Henri Nouwen

Community life is not easy for somebody like me, who is used to living by himself and doing what he wants. It\'s a demanding life, and you quickly get in touch with your own handicaps and weaknesses.

Beneath our frantic activities, there\'s a deep desire to show the world we are worthwhile.

I wrote to my bishop, the Archbishop of Utrecht, Holland, and explained that I wanted not just permission to stay longer, but a mission. He met me at the Trosly L\'Arche community and we spent a few days together . . . I wanted him to get to know L\'Arche, to understand what I was doing there. Afterward he said, \'I understand now, Henri. You have found a home for your self.\'

The beatitudes say, \'Blessed are the poor\'. They don\'t say, \'Blessed are those who care for the poor.\'

The great challenge is to discover that we are truly invited to participate in the divine life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I am working on three things: on being a prayerful person; on staying close to the handicapped; and on my writing. These are my constant concerns.

There are areas I have to work on. I had some questions and some struggles, but it was an enormously important time for me.

Mysticism is for all, not just for a few special people.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not \'How am I to find God?\' but \'How am I to let myself be found by him?\' The question is not \'How am I to love God?\' but \'How am I to let myself be loved by God?\'

Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write.

Teaching, therefore, asks first of all the creation of a space where students and teachers can enter into a fearless communication with each other and allow their respective life experiences to be their primary and most valuable source of growth and maturation. It asks for a mutual trust in which those who teach and those who want to learn can become present to each other, not as opponents, but as those who share in the same struggle and search for the same truth.

You don\'t have to run around world proving you\'re lovable.

Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?-are not questions with an answer but questions that open us up to new questions which lead us deeper into the unshakeable mystery of existence.

My writing has developed drastically . The Return of the Prodigal Son is the most important thing I\'ve done, and my most mature book.

In 1984, Jean Vanier invited me me to visit L\'Arche community in Trosly, France. He didn\'t say \'We need a priest\' or \'We could use you.\' He said, \'Maybe our community can offer you a home.\' I visited several times, then resigned from Harvard and went to live with the community for a year. I loved it! I didn\'t have much to do. I wasn\'t pastor or anything. I was just a friend of the Community.

That\'s prayer to let God\'s Word speak deep within you and tell you, \'You are my beloved. You don\'t have to take an eye for an eye. No, no you\'re too rich for that.\'

Take prayer with you wherever you go. Say it anytime, and then focus your mind and heart on God.

Only in the context of the great encounter with Jesus can a real authentic struggle take place. The encounter with Christ does not take place before, after, or beyond the struggle with our false self and its demons. No, it is precisely in the midst of this struggle that our Lord comes to us and says, as he said to the old man in the story: 'As soon as you turned to me again, you see I was beside you.'

When I was teaching, I didn\'t feel I had a home, a place where I truly belonged.

I had a deep experience of God\'s love for me.

Jesus said Communion first, community comes out of that, and out of community, ministry.

We want to prove we are good writers or good business, good parents or good teachers. The world is very competitive and catches us in this frenzy. It wants us to go here, be there, and be part of this or that.

I don\'t pray enough, but I pray more now. Every morning at six o\'clock have a half hour of meditation before the Blessed Sacrament. I pray with others too.

I loved to teach, I loved my students, but I wanted to find a community. I prayed: \'Lord, show me where you want me to go. I will go wanted wherever you call me - but please be clear.\'

I feel the problems I have are meant to purify me.

Live, work, and travel with handicapped people, so I can stay close to them. But since I am often busy with many things, it\'s a constant struggle to keep the handicapped members of our community in the center of my life.

Nuclear man is the man who realizes that his creative powers hold the potential for self-destruction. He sees that in this nuclear age vast new industrial complexes enable man to produce in one hour that which he labored over for years in the past, but he also realizes that these same industries have disturbed the ecological balance and, through air and noise pollution, have contaminated his own milieu.

Jesus didn\'t live alone. He had Peter, John, and James around him. There were the Twelve and the other disciples. They formed circles of intimacy around Jesus. We too need these circles of intimacy, but it\'s a discipline.

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It\'s openness. God is always speaking; he\'s always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue,... a conversation with God.

The gospel word of the day can become like a painting on the walls. of your inner room, the inner room that is your heart.