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Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.

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
Find
Self
Purification
Selves
True
Place

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.
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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We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.
Henri Nouwen
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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
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Is my growing old making me any closer to Christ? Am I only getting older or am I getting more godly?
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.
Henri Nouwen
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Where are you getting your affection? Who's touching you? Who's holding you? Who makes you feel alive? Who says, You are a beautiful person, you are the beloved of God, don't forget it? That's an important discipline.
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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Although many, we might even say most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.
Henri Nouwen
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In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
Henri Nouwen
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We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
Henri Nouwen
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In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.
Henri Nouwen
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Simply being with someone is difficult because it asks of us that we share in the other's vulnerability, enter with him or her into the experience of weakness and powerlessness, become part of the uncertainty, and give up control and self-determination.
Henri Nouwen
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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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Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.
Henri Nouwen
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The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent life is recognizing the coming of the Lord
Henri Nouwen
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Our inclination is to show our Lord only what we feel comfortable with. But the more we dare to reveal our whole trembling self to him, the more we will be able to sense that his love, which is perfect love, casts out all our fears.
Henri Nouwen
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Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn. Perhaps this is what it means to be human.
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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If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.
Henri Nouwen