The Wounded Healer Quotes

“when the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Through compassion it is possible to recognize that the craving for love that people feel resides also in our own hearts, that the cruelty the world knows all too well is also rooted in our own impulses. Through compassion we also sense our hope for forgiveness in our friends' eyes and our hatred in their bitter mouths. When they kill, we know that we could have done it; when they give life, we know that we can do the same. For a compassionate person nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: “Who can take away suffering without entering it?”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“The mystery of one man is too immense and too profound to be explained by another man.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“The inward man is faced with a new and often dramatic task: He must come to terms with the inner tremendum. Since the God 'out there' or 'up there' is more or less dissolved in the many secular structures, the God within asks attention as never before. And just as the God outside could be experienced not only as a loving father but also as a horrible demon, the God within can be not only the source of a new creative life but also the cause of a chaotic confusion.
The greatest complaint of the Spanish mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross was that they lacked a spiritual guide to lead them along the right paths and enable them to distinguish between creative and destructive spirits. We hardly need emphasize how dangerous the experimentation with the interior life can be. Drugs as well as different concentration practices and withdrawal into the self often do more harm than good. On the other hand it also is becoming obvious that those who avoid the painful encounter with the unseen are doomed to live a supercilious, boring and superficial life.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“The man who articulate the movements of his inner life, who can give names to his varied experiences, need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. He is able to create space for Him who heart is greater than his, whose eyes see more than his, and whose hands can heal more than his.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“when two people have become present to each other, the waiting of one must be able to cross the narrow line between the living or dying of the other.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Why should a man marry and have children, study and build a career; why should he invent new techniques, build new institutions, and develop new ideas--when he doubts if there will be a tomorrow which can guarantee the value of human effort?
Crucial here for nuclear man is the lack of a sense of continuity, which is so vital for a creative life. He finds himself part of a nonhistory in which only the sharp moment of the here and now is valuable. For nuclear man life easily becomes a bow whose string is broken and from which no arrow can fly. In his dislocated state he becomes paralyzed. His reactions are not anxiety and joy, which were so much a part of existential man, but apathy and boredom.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“experience tells us that we can only love because we are born out of love, that we can only give because our life is a gift, and that we can only make others free because we are set free by Him whose heart is greater than ours. When we have found the anchor places for our lives in our own center, we can be free to let others enter into the space created for them and allow them to dance their own dance, sing their own song and speak their own language without fear.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Who can save a child from a burning house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind? In short: “Who can take away suffering without entering it?”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“preaching means more than handing over a tradition; it is rather the careful and sensitive articulation of what is happening in the community”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every man in it unless the young man were handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the minister and asked him what to do. The minister, torn between handing over the boy to the enemy or having his people killed, withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. After many hours, in the early morning his eyes fell on these words: “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.” Then the minister closed the Bible, called the soldiers and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the minister had saved the lives of the people. But the minister did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him, and asked, “What have you done?” He said: “I handed over the fugitive to the enemy.” Then the angel said: “But don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?” “How could I know?” the minister replied anxiously. Then the angel said: “If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.” While versions of this story are very old, it seems the most modern of tales. Like that minister, who might have recognized the Messiah if he had raised his eyes from his Bible to look into the youth’s eyes, we are challenged to look into the eyes of the young men and women of today, who are running away from our cruel ways. Perhaps that will be enough to prevent us from handing them over to the enemy and enable us to lead them out of their hidden places into the middle of their people where they can redeem us from our fears.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“every Christian is constantly invited to overcome his neighbor’s fear by entering into it with him, and to find in the fellowship of suffering the way to freedom.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“But human withdrawal is a very painful and lonely process, because it forces us to face directly our own condition in all its beauty as well as misery.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Christian leadership is a dead-end street when nothing new is expected, when everything sounds familiar and when ministry has regressed to the level of routine.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Thus the authority of compassion is the possibility of man to forgive his brother, because forgiveness is only real for him who has discovered the”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Christian leaders are called to help others affirm this great news, and to make visible in daily events the fact that behind the dirty curtain of our painful symptoms there is something great to be seen: the face of God in whose image we are shaped.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Building a vocation on the expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock, and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Therefore every real revolutionary is challenged to be a mystic at heart, and he who walks the mystical way is called to unmask the illusory quality of human society.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“The first and most basic task of the minister of tomorrow is to clarify the immense confusion which can arise when people enter this new internal world. It is a painful fact indeed to realize how poorly prepared most Christian leaders prove to be when they are invited to be spiritual leaders in the true sense.
Most of them are used to thinking in terms of large-scale organization, getting people together in churches … running the show as a circus director. They have become unfamiliar with, and even somewhat afraid of, the deep and significant movements of the Spirit. I am afraid that in a few decades the Church will be accused of having failed in its most basic task: to offer men creative ways to communicate with the source of human life.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society

“The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there. Our lives are filled with examples which tell us that leadership asks for understanding and that understanding requires sharing.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Ministers are those who can make their search for authenticity possible, not by standing on the side as neutral screens or impartial observers, but as articulate witnesses of Christ, who put their own search at the disposal of others. This hospitality requires that ministers not only know where they stand and whom they stand for, it also requires that they allow others to enter into their lives, to come close to them, and to ask how their lives are connected with one another.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society

“Perhaps the main task of the minister is to prevent people from suffering for the wrong reasons. Many people suffer because of the false supposition on which they have based their lives. That supposition is that there should be no fear or loneliness, no confusion or doubt. But these sufferings can only be dealt with creatively when they are understood as wounds integral to our human condition. Therefore ministry is a very confrontational service. It does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society