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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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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
Artist
Walk
Tower
Trying
Broken
Applause
Always
Walks
Towers
Life
Came
Wounded
People
Waiting
Thin
High
Fallen
Tightrope
Community
Legs
Cable
Living
Lived
Cables

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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I am working on three things: on being a prayerful person on staying close to the handicapped and on my writing. These are my constant concerns.
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When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.
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Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.
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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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Is my growing old making me any closer to Christ? Am I only getting older or am I getting more godly?
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Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
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The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not of upward mobility but of downward mobility. It is going to the bottom, staying behind the sets and choosing the last place! Why is the way of Jesus worth choosing? Because it is the way to the Kingdom, the way Jesus took, and the way that brings everlasting life.
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Friendship and love are impossible without a mutual vulnerability.
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Trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
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a spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ.
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Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.
Henri Nouwen
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Although I am a committed Catholic priest, and nowhere hide that fact, my focus is very much a spiritual journey.
Henri Nouwen
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When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.
Henri Nouwen
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Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
Henri Nouwen
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Our life is full of brokenness - broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God's faithful presence in our lives.
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In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom.
Henri Nouwen
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A happy life is a life for others.
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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 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