Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment … Joy and sadness are born at the same time, both arising from such deep places in your heart that you can’t find words to capture your complex emotions. Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude
Jesus said to his disciples, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16:16).
Life is “a little,” a short moment of waiting. But life is not empty waiting. It is to wait full of expectation. The knowledge that God will indeed fulfill the promise to renew everything, and will offer us a “new heaven and a new earth,” makes the waiting exciting. We can already see the beginning of the fulfillment. Nature speaks of it every spring; people [speak] of it whenever they smile; the sun, the moon, and the stars speak of it when [they] offer us light and beauty; and all of history speaks of it when amid all devastation and chaos, men and women arise who reveal the hope that lives within them. … What is my main task during my “little while”? I want to point to the signs of the Kingdom to come, to speak about the first rays of the day of God, to witness to many manifestations of the Holy Spirit among us. I do not want to complain about this passing world but to focus on the eternal that lights up in the midst of the temporal. I yearn to create space where it can be seen and celebrated. From Sabbatical Journey by Henri J.M. Nouwen
The bloodline of God is connected to everything . . . shells on the ocean shore, the mushrooms growing in the forest, the trees stretching to the clouds, the tiniest speck of snow in the winter, and our dust-to-dustness—we are all connected and tethered to this sacred gift of creation. —Kaitlin B. Curtice
“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 J.M. Nouwen
“Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear at my center words that say:
‘I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother’s womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on you head and guided you at every step.
Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me I am your father your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover, and your spouse … yes even your child … wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one.'”
Henry J.M. Nouwen Life of the Beloved
The pathway through which infinite awareness assumes the form of the finite mind is the same pathway, traversed in the opposite direction, through which the finite mind loses its limitations and stands revealed as infinite awareness. – Rupert Spira
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