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Living in a World of Strangers - Henri Nouwen


    The first characteristic of the spiritual life is
    the continuing movement from loneliness to solitude.

    Its second equally important characteristic is
    the movement by which our hostilities can be
    converted into hospitality.

    It is there that our changing relationship to ourself
    can be brought to fruition in an ever-changing
    relationship to our fellow human beings.

    It is there that our reaching out to our innermost being
    can lead to a reaching out to the many strangers
    whom we meet on our way through life.
    In our world full of strangers,
    estranged from their own past, culture and country,
    from their neighbors, friends and family,
    from their deepest self and their God,
    we witness a painful search for a hospitable place
    where life can be lived without fear and
    where community can be found.

    Although many strangers in this world become easily
    the victim of a fearful hostility,
    it is possible for men and women and
    obligatory for Christians to offer an open and
    hospitable space where strangers can cast off
    their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.

    The movement from hostility to hospitality
    is hard and full of difficulties.
    Our society seems to be increasingly full of
    fearful, defensive, aggressive people
    anxiously clinging to their property and
    inclined to look at their surrounding world
    with suspcion, always expecting an enemy
    to suddenly appear, intrude and do harm.

    But still --- that is our vocation:
    to convert hostility to hospitality,
    the enemy into a guest and
    to create the free and fearless space where
    brotherhood and sisterhood  can be
    formed and fully experienced.

---- from the book, "Reaching Out" by Henri Nouwen
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