What is your favorite Nouwen quote?
We invite you to share your favorite Henri Nouwen quote! Post a brief quote, 2 or 3 lines would be ideal, and the name of the book. Include the page number if you can. Tell us why it is so meaningful for you and how you share it with others - at the bottom of your email messages? On your website? On homemade cards, bookmarks? Facebook?
Blessings,
Maureen
Resource Coordinator
Henri Nouwen Society
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August 6th, 2010 @ 1:40 am
One of my favorite quotes is “The spiritual life consists of paying attention….” I have lost the source. But I use this regularly in my classes in spiritual formation wherever I’m on staff. I think it sums up in the simplist of ways what we are to be about in our relationship with Christ. If someone has the source I would love for you to let me know…
May 22nd, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
recently I have been working through the concept and practice of forgiveness. Henri speaks about the practice of grace in his book concerning Spiritual Direction. There is a quote from this book that really identifies what it means to forgive
“As people who have hearts that long for perfect love, we have to forgive one another for not being able to give or receive that perfect love in our daily lives. Our many needs constantly interfere with our desire to be there for the other unconditionally. Our love is always limited by spoken or unspoken conditions. What needs to be forgiven? We need to forgive one another for not being God!”
March 16th, 2009 @ 4:53 am
I keep this quote on my yahoo homepage.
“The reward of choosing joy is joy itself” It’s from “Making All Things New”
February 14th, 2009 @ 4:03 pm
My favourite quote came quickly & easily to mind: “LOVE DEEPLY” found at pgs 59 & 60 in ‘The Inner Voice of Love - A journey through anguish to freedom’. In particular, the last sentence reads, “Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear.”
My painful journey includes two recent deaths: my father after a long illness, and the death of my marriage - two men I loved dearly.
Yet, it is only now that I am beginning to see the wisdom of Henri’s writing: “When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful.”
I believe I am about to start that “freedom” portion of the journey soon. I pray for two things: (1) To be more intuitive, sensitive,& loving to others on their painful journeys.(2) Not to be afraid to love again that deeply.
January 31st, 2009 @ 12:16 am
“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 body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body’s superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.”
January 4th, 2009 @ 3:50 am
Over the past decades Years and months of Spiritual Growth & Direction Henri Nouwen spirituality and Ministry with my “Wounded” Friends that I have worked and lived with since my grade school years in various venues. I was blessed and fortunate to see and visit with him when he visited St. Michael’s Parish in the early 1990’s, 1993-1994.
January 1st, 2009 @ 7:29 pm
I have so many–it is hard to choose! But “Here and Now” came to me at a time when I was most desperate to find God again. I was so vulnerable and carried a lot of wounds from past “religious” experiences (i.e. churches). This wonderful cyber-community held out this book to me and I read it hungrily and cherished my time with others participating in the book discussion. It was a tremendously healing time for me and I am so grateful. It was also my first introduction to Henri and he has become my spiritual “guru” so to speak! (He would chuckle at that no doubt). I recently had the joy of sharing “Here and Now” with some very dear friends and we formed a married couples weekly discussion of the book. It was such a blessing for me to watch them “discover” this incredible man of faith.
So, my favorite Henri quote? It would have to be the following from “Here and Now”:
“Still, when we remain faithful to our discipline (of prayer and meditation), even if it is only ten minutes a day, we gradually come to see–by the candlelight of our prayers–that there is a space within us where God dwells and where we are invited to dwell with God. Once we come to know that inner, holy place, a place more beautiful and precious than any place we can travel to, we want to be there and be spiritually fed.”
This simple passage led me to a new life of contemplative prayer and meditation which has truly changed my life and led me down a unexpected path to the God who was waiting patiently for me to discover Him.
Peace and Happy New Year!
Diane
December 29th, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
Precisely where we feel most present to each other we experience deeply the absence of those we love. And precisely at moments of great loss we can discover a new sense of closeness and intimacy. This is also what the Eucharist is about. We announce the presence of Christ among us until he comes again! There is both presence and absence, closeness, and distance, an experience of at-homeness on the way home.
- Henri J.M. Nouwen
Sabbatical Journey
December 29th, 2008 @ 11:39 am
Here is my favorite quote… not sure where I got it from… maybe In The Name of Jesus
“Our faithfulness will depend on our willingness to go where there is brokenness, loneliness, and human need. If the church has a future it is a future with the poor in whatever form.”
Thanks.
Malcolm
http://christfollowingheretics.blogspot.com/
December 25th, 2008 @ 6:53 am
As with many others, Nouwen is a spiritual oasis . My favorite quote is a succinct reminder that Jesus came to bring us abundant life.
Commenting on Luke 13:1-5 Nouwen writes “Jesus does not give a political interpretation of the event but a spiritual one. “What happened invites you to conversion”. This is the deepest meaning of history: a constant invitation calling us to turn our hearts to God and so discover the full meaning of our lives. (Here And Now page 73) I include it in correspondence, as a word of encouragement, and I have a bookmark that I hand out. (It’s on my facebook page.)
Merry Christmas - God is with us - REJOICE!
Jack Given