It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of silence and contemplation in connecting with the spiritual or deeper aspects of life.
Henri Nouwen highlights the significance of silence and contemplative prayer as essential practices that everyone is called to experience. In a world filled with noise and distraction, this call invites individuals to seek moments of stillness, allowing for deeper introspection and a stronger connection to their spiritual selves.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, the facilitator quoted Nouwen to emphasize the importance of quiet reflection.
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.
The religion that has to be supported by law is without value, not only, but a fraud and a curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket is hardly worth making.
To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.
Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months.
Those who persevere in sin are those who are held in abhorrence by God, but those who abandon the ways of sin are loved by the Lord.
War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.
Mystery is the essence of divinity
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