways for spiritual formation to take place is to let your insecurity lead you closer to the Lord. Natural hypersensitivity can become an asset; it makes you aware of your need to be with people and it allows you to be more willing to look at their needs. "

" Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God. "

" Peacemaking is a full-time vocation that includes each member of God's people. "

" Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful. "

" In our production-oriented society, being busy, having an occupation, has become one of the main ways, if not the main way, of identifying ourselves. Without an occupation, not just our economic security but our very identity is endangered. "

" 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. "

" Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us. "

Henri Nouwen

Violence

Our

" '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. "

Henri Nouwen

Day

Live

" Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. "

" Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear. "

" Ministers are powerless people who have nothing to boast of except their weaknesses. But when the Lord whom they serve fills them with His blessing they will move mountains and change the hearts of people wherever they go. "

Henri Nouwen

Change

Blessing

" 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. "

" 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. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love. "

" Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry. "

" Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom. "

" 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. "

" In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel. "

Henri Nouwen

Gospel

Reveal

" Our inclination is to show our Lord only what we feel comfortable with. But the more we dare to reveal our whole trembling self to him, the more we will be able to sense that his love, which is perfect love, casts out all our fears. "

" To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship. "

" The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised. "

" Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on. "

" The real enemies of our life are the 'oughts' and the 'ifs.' They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now. "