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Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.

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
Great
Purification
Encounter
Encounters
Transformation
Solitude
Struggle
Place

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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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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The real 'work' of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me.
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Without Pentecost the Christ-event - the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus - remains imprisoned in history as something to remember, think about and reflect on. The Spirit of Jesus comes to dwell within us, so that we can become living Christs here and now.
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Our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
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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.
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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.
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Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.
Henri Nouwen
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The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark.
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Those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. LOVE is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.
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...we all want to hear stories, from the moment we are born to the moment we die. Stories connect our little lives with the world around us and help us discover who we are.
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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
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I loved to teach, I loved my students, but I wanted to find a community. I prayed: Lord, show me where you want me to go. I will go wanted wherever you call me - but please be clear.
Henri Nouwen
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The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation.
Henri Nouwen
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Through discipline, discipline is the other side of discipleship. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to have discipline.
Henri Nouwen
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Community always calls us back to solitude, and solitude always calls us to community. Community and solitude, both, are essential elements of ministry and witnessing.
Henri Nouwen
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In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.
Henri Nouwen
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It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.
Henri Nouwen
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My hope is that the description of God's love in my life will give you the freedom and the courage to discover... God's love in yours.
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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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