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Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence -- priceless and irreplaceable.
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
Humans
Mosaics
Irreplaceable
Priceless
Stones
Unique
Existence
Lives
Human
Mosaic
More quotes by Henri Nouwen
Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.
Henri Nouwen
Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.
Henri Nouwen
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
It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.
Henri Nouwen
The world is evil only when you become its slave.
Henri Nouwen
Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.
Henri Nouwen
Often we come home from a sharing session with a feeling that something precious has been taken away from us or that holy ground has been trodden upon.
Henri Nouwen
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
Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule.
Henri Nouwen
As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their right place.
Henri Nouwen
Gratitude flows from the recognition that who we are and what we have are gifts to be received and shared.
Henri Nouwen
The Church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care. The blessing of Jesus always comes to us through the poor. The most remarkable experience of those who work with the poor is that, in the end, the poor give more than they receive. They give food to us.
Henri Nouwen
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
To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.
Henri Nouwen
The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table.
Henri Nouwen
I was forced to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, and to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life.
Henri Nouwen
Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.
Henri Nouwen
Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing-sicknes s, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death--can take that love away.
Henri Nouwen
I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.
Henri Nouwen
Today's reading was if they ask you to walk a mile, walk two. Don't take an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. You have chances every second to live this Word, but it has to be in you. It can't just be an idea it has to sink from the mind into the heart.
Henri Nouwen
