The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.
Interpretation
Realizing the difference between understanding love and actually experiencing it can take a long time.
This quote by Henri Nouwen reflects the idea that it's one thing to learn about love in an intellectual or theoretical sense, but itβs an entirely different challenge to open oneself up to love and vulnerability. The journey from merely teaching or understanding love to truly embodying it and welcoming it into oneβs life can be a complex and often lengthy process, filled with personal growth and self-discovery.
In practice
During a relationship seminar, one might use this quote to illustrate the emotional hurdles people face.
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.
Love doesn't need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself.
A dog doesn't care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his.
Let not your love become attachment, nor your hate become destruction.
My wife comes with me on all the movies, but she is not an appendage to a film star or anything like that. She is a completely intertwined partner. She is the other half of me. Also, we're still very much in love with each other. We always have been, we always will be.
If one wishes to know love, one must live love, in action.
Jim lights a cigarette and leans indolently back on his elbow smiling at Laura with a warmth and charm which lights her inwardly with altar candles.
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