When we are not afraid to enter into our own center and to concentrate on the stirrings of our own soul, we come to know that being alive means loved. This experience tells us that we can love only because we are born out of love, that we can give only because our life is a gift, and that we can make others free only because we are set free by God whose heart is greater than ours.

–Henry Nouwen, The Wounded Healer