Patrick Watters

“Healing begins when, in the face of our own darkness, we recognize our helplessness and surrender our need for control… we face what is, and we ask for mercy.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son

“It's all about trust."
She wrote trust under the arrow, right under the word skeptic.
"Wait a second. Your discipleship model starts with unbelievers?"
"Right," she said. "With both unbelievers and believers, we're just helping them become like Jesus and do what he did. We really see evangelism and discipleship as part of the same continuum. But we have different tasks at each stage.”
― James Choung, Real Life: A Christianity Worth Living Out

“The genius of the Gospel was that it included the problem inside the solution. The falling became the standing. The stumbling became the finding. The dying became the rising. The raft became the shore. The small self cannot see this very easily, because it doubts itself too much, is still too fragile, and is caught up in the tragedy of it all. It has not lived long enough to see the big patterns. No wonder so many of our young commit suicide. This is exactly why we need elders and those who can mirror life truthfully and foundationally for the young. Intimate I-Thou relationships are the greatest mirrors of all, so we dare not avoid them, but for the young they have perhaps not yet taken place at any depth, so young people are always very fragile.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Jesus' life is an invitation for us to believe, not primarily in him but in the relationship between himself and the God whom he names “Father.” Furthermore, Jesus comes into the world to communicate to those of us who are listening that this very same relationship is uniquely available to each one of us. By his life and death Jesus announces the yearning in the heart of Love Divine, to be in relationship with each individual person. For you or I to engage this primal encounter is for us to return “home.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Home Tonight: Further Reflections on the Parable of the Prodigal Son