Turn My Mourning Into Dancing Quotes

“We see him or her as a limited expression of an unlimited love.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“When people can cease having to be for us everything, we can accept the fact they may still have a gift for us.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“When we look for divine solutions in others, we make others into gods and ourselves into demons. Our hands no longer caress but instead grasp. Our lips no longer kiss or form kind words but bite.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Healing encounters and deep communion with others come about from persons who have experienced at least a taste of love offering love to another, without manipulation or subtle games.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“If you believe that you are the beloved, you can offer forgiveness, even when it cannot be received.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Before I go to breakfast in the morning I have twenty thoughts of people who should, I think, be just a little different from what they are: If they would just shape up, or not always arrive late, if they would not act so brusquely. . . . We must constantly learn to offer compassion in such situations because we have a heart that desires things that are complete, and we live—always—in situations that can seem only incomplete. We walk with (or bump into) people who always live and love imperfectly.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“We wonder if we serve better than someone else. We import a drive to achieve into our works of mercy.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Activism comes from an unbelief that insists that God does not or cannot move and act; it wants to replace God’s supposed slowness or inaction with our activity”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“The more we try to justify ourselves, the more we collide with our inability to do so. The more burdens we take on, the more we burden others with our unmet needs. Is it any wonder that our words do not help and our presence does not heal?”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“And because of our culture’s emphasis on psychology and interpersonal relationships, we import a consumer mentality to our intimacies. We expect more of our friends and partners than they can (or want to) give.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“By offering premature advice on how to cope, by rushing to reassure, by prodding with advice, we say much about our own need for easy closure. When we barge in with such consolation, we make hurting souls into objects or projects.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“We resist getting near the suffering of another partly out of our unwillingness to suffer ourselves.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“For even while we mourn, we do not forget how our life can ultimately join God’s larger dance of life and hope.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“No one can truly say with certainty where he or she will be ten or twenty years from now. You do not know if you will be free or in captivity, if you will be honored or despised, if you will have many friends or few, if you will be liked or rejected. But when you hold lightly these dreams and fears, you can be open to receive every day as a new day and to live your life as a unique expression of God’s love for humankind.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Hope is not dependent on peace in the land, justice in the world, and success in the business. Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God’s guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Thomas Merton wrote, “The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Time becomes a means to an end, not moments in which to enjoy God or pay attention to others.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“This kind of attention to the eternal in our every day does not strain our hearts. It does not major on brawny striving. It has more to do with attention to God than perfection, with a desire to see God even amid our great weakness.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“trust is to allow for hope.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Hope does not mean that we will avoid or be able to ignore suffering, of course. Indeed, hope born of faith becomes matured and purified through difficulty. The surprise we experience in hope, then, is not that, unexpectedly, things turn out better than expected. For even when they do not, we can still live with a keen hope. The basis of our hope has to do with the One who is stronger than life and suffering. Faith opens us up to God’s sustaining, healing presence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“For even when they do not, we can still live with a keen hope. The basis of our hope has to do with the One who is stronger than life and suffering. Faith opens us up to God’s sustaining, healing presence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Hope does not mean that we will avoid or be able to ignore suffering, of course. Indeed, hope born of faith becomes matured and purified through difficulty. The surprise we experience in hope, then, is not that, unexpectedly, things turn out better than expected.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“When we pray we admit that we don’t know what God is going to do, but remember that we will never find out if we are not open to risks. We learn to stretch out our arms to the deep sea and the high heavens with an open mind and heart. In many ways prayer becomes an attitude toward life that opens itself up to a gift that is always coming. We find courage to let new things happen, things over which we have no control, but which now loom as less threatening. And it is here that we find courage to face our human boundaries and hurts, whether our physical appearance, our being excluded by others, our memories of hurt or abuse, our oppression at the hands of another. As we find freedom to cry out in our anguish or protest someone’s suffering, we discover ourselves slowly led into a new place. We become conditioned to wait for what we in our own strength cannot create or orchestrate. We realize that joy is not a matter of balloons and parties, not owning a house, or even having our children succeed in school. It has to do with a deep experience— an experience of Christ. In the quiet listening of prayer, we learn to make out the voice that says, “I love you, whoever else likes you or not. You are mine. Build your home in me as I have built my home in you.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Prayer then becomes an attitude that sees the world not as something to be possessed but as a gift that speaks constantly of the Giver. It leads us out of the suffering that comes from insisting on doing things our way. It opens our hearts to receive. And prayer refreshes our memory about how other people reveal to us the gift of life.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). We find freedom as we are touched by that first love. For it is that love that will break us away from our alienation and separation. It is a love that can soothe our compulsions to hoard and pretend we can organize the future. It is a love that allows us to love others.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“Do not be afraid” (Matt. 28:10). It is as though God is saying to us, “I am the God of love, a God who invites you to receive the gifts of joy and peace and gratitude the poor have discovered, and to let go of your fears so that you can start sharing what you hoard.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“When I demand from others what only God can give, I experience pain.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“We feel lonely, for example, and thereby look—sometimes desperately—for someone who can take away the pain: a husband, wife, friend. We are all too ready to conclude that someone or something can finally take away our neediness. In this way we come to expect too much from others. We become demanding, clingy, even violent. Relationships bend under a heavy weight because we lay exaggerated seriousness on them. We load our fellow human beings with immortal powers. In our worst moments, we make them objects to meet our expectations.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“To be converted fully is to let God lead us out of our compulsions. It means that we admit how we give up ceaselessly trying to “fix” things. Freedom is the opposite of compulsive obsessions. This is not easy, of course, mostly because intense needs motivate us.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

“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 J.M. Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times