Henri Nouwen - Spiritual Quotes

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Friendship has always belonged to the core of my spiritual journey.

Henri Nouwen
To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.

Henri Nouwen
Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.

Henri Nouwen
Joy is hidden in sorrow and sorrow in joy. If we try to avoid sorrow at all costs, we may never taste joy, and if we are suspicious of ecstasy, agony can never reach us either. Joy and sorrow are the parents of our spiritual growth.

Henri Nouwen
However, community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another.
Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.
The question, therefore, is not 'How can we make community?' but, 'How can we develop and nurture giving hearts?'

Henri Nouwen
I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.

Henri Nouwen
All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope.

Henri Nouwen
Living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always involves an inner experience of oneness.

Henri Nouwen
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it

Henri Nouwen
A spiritual life without prayer is like the gospel without Christ.

Henri Nouwen
The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world—free to speak even when my words are not received; free to act even when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless.... I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries.

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.

Henri Nouwen
Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life....We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him.

Henri Nouwen
I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but instead as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding...

Henri Nouwen
The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.

Henri Nouwen
One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.

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.

Henri Nouwen