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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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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
Hope
Signs
Pain
Transformed
Inspirational
Escape
Become
Search
Life
Despair
Aware
Mobilize
Expression
Expressions
Common
Pains
More quotes by Henri Nouwen
Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.
Henri Nouwen
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it
Henri Nouwen
What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love.
Henri Nouwen
How do you pray? Take the gospel of each day and spend ten minutes with it. Read it, and read it again. Walk into the world with the gospel in your heart.
Henri Nouwen
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
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
I have always felt that if I am very personal and connected with what I myself am living, my writing will transcend ecclesial boundaries.
Henri Nouwen
I am learning that the best cure for hypocrisy is community. Hypocrisy is not so much the result of not living what I preach but much more of not confessing my inability to fully live up to my own words.
Henri Nouwen
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.
Henri Nouwen
To receive spiritual direction is to recognize that God does not solve our problems or answer all our questions, but leads us closer to the mystery of our existence where all questions cease.
Henri Nouwen
It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.
Henri Nouwen
Friendship and love are impossible without a mutual vulnerability.
Henri Nouwen
Prayer is the way to both the heart of God and the heart of the world - precisely because they have been joined through the suffering of Jesus Christ Praying is letting one's own heart become the place where the tears of God's children merge and become tears of hope.
Henri Nouwen
From the moment we claim the truth of being the beloved, we are faced with the call to become who we are.
Henri Nouwen
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 curing, not healing...that is a friend who cares.
Henri Nouwen
When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.
Henri Nouwen
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
The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. It is a secret known only to a very few people, a secret that has to be rediscovered over and over again.
Henri Nouwen
As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer.
Henri Nouwen
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.
Henri Nouwen