Quote

Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

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
Even
Inner
Hospitality
Silent
Invite
Listening
Selves
Friends
Strangers
Spiritual
Invites
Form
Stranger
Become
Fully
Self
Dare

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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The university has become a place that prepares you for the fights in the world.
Henri Nouwen
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Live, work, and travel with handicapped people, so I can stay close to them. But since I am often busy with many things, it's a constant struggle to keep the handicapped members of our community in the center of my life.
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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The real 'work' of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
Henri Nouwen
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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
Henri Nouwen
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Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel.
Henri Nouwen
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[...]when two people have become present to each other, the waiting of one must be able to cross the narrow line between the living or dying of the other.
Henri Nouwen
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What is Hope?Hope is that inner dynamic that compels us to explore and pursue the expectations built into the human condition. Hope was born the day the first human beings discovered the first bridge and decided not to jump off the bridge in despair, but to cross it
Henri Nouwen
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The Question is not how much are you going to accomplish? Or can you show some results? But are you in love with Jesus? In our world of brokeness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God a heart that forgives, cares, reaches out and wants to heal.
Henri Nouwen
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True Hospitality is welcoming the stranger on her own terms. This kind of hospitality can only be offered by those who've found the center of their lives in their own hearts.
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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A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.
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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You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.
Henri Nouwen
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When suddenly you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself All is lost. I have to start all over again. This is not true. What you have gained you have gained....When you return to the the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you starte
Henri Nouwen
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Although we tend to think about saints as holy and pious, and picture them with halos above their heads and ecstatic gazes, true saints are much more accessible. They are men and women like us, who live ordinary lives and struggle with ordinary problems. What makes them saints is their clear and unwavering focus on God and God's people.
Henri Nouwen
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We seldom realize fully that we are sent to fulfill God-given tasks. We act as if we were simply dropped down in creation and have to decide to entertain ourselves until we die. But we were sent into the world by God, just as Jesus was. Once we start living our lives with that conviction, we will soon know what we were sent to do.
Henri Nouwen