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Which questions guide our lives? Which questions do we make our own? Which questions deserve our undivided and full personal commitment? Finding the right questions is crucial to finding the answers.

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
Personal
Guide
Answers
Crucial
Full
Guides
Lives
Findings
Inspirational
Finding
Right
Commitment
Make
Questions
Deserve
Undivided

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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When I could no longer cling to my normal supports I discovered that true support and real safety lie far beyond the structures of our world.
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Through discipline, discipline is the other side of discipleship. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to have discipline.
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The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.
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When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.
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What is forgotten cannot be healed, and that which cannot be healed easily becomes the cause of greater evil.
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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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You have to listen to the one who calls you beloved. That has to be affirmed over and over again. That is prayer - listening to the voice of the one who calls you the beloved.
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Our tendency is to run from the painful realities or try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators.
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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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I've had a tremendous problem with depression in my life. I'd rather not talk about it, because it's over. But depression is real.
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Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church, and that is how it is supposed to be! Thus we are called as members of the Church to keep going to the margins of our society. The homeless, the starving, parentless children, people with AIDS, our emotionally disturbed brothers and sisters - they require our first attention.
Henri Nouwen
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That's the temptation of the devil: Turn stones into bread! Be relevant!
Henri Nouwen
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We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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I am very grateful that I am in touch with so many different church groups. I am always very moved by the fact that so many people - practically over the spectrum of the Christian world - are responding to my writing.
Henri Nouwen
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When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.
Henri Nouwen
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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.
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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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We need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow is also the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness.
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