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.
Ask before offering advice or reassurance.
I've been accused of being cold, snobbish, distant. Those who know me well know that Iβm nothing of the sort. If anything, the opposite is true. But is it too much to ask to want to protect your private life, your inner feelings? Lots of things touch me and I donβt want to be indiscreet.
In fact, they didn't talk much at all, but they spent time together, each in his own abyss, held safe and tight by the other's silence.
I don't pay attention to a lot of people - I pay attention to a select few, and that's worked out well for me.
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.
There are three kinds of yeses. There's commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit. People are most used to giving the counterfeit yes because they've been trapped by the confirmation yes so many times. So the way you master no is understanding what really happens when somebody says 'no.' When yes is commitment, no is protection.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.