If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.
Interpretation
Fear can hinder close connections, while love fosters them.
This quote by Henri Nouwen highlights the dual nature of fear and love in human relationships. It suggests that fear acts as a barrier to intimacy, preventing individuals from fully opening up to one another, whereas love serves as a powerful ally that encourages vulnerability and connection, ultimately nurturing deeper bonds between people.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'Remember, if fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.'
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.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering β for us. And calling us to share in Godβs suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.
I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music.
Calonice: My dear Lysistrata, just what is this matter you've summoned us women to consider.What's up? Something big? Lysistrata: Very big. Calonice: (interested) Is it stout too? Lysistrata: (smiling) Yes, indeed -- both big and stout. Calonice: What? And the women still haven't come? Lysistrata: It's not what you suppose; they'd come soon enough for that.
No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.
And when she was good she was very very good. But when she was bad she was horrid.
I'm the only one in my family who is deaf, and there are still conversations that go around me that I miss out on. And I ask what's going on, and I have to ask to be included. But I'm not going to be sad about it. I don't live in sad isolation. It's just a situation I'm used to.
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