The L'Arche Canada Foundation in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada with Jean Vanier's Daily Thoughts for Saturday, 10 September 2016 "Finding a Place"
>> Image from: Expo Haiti-Quebec (Jonathan Boulet-Groulx)"Finding a Place"
Those who are weak have great difficulty finding their place in our society. The image of the ideal human as powerful and capable disenfranchises the old, the sick, the less-abled. For me, society must, by definition, be inclusive of the needs and gifts of all its members. How can we lay claim to making an open and friendly society where human rights are respected and fostered when, by the values we teach and foster, we systematically exclude segments of our population?
I believe that 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.[Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, page 45]
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>> Image from: Expo Haiti-Quebec (Jonathan Boulet-Groulx)"Finding a Place"
Those who are weak have great difficulty finding their place in our society. The image of the ideal human as powerful and capable disenfranchises the old, the sick, the less-abled. For me, society must, by definition, be inclusive of the needs and gifts of all its members. How can we lay claim to making an open and friendly society where human rights are respected and fostered when, by the values we teach and foster, we systematically exclude segments of our population?
I believe that 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.[Jean Vanier, Becoming Human, page 45]
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>> Image from: Expo Haiti-Quebec (Jonathan Boulet-Groulx)"Impatience"
We are all so impatient. We want everything and we want it now! We want happiness, fulfilment and life. It is normal to want such things. But we have to learn to respect the rhythm of our being. Look at the plants and animals, look at the vegetables and the fruit trees. It takes time to grow and to bear fruit. There are the summers of rich harvests, the autumns with rain and falling leaves, the grey and cold winters where life seems to have stopped and then there are springtimes when life is reborn.
It is the same with human life. We are like the fruit trees. We have been planted in the earth of our mother's being and we have grown. We are born, we developed in the sometimes rugged earth of our families. During our life, just as in the cycle of nature, seasons follow one another.[Jean Vanier, Seeing Beyond Depression, page 41]
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