The L'Arche Canada Foundation in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada with Jean Vanier's Daily Thoughts for Thursday, 15 September 2016 "Using our free time well"
Some people don't know what to do with free time. They spend hours just sitting around and talking. It is sad if people have no interest outside the community, if they have given up reading, if they don't enjoy simple pleasures like walking and listening to music. We have to help each other keep alive the personal interests which help us relax and which re-create us.[Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, page 181]
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JEAN VANIER'S Daily thought
>> Image from: Portraits - L'Arche Greater Vancouver (Juan Olaechea)"Dietrich Bonhoeffer"
Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer[1] says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal. We are not striving for perfect community. 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 would want them to be. Community means giving them space, helping them to grow. It means also receiving from them so that we too can grow. It is giving each other freedom; it is giving each other trust; it is confirming but also challenging each other. We give dignity to each other by the way we listen to each other, in a spirit of trust and of dying to oneself so that the other may live, grow and give.[Jean Vanier, From Brokeness to Community, pages 35-36]
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German theologian, pastor, preacher, radio broadcaster, and prolific writer in the 1930s and early-1940s.
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