Quotes about Transformation
But as we come to God with our hurts—honestly, not superficially—something life changing can begin slowly to happen. We discover how God is the One who invites us to healing. We realize that any dance of celebration must weave both the sorrows and the blessings into a joyful step.
— Henri Nouwen
Dare to lose your life and you will find it.
— Henri Nouwen
A prayerful life, then, is one in which we convert the world from darkness, people from mere roles to persons.
— Henri Nouwen
Rembrandt portrays the father as the man who has transcended the ways of his children. His own loneliness and anger may have been there, but they have been transformed by suffering and tears. I see the immense beauty of the father's emptiness and compassion.
— Henri Nouwen
Our first task is to dispel this vague, murky feeling of discontent and to look critically at how we are living our lives. This requires honesty, courage, and trust. We must honestly unmask and courageously confront our many self-deceptive games. We must trust that our honesty and courage will lead us not to despair, but to a new heaven and a new earth.
— Henri Nouwen
The great spiritual call of the Beloved Children of God is to pull their brokenness away from the shadow of the curse and put it under the light of the blessing.
— Henri Nouwen
Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say or do.
— Henri Nouwen
Your whole life is filled with losses, endless losses. And every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression, and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper. The question is not how to avoid loss and make it not happen, but how to choose it as a passage, as an exodus to greater life and freedom.
— Henri Nouwen
Solitude is the furnace in which transformation takes place.
— Henri Nouwen
But still — that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.
— Henri Nouwen
Spiritual formation is not about steps or stages on the way to perfection. It's about the movements from the mind to the heart through prayer in its many forms that reunite us with God, each other, and our truest selves.
— Henri Nouwen
The years that lie behind you, with all their struggles and pains, will in time be remembered only as the way that led you to your new life.
— Henri Nouwen