Excerpts from Lifesigns by Henri Nouwen

Here are a few quotes from my latest read....
Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective

"To those who are tortured by inner or outer fear, and who desperately look for the house of love where they can find the intimacy their hearts desire, Jesus says: 'You have a home...I am your home...claim me as your home...you will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home...it is right where you are...in your innermost being...in your heart.' The more attentive we are to such words the more we realize that we do not have to go far to find what we are searching for. The tragedy is that we are so possessed by fear that we do not trust our innermost self as an intimate place but anxiously wander around hoping to find it where we are not. We try to find that intimate place in knowledge, competence, notoriety, success, friends, sensations, pleasure, dreams, or artificially induced states of consciousness. Thus we become strangers to ourselves, people who have an address but are never home and hence can never be addressed by the true voice of love.
Here we come to see what discipline in the spiritual life means. It means a gradual process of coming home to where we belong and listening there to the voice which desires our attention."
- p.26-27

"We cannot live in intimate communion with Jesus without being sent to our brothers and sisters who belong to that same humanity that Jesus has accepted as his own. Thus intimacy manifests itself as solidarity and solidarity as intimacy." - p.32

"Everything that we read in the papers, hear on the radio, and see on television about the condition of the world seems to confirm the saying: 'homo homini lupus,' human beings are wolves to each other." - p.32

"Being bored while being busy is an ominous symptom of this spiritual illness [in reference to spiritual sterility]." - p.46

"A call to lead a fruitful life does not necessairly imply a call to be productive." - p.48

"People are often introduced with emphasis on their productivity. 'This is Frank, he wrote some very influential books which you might like to read; this is Mary, who won a Pulitzer Prize; and this is Peter, who knows everything about photography, etc.,etc....' In all of this, the suggestion is made that we are what we make." - p.48

"The word 'school' which comes from 'schola' (meaning: free time), reminds us that schools were originally meant to interrupt a busy existence and create some space to contemplate the mysteries of life. Today they have become the arena for a hectic race to accomplish as much as possible, and to acquire in a short period the necessary tools to survive the great battle of human life. Books written to be savored slowly are read hastily to fulfill a requirement, paintings made to be seen wth a contemplative eye are taken in as part of a necessary art appreciation course, and music composed to be enjoyed at leaisure is listened to in order to identify a period or style. Thus, colleges and universities meant to be places for quiet learning have become places of fierce competition, in which the rewards go to those who produce the most and the best." - p.49-50

"I may have come to the theoretical insight that being is more important than doing, but when asked to jsut be with people who can do very little I realize how far I am from the realization of that insight." - p.51

"A fearful refusal to give birth to new life and a fearful attempt to create it ourselves are both ways to play God." - p.52

“Only when we dare to lay down our protective shields and trust each other enough to confess our shared weakness and need can we live a fruitful life together.
The Way of God is the way of weakness. The great news of the Gospel is precisely that God became small and vulnerable, and hence bore fruit among us.” – p.53

“Much suffering is caused by the fear of confessing and asking forgiveness. I have seen the most radical changes in the lives of people when they finally found the courage to confess what they felt most ashamed of or most guilty about and discovered that instead of losing a friend they gained one. Distances were bridged, walls came down, and abysses were filled in.” – p.54

“Many young men and women who have lost their motivation to develop their minds and hearts have little sense of home. When the world is a fearful place where you need all of your emotional energy just to survive, you have little capacity to move from one way of being alive to another.” – p.81

“Much money and energy is spent trying to make people happy and relaxed by offering a moment of artificial bliss. This happiness is as contrives as the good meal given to a man on death row before his execution…
Many people hardly believe anymore in the possibility of a truly joy-filled life. They have more or less accepted life as a prison and are grateful for every occasion that creates the illusion of the opposite: a cruise, a suspense novel, a sexual experience, or a few hours in a heightened state of consciousness.” – p.83-84

“The more preoccupied we are with security the more visible the force of death becomes, whether in the form of a pistol beside our bed, a rifle in our house, or a
Trident submarine in our port.” – p.95

“We therefore must develop a global spirituality in which the demands of the gospel guide not only the behavior of individuals but of nations as well. Many will consider this naïve. They are glad to accept the teachings of Jesus for their personal and family lives, but when it comes to international affairs they consider these same teachings unrealistic and utopian. Yet, Jesus sent out his apostles to make disciples not just of individual people but of all the nations, and to teach these nations to observe his commands (Matthew 28:18-20).” – p.97-98

“Twenty years ago young people believed they could do everything, and now they are convinced that it is impossible to do anything.” – Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui: un pressant appel a l’Eglise, p.283