Create Space in Your Innermost Self

"Today I imagined my inner self as a place crowded with pins and needles. How could I receive anyone in my prayer when there is no place for them to be free and relaxed? When I am still so full of preoccupations, jealousies, angry feelings, anyone who enters will get hurt. I had a very vivid realization that I must create some free space in my innermost self so that I may indeed invite others to enter and be healed. To pray for others means to offer others a hospitable place where I can really listen to their needs and pains. Compassion, therefore, calls for a self-scrutiny that can lead to inner gentleness."  --Henri Nouwen

God is Gentle

While realizing that ten years ago I didn’t have the faintest idea that I would end up where I am now, I still like to keep up the illusion that I am in control of my own life. I like to decide what I most need, what I will do next, what I want to accomplish, and how others will think of me. While being so busy running my own life, I become oblivious to the gentle movements of the Spirit of God within me, pointing me in directions quite different from my own.

It requires a lot of inner solitude and silence to become aware of these divine movements. God does not shout, scream, or push. The Spirit of God is soft and gentle like a small voice or a light breeze. It is the Spirit of Love.

Henri Nouwen

"We should never underestimate the great power of the way of love which reaches that spark of good in the other person; how it is always there no matter how deeply buried, and the moment comes when the person is disarmed."  --Peace Pilgrim

"The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart. This repetition has nothing to do with magic. It’s not meant to throw a spell on God or to force him into hearing us. On the contrary, a word or sentence repeated frequently can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness, and thus to listen to the voice of God. When we simply try to sit silently and wait for God to speak to us, we find ourselves bombarded with endless conflicting thoughts and ideas. But when we use a very simple sentence such as “O God, come to my assistance,” or “Jesus, master, have mercy on me,” or a word such as “Lord” or “Jesus” it is easier to let the many distractions pass by without being misled by them. Such a simple, easily repeated prayer can slowly empty out our crowded interior life and create the quiet space where we can dwell with God. It can be like a ladder along which we can descend into the heart and ascend to God."  --Henri Nouwen

"Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what you are ... Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life."  --Parker Palmer

 “I’m giving up on fear. Everybody dies. Nothing is left.”

"We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world."  --Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (1994)

"Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another."  --Yuri Kochiyama

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better."  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other."  --Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture (2008)

“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”  --George Saunders

“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”  --Jack Kerouac 

"A person is watching three bricklayers working on a project together. He talks to the first bricklayer and asks him what he is doing; he answers, ‘I am laying bricks.’ He goes to the next and asks him what he is doing, and this bricklayer says, ‘I am building a wall.’ The observer then asks the third bricklayer and his answer is startlingly different, he says, ‘I'm building a cathedral.’"  --Kathleen Allen

"When Jesus washed the feet of his disciples ... he challenged us to get beyond the outward image and honor souls in acts of human fellowship."  --Rebecca Dudley

"We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds."  --Etty Hillesum