Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

We're afraid, he says, that we will be unmasked and revealed for being imperfect. We are afraid of being judged and found wanting. Nouwen's answer echoes the extraordinary theologian Paul Tillich: Know that you are accepted. You are fine as who you are. Have faith in yourself, instead of requiring approval from others, and then get on with being connected in community.

We need a central point of stillness so that our actions are creative rather than destructive.

There is something heroic in cure, but parental in the best sense, artistic, and deeply ...

The paradox is that we are most connected and most creative while living in that special kind of solitude.

In the middle of sentences loaded with action-healing suffering people, casting out devils, responding to impatient disciples, traveling from town to town and preaching from synagogue to synagogue-we find these quiet words: "In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there."