Henri Nouwen

“People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.”

“God wants you to live for others and to live that presence well.”

“To be a minister means above all to become powerless, or in more precise terms, to speak with our powerlessness to the condition of powerlessness which is so keenly felt but so seldom expressed by the people of our age.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we have. We are the beloved daughters and sons of God.”

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

“The fruits of your labors may be reaped two generations from now. Trust, even when you don't see the results.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.”

“The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.”

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

“The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful.”

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

“God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful and painful.”

“As peacemakers, we must resist all the powers of war and destruction and proclaim that peace is the divine gift offered to all who affirm life. Resistance means saying 'No' to all the forces of death, wherever they may be.”

“A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.”