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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.

Henri Nouwen

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Henri Nouwen
Age: 64 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 24
Died: 1996
Died: September 21
Catholic Priest
Presbyter
Priest
Psychologist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen
Identity
Endangered
Security
Identifying
Ways
Oriented
Economic
Occupation
Society
Production
Become
Productions
Without
Main
Way
Busy

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. ...We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.
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Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.
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Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved.
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God doesn't give us just enough. God gives us more than enough: more bread and fish than we can eat, more love than we dared to ask for.
Henri Nouwen
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The dance of life finds its beginnings in grief......Here a completely new way of living is revealed. It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
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Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched.
Henri Nouwen
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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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...the word that seems best to summarize the desire of the human heart is 'communion.' ...wherever we look it is communion that we seek.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
Henri Nouwen
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If you meet God in solitude, you discover the God you meet is the God who embraces all people.
Henri Nouwen
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It's an incredible mystery of God's love that the more you know how deeply you are loved, the more you will see how deeply your sisters and your brothers in the human family are loved.
Henri Nouwen
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For me the university has always been an ideal context for spiritual formation. I always felt that if you want to offer spiritual formation at the university, you can.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
Henri Nouwen
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The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear.
Henri Nouwen
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The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?
Henri Nouwen
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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.
Henri Nouwen