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So I am praying while not knowing how to pray. I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting.

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
Love
Doubt
Tempted
Feeling
Surrounded
Knowing
Anxious
Peace
Clouds
Feelings
Pray
Doubting
Light
Praying
Resting
Stills
Darkness
Cloud
Still
Safe
Restless

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.
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Today's reading was if they ask you to walk a mile, walk two. Don't take an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. You have chances every second to live this Word, but it has to be in you. It can't just be an idea it has to sink from the mind into the heart.
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For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved.
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To be a Christian who is willing to travel with Christ on his downward road requires being willing to detach oneself constantly from any need to be relevant, and to trust ever more deeply the Word of God.
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Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence -- priceless and irreplaceable.
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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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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.
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It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.
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From the moment we claim the truth of being the beloved, we are faced with the call to become who we are.
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Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God's guidance.
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Fundraising is a very rich and beautiful activity. It is a confident, joyful and hope-filled expression of ministry. In ministering to each other, each from the riches that he or she possesses, we work together for the full coming of God's Kingdom.
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.
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Feelings of guilt dominate our work as peacemakers we cannot last long. But when we have opened each other's eyes to the great human gifts among all people we can indeed make peacemaking a way of being.
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The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.
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People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.
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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
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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.
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The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.
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Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.
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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