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" 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
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" In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real. "
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" 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. "
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" Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity. "
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" To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship. "
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" 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. "
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" Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger. "
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" Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. "
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" The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. "
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" The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised. "
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" 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. "
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" Our Western society is showing its technological muscles in ever more threatening ways, but the experience of fear, anxiety and even despair has increased in equal proportion. Indeed, the paradox is that the powerful giants feel as powerless as a new-born babe. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful. "
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" 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. "
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" Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared. "
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" Ministry is the least important thing. You cannot not minister if you are in communion with God and live in community. "
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" 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. "
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" The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don't see the results. "
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" Peacemaking is a full-time vocation that includes each member of God's people. "
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" 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. "
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" Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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