Henri NouwenThinkers

Compassion is full immersion in the condition of being human.

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. It is full immersion in the condition of being human.

Discipline is to retain a place where one is not occupied, to create a space in which something can happen that one hadn't planned or counted on.

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

Forgiveness changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a blessing. Forgiveness indeed heals memories.

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.

Gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.

Intimacy is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears.

Intimacy 1s 2reat enemy is fear and true friend is love.

Prayer is, in the festive and the still moments, and to realize this is to realize that to pray is to live.

Prayer is the beginning and the end of all peacemaking... the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal.

Solitude is the place where one can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.

Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.

Suffering is not someting that can be easily brushed away. One's efforts to disconnect oneself from one's own suffering end up disconnecting one's suffering from God's suffering for us.

Theology is tasked with finding words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal.