Nouwen quote

I am spending my first whole day at home in a while, and it's really nice. I am realizing how short my attention span is, though. I think it's getting shorter in my old age. I have been reading, heating up leftovers for lunch, and studying Korean. After studying Korean for a while, though, I decided to come post a quote I read earlier in this biography of Henri Nouwen I just finished. It's good food for thought for me.

We, too, must move from action to ‘passion,’ from being in control to being dependent, from taking initiatives to having to wait, from living to dying. Painful and nearly impossible as this move seems to be, it is in this movement that our true fruitfulness is hidden. Our years of action are years of success and accomplishment. During these years, we do things about which we can speak with pride. But much of this success and many of these accomplishments will soon lie behind us. We might still point to them in the form of trophies, medals, or artistic products. But what is beyond our success and productivity? Fruitfulness lies beyond and that fruitfulness comes through passion, or suffering. Just as the ground can only bear fruit if broken by the plow, our own lives can only be fruitful if opened through passion. Suffering is precisely ‘undergoing’ action by others, over which we have no control.

-Henri Nouwen, in reference to John 21:18