Henri Nouwen Quotes

When you master the art of being fully awake to this moment, you bestow a precious gift on your soul - the experience of love. Being present is the art of the soul.

Life simply is. It follows its course. Give yourself to the moment. Let life reveal itself to you.

When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. Now is the key.

Everything starts from prayer. Without asking God for love, we cannot possess love and still less are we able to give it to others. Just as people today are speaking so much about the poor but they do not know or talk to the poor, we too cannot talk so much about prayer and yet not know how to pray.

If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.

Heaven is the experience of being completely present to all that is, all that you are, and all that you have to give. Are you choosing to live in heaven or suffer in hell?

Dear God, I give this time of quiet to You. Please dissolve my thoughts of stress and fear And deliver me to the inner place Where all is peace and love. Amen.

By turning your eyes on God in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with God. Begin all your prayers in the presence of God.

When you meditate or pray... both are forms of meditation... you give up control and find the answer and you open yourself to receive God's gift, the universal force, or whatever that is.

You spend all this time reading or thinking or praying or searching or exploring.Maybe there's an Omega Point of love.

Before you find a way to channel your emotional energy, you must take time to be still and actually feel. Meditation is a simple tool for becoming present.

Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.

There is a place for analysis, but it is apt to be quite fatal in prayer and meditation. Do not dissect the love of God, but feel it. Do not dissect divine intelligence, but realize it. Do not wonder how God can possibly solve this problem, but just watch Him do it in His own way-and He will if you will give Him a chance. You know that God is Love. So go ahead on that, and do not get theoretical about it.

You can pray while you work. Work doesn't stop prayer and prayer doesn't stop work. It requires only that small raising of the mind to him: I love you God, I trust you, I believe in you, I need you now. Small things like that. They are wonderful prayers.

Above all, live in the present moment and God will give you all the grace you need.

God, whose love and joy are present everywhere, can't come to visit you unless you aren't there.

Am I always in contact with Reality, or do I only pray when things have gone wrong, when there is a disturbance in the moments of my life?

When we let go of yearning for the future, preoccupation with the past, and strategies to protect the present, there is nowhere left to go but where we are. To connect with the present moment is to begin to appreciate the beauty of true simplicity.

To be present is to be prayerful.

When you rest in presence and pure awareness, sometimes everything is experienced as love because you're connected with all that is, and love is simply the nature of being.

Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.

We stand there for a moment, looking at each other, and in that instant I feel our connection so strongly it's as though it achieves physical existence, becomes a hand all around us, cupping us together, protecting us. This is what people are always talking about when they talk about god: this feeling, of being held and understood and protected. feeling this way seems about as close to saying a prayer as you could get.

Today is the most wonderful day of your life. This moment represents eternity. It is the moment when you return to love by deciding to live in communion with our Creator.

We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs in a heart that is in LOVE WITH GOD.