If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.
Interpretation
Fear can hinder close connections, while love fosters them.
This quote by Henri Nouwen highlights the dual nature of fear and love in human relationships. It suggests that fear acts as a barrier to intimacy, preventing individuals from fully opening up to one another, whereas love serves as a powerful ally that encourages vulnerability and connection, ultimately nurturing deeper bonds between people.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'Remember, if fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.'
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
The emotional magnets beneath home and workplace are in the process of being reversed. Work has become a form of 'home' and home has become 'work.'
A little still she strove, and much repented, And whispering “I will ne'er consent”—consented.
Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.
All things I do are in every woman. Every woman is Medea. Every woman is Jocasta. There comes a time when a woman is a mother to her husband. Clytemnestra is every woman when she kills.
Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.
In the quest to be clever, I completely forgot about the people that I love and that love me.
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