A Quote by Henri Nouwen

One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there. — © Henri Nouwen
One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.
I make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it's a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.
I have an increasing sense that the most important crisis of our time is spiritual and that we need places where people can grow stronger in the spirit and be able to integrate the emotional struggles in their spiritual journeys.
What children don't understand, and can't understand until they grow up some, is how much the whole fabric and process of human society depends on everybody agreeing to ignore, most of the time, the fact that all of us are, most of the time, inadequate, incompetent, pitiful, and, in fact, naked to our enemies. None of us really has very much in the way of spiritual, moral clothing. We dress ourselves in rags. And we agree to say nothing about it. To a very large extent, it is human charity that clothes us.
We cannot erase what has been done. We can apologize for it. We can express our outrage. We can say to the American people and to the people of the world, this is not our way and we do not condone it, but we cannot change it and we cannot erase it.
The books remind us that way down deep in our hearts, part of us knows that we are creatures of light and we cannot be touched or destroyed by anything made out of atoms or destroyed at all - that light is indestructible. And we may reflect that and express that in multiple trillions of discrete ways, but nevertheless, that indestructible sense of joyful capacity to express life and express love is always there.
Many of us incorrectly assume that a spiritual life begins when we change what we normally do in our daily life. We feel we must change our job, our living situation, our relationship, our address, our diet, or our clothes before we can truly begin a spiritual practice. And yet it is not the act but the awareness, the vitality, and the kindness we bring to our work that allows it to become sacred.
Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.
We cannot step aside and say that we have achieved our goal by inventing a new drug or a new way by which to treat presently incurable diseases, a new way to help those who suffer from malnutrition, or the creation of ideal balanced diets on a worldwide scale. We cannot rest till the way has been found, with our help, to bring our finest achievement to everyone.
Something is amiss, deeply wrong, something is deeply wrong with the way we're living our lives collectively, with the way we are creating our collective experience on earth. And we are coming to the conclusion that the problem after all is not political, that the problem after all is not economic, that the problem after all cannot be solved with bombs or missiles or bullets, but that the problem in fact is spiritual, that the problem with the world today is as it has always been, a problem of our most basic beliefs. Without a doubt it`s a spiritual awakening and a spiritual revolution.
I have a strong spiritual commitment, and I try to express that in my work. Salvation cannot be worked out in human terms. The point of my writing is to touch upon the systematics of prayer and on how we arrive at a method of achieving spiritual coherence in our lives.
We cannot hope to build the Church and to bring hearts and souls to Christ without using every resource the Lord has given to help us take advantage of our opportunities and address the obstacles standing in our way.
So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.
Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts.
Global warming may be a 'crisis,' even 'the most pressing environmental problem of our time.' ... Indeed, it may ultimately affect nearly everyone on the planet in some potentially adverse way, and it may be that governments have done too little to address it. It is not a problem, however, that has escaped the attention of policymakers in the Executive and Legislative Branches of our Government, who continue to consider regulatory, legislative, and treaty-based means of addressing global climate change.
In fact, the environmental crisis is related to the crisis of aesthetics, crisis of social cohesion and the crisis of spiritual values.
We all can do our part to address America's anger mismanagement crisis. And for us Christians, it starts with a little more faith, hope, and love.
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