Jean Vanier is first and foremost committed to the person with an intellectual disability. Indeed, it is his experience of a shared life with people with an intellectual disability that allowed him to develop his vision of what it means to become human.

 

Latest Letter of Jean Vanier to his friends - January 2012

Dear Friends,

At last, it is over! The trip from 31 rue Louis Marillac to 19 rue d’Orléans is finished. It meant moving furniture, books and papers, more papers and books, my bed, my toothbrush (even though I don’t have many teeth left to brush) and finally me. I have settled into my new surroundings, near the Farm (where I am still giving retreats). It is a beautiful place… my office has a big bay window overlooking the L’Arche chapel and a garden with a small house just for birds. The birds will come, soon I hope, to pick seed, fighting and playing among themselves.  Read more >>>

 

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"Doing Good in a Complex World", an Interview with Jean Vanier

While the progressive disability movement speaks mainly about tolerance, rights and normalization, Jean Vanier has shaped a distinct way of thinking that builds on those minimum standards of a civil society while inspiring us to transcend them. (...)Where modernity calls us to privileged personal mastery, progress and doing big things, Vanier's experience of living with people with profound impairment and his spiritual reflection on this experience, lead him to focus on being with and for others, especially disadvantaged others: to cultivating sincere presence to others' desires, being attentive to the beauty in all of our ordinariness, and being of meaningful service to others. (http://www.drewmarshall.ca)

Listen to Jean speaking on the Drew Marshall Show on December 17th, 2011 click here

 

Inspiration from the heart

"To love someone is to reveal to them that they are beautiful"

"What meaning can be found in life in the modern world? So many people today are searching, so many seem lost and no longer have any kind of ethical reference points; so many are dissatisfied with a purely materialistic life, with ephemeral pleasures or with a quest for power and success.(...)
Openness does not imply weakness, nor a tolerance which ignores truth and justice. Being open does not mean adhering to others' ideologies. It means being truly sympathetic and welcoming to people, listening to them, and in particular to people who are weak or poor or oppressed, so as to live in communion with them."

Jean Vanier, Our Journey Home, p 145

 

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