Quote

A sense of solitude is one of the most beautiful things that parents can give a child. It doesn't mean leaving the child alone, but it does mean creating safe spaces where the child can be with other people. It does mean directing their attention to God.

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
People
Doesn
Safe
Beautiful
Parents
Doe
Parent
Give
Alone
Spaces
Giving
Child
Directing
Children
Attention
Solitude
Mean
Space
Leaving
Things
Sense
Creating

More quotes by Henri Nouwen

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This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without condition or limits.
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Forgiveness changes the way we remember.
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L'Arche is not a service institution or a group home. It is a community that exists to reveal God's love. Our people are given to the world to tell others about peace and forgiveness and celebration, to make them aware that in the midst of their brokenness, there is joy in the midst of their wounded nature, there is healing.
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A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.
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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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If you believe you are the beloved of God, you need to spend time listening to his voice - period! You can't say, Yes God calls me the beloved, but I have to go out to do something now.
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Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.
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God's Kingdom is a place of abundance where every generous act overflows its original bounds and becomes part of the unbounded grace of God at work in the world.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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It is very hard to stay in touch with our true identity because those who want our money, our time, and our energy profit more from our insecurity and fears than from our inner freedom.
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To live in the present, we must deeply believe that what is most important is in the here and now.
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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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Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God's guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness.
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Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal of all peacemaking.
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Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be.
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To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer.
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Every time there are losses, there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.
Henri Nouwen