Quotes by Henri Nouwen

“For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.”

“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”

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”

“Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your bodys deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the bodys superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.”

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advise, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender han”

“Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.”

“.....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”

In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call.

You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable, you are nobody- unless you can demonstrate the opposite. These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. Thats the great trap. It is the trap of self-rejection.

The church itself is a spiritual director. It tries to connect your story with Gods story. Just to be a true part of this community means you are being directed, you are being guided, you are being asked to make connection. The Bible is a spiritual director. People must read Scripture as a word for themselves personally, and ask where God speaks to them. Finally, individual Christians are also spiritual directors. A spiritual director is a Christian man or woman who practices the disciplines of the church and of the Bible and to whom you are willing to be accountable for your life in God.

Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someones face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.

If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.

The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.

Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere youre not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadnt planned or counted on.

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.

To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship.

Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.

The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

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.

Jesus didnt say, Blessed are those who care for the poor. He said, Blessed are we where we are poor, where we are broken. It is there that God loves us deeply and pulls us into deeper communion with himself.