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Before being Christians or Jews or Muslims, before being Americans or Russians or Africans, before being generals or priests, rabbis or imams, before having visible or invisible disabilities, we are all human beings with hearts capable of loving,
Jean Vanier
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To look forward, to want life, means we have to be willing to look backwards and become more conscious of all those who have hurt us, all that is broken in us and that has brought us inner deaths, hurts that we may have hidden and stifled. It means that we acknowledge the story of our origins, of our own lives, see and accept our brokenness and the times we also have hurt others. When we have accepted who we are and what we need in order to grow in compassion and peacemaking, we can move forward to give life. To forgive is a gift of God that permits us to let go of our past hurts.
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When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.
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Every human activity can be put at the service of the divine and of love. We should all exercise our gift to build community.
Jean Vanier
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To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.
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In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.
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Peace can only come as people begin to meet each other. Those that do have the courage to cross the road, however, to look kindly at people and to listen to them with tenderness, will find people much like themselves, people seeking to be loved for who they are. And that it is OK for each one of us to admit, "I don't have all the truth.... I am vulnerable, I am broken. I need help." Then comes the realization, "I need your help. I need your friendship." In the end, what you will find, and what you will help the world to discover, Vanier said, is what it means to be human.
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The strong need the weak in order to become more human, more compassionate.
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Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us. When we do include them, they add richly to our lives and add immensely to our world.
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Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.
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We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.
Jean Vanier
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Quote of the day
True, the initial ideas are in general those of an individual, but the establishment of the reality and truth is in general the work of more than one person.
Willard Libby
Jean Vanier
Creative Commons
Born:
September 10, 1928
Died:
May 7, 2019
(aged 90)
Bio:
Jean Vanier was a Canadian Catholic philosopher, theologian and humanitarian.
Known for:
Becoming Human (1998)
Community & growth (1979)
Tears of silence (1940)
Befriending the Stranger (2005)
From brokenness to community (1992)
Most used words:
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community
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