Henri Nouwen quotes - page 2

The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy. (Henri Nouwen)
One of the main tasks of theology is to find words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Too many of us are lonely ministers practicing a lonely ministry. View quote
Henri Nouwen
If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend. View quote
Henri Nouwen
One of the most beautiful ways for spiritual formation to take place is to let your insecurity lead you closer to the Lord. Natural hypersensitivity can become an asset; it makes you aware of your need to be with people and it allows you to be more willing to look at their needs. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering end up disconnecting our suffering from God's suffering for us. The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through. View quote
Henri Nouwen
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. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God. View quote
Henri Nouwen
The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised. View quote
Henri Nouwen
A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive. (Henri Nouwen)
Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on. View quote
Henri Nouwen
When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Perhaps nothing helps us make the movement from our little selves to a larger world than remembering God in gratitude. Such a perspective puts God in view in all of life, not just in the moments we set aside for worship or spiritual disciplines. Not just in the moments when life seems easy. View quote
Henri Nouwen
God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well. View quote
Henri Nouwen
In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Ministers are powerless people who have nothing to boast of except their weaknesses. But when the Lord whom they serve fills them with His blessing they will move mountains and change the hearts of people wherever they go. View quote
Henri Nouwen
I have an increasing sense that the most important crisis of our time is spiritual and that we need places where people can grow stronger in the spirit and be able to integrate the emotional struggles in their spiritual journeys. View quote
Henri Nouwen
In their poverty, the mentally handicapped reveal God to us and hold us close to the gospel. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom. (Henri Nouwen)
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. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey. View quote
Henri Nouwen
The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time. View quote
Henri Nouwen
Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear. View quote
Henri Nouwen