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Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

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
Never
Coexist
Prevents
Judgement
Distinction
Creates
Distance
Compassion
Really

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Reading with children is an enormous gift to them. It's a great honor to invite children to read with adults.
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Our Western society is showing its technological muscles in ever more threatening ways, but the experience of fear, anxiety and even despair has increased in equal proportion. Indeed, the paradox is that the powerful giants feel as powerless as a new-born babe.
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The dance of life finds its beginnings in grief......Here a completely new way of living is revealed. It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain.
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The farther the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey must be.
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My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.
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Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.
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The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.
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You have to dare to live through the pain and struggle. Acknowledge your anguish but do not let it pull you out of yourself. Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear.
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The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering.
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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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...real care means the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to joy.
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The university has become a place that prepares you for the fights in the world.
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To give someone a blessing is the most significant affirmation we can offer.
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In this crazy world, there's an enormous distinction between good times and bad, between sorrow and joy. But in the eyes of God, they're never separated. Where there is pain, there is healing. Where there is mourning, there is dancing. Where there is poverty, there is the kingdom.
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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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Active waiting means present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it.
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When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.
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His (Christ's) appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross.
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Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.
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Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence -- priceless and irreplaceable.
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