Jean Vanier
Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.
Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.
Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.
Community begins in mystery and ends in administration. Leaders move away from people and into paper.
Each human being, however small or weak, has something to bring to humanity. As we start to really get to know others, as we begin to listen to each other's stories, things begin to change. We begin the movement from exclusion to inclusion, from fear to trust, from closedness to openness, from judgment and prejudice to forgiveness and understanding. It is a movement of the heart.Collection: Heart
To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.Collection: Love
Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be.Collection: People
In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts.Collection: People
Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.Collection: Love
Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved.Collection: Heart
It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community.Collection: Pain
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals.Collection: People
To love someone is not first of all to do things for them,but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: 'You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.'Collection: Beautiful
Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.Collection: Children
I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.Collection: Quality
A society which discards those who are weak and non-productive risks exaggerating the development of reason, organisation, aggression and the desire to dominate. It becomes a society without a heart, without kindness - a rational and sad society, lacking celebration, divided within itself and given to competition, rivalry and, finally, violence.Collection: Kindness
I do not believe we can truly enter into our own inner pain and wounds and open our hearts to others unless we have had an experience of God, unless we have been touched by God. We must be touched by the Father in order to experience, as the prodigal son did, that no matter how wounded we may be, we are loved. And not only are we loved, but we too are called to heal and to liberate. This healing power in us will not come from our capacities and our riches, but in and through our poverty. We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion and love through our wounds.Collection: Pain
Growth begins when we start to accept our own weaknessCollection: Love Yourself
Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach usCollection: People
Wisdom is something that comes, little by little, through a lot of listening.Collection: Listening
Every human being is a mixture of light and darkness, trust and fear, love and hate.Collection: Hate
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.Collection: Healing
When we begin to believe that there is greater joy in working with and for others, rather than just for ourselves, then our society will truly become a place of celebration.Collection: Believe
The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable every one to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal.Collection: Brother
A community which refuses to welcome - whether through fear, weariness, insecurity, a desire to cling to comfort, or just because it is fed up with visitors - is dying spiritually.Collection: Community
Prayer is like a secret garden made up of silence and rest and inwardness. But there are a thousand and one doors into this garden and we all have to find our own.Collection: Prayer
Love is an act of endless forgiveness.Collection: Love
A community is only a community when the majority of its members are making the transition from 'the community for myself' to 'myself for the community'.Collection: Community
Power always has a direction. It is always downward, towards the weak but power is often confused with what is rightCollection: Confused
We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important, because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the huge and glorious final humanityCollection: Humanity
The people with the best sense of what is essential to a community, of what gives and maintains its spirit, are often doing very humble, manual tasks. It is often the poorest person - the one who has a handica[p, is] ill or old - who is the most prophetic. People who carry responsibility must be close to them and know what they think, because it is often they who are free enough to see with the greatest clarity the needs, beauty and pain of the community.Collection: Pain
He who is or has been deeply hurt has a RIGHT to be sure he is LOVED.Collection: Hurt
When children are loved, they live off trust; their bides and hearts open up to those who respect and love them, who understand and listen to them.Collection: Children
We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love.Collection: Exercise
[...] We have to realize that this wound [of loneliness] is inherent in the human condition and that what we have to do is walk with it instead of fleeing from it. We cannot accept it until we discover that we are loved by God just as we are, and that the Holy Spirit in a mysterious way is living at the centre of the wound.Collection: Loneliness
Machines help us do things more quickly and efficiently, but they can also destroy some community activities. Machines can also throw the weakest people out of work and this would be sad, because their small contribution to the housework or cooking is their way of giving something to the community. People who are capable of doing things very quickly with the help of machines become tremendously busy, always active, in charge of everyone - a bit like machines themselves.Collection: People
The friend of time doesn't spend all day saying: 'I haven't got time.' He doesn't fight with time. He accepts it and cherishes it.Collection: Fighting
I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: 'Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?Collection: Real
I have discovered the value of psychology and psychiatry, that their teachings can undo knots in us and permit life to flow again and aid us in becoming more truly human.Collection: Teaching
A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow in their own gift.Collection: Prayer
The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life.Collection: Heart
Look at your own poverty welcome it cherish it don't be afraid share your death because thus you will share your love and your lifeCollection: Looks
At the heart of the celebration, there are the poor. If [they] are excluded, it is not longer a celebration. [...] A celebration must always be a festival of the poor.Collection: Heart
A community that is growing rich and seeks only to defend its goods and its reputation is dying. It has ceased to grow in love. A community is alive when it is poor and its members feel they have to work together and remain united, if only to ensure that they can all eat tomorrow!Collection: Community
Put on light-coloured clothes and some perfume, take care of your body and do everything you can to fight against the forces of darkness. It is not an easy struggle, but it is worthwhile.Collection: Struggle
Every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. (23-24)Collection: Needs
A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly.Collection: Grace
True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.Collection: Community
If we love (the poor) people, we want to identify with them and share with them.Collection: People
So we need places, laboratories, the creation of places which could be each one of our homes, where we invite people who are different, and we listen to each other, people of different class groups.Collection: Home