Quotes from Henri Nouwen

Because where God wants you to be, God holds you safe and gives you peace, even when there is pain.

Preaching means more than handing over a tradition; it is rather the careful and sensitive articulation of what is happening in the community.

Jesus changes our history from a random series of sad incidents and accidents into a constant opportunity for a change of heart.

By prayer, community is created as well as expressed.

You can only seek God when you have already found God. The desire for God's unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love.

It is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human.

The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.

Who can save a child from a burning house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: "Who can take away suffering without entering it?

In the midst of a turbulent, often chaotic, life we are called to reach out, with courageous honesty to our innermost self, with relentless care to our fellow human beings, and with increasing prayer to our God.

Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.

We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat.

If God is compassionate, then certainly those who love God should be compassionate as well.