The L'Arche Canada Foundation in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada with Jean Vanier's Daily Thoughts for Wednesday, 21 September 2016 "The Cancer"

The L'Arche Canada Foundation in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada with Jean Vanier's Daily Thoughts for Wednesday, 21 September 2016 "The Cancer"
One of the greatest sins of a community is perhaps a sort of sadness and moroseness. It is easy to spend time with a few friends, criticizing others, saying that we are fed up and that nothing is like it was in the old days. This state of spirit, which you can read on people's faces, is a real cancer that can spread right through the body. Sadness, like love and joy, comes in waves which immediately spread. We can nourish people with trust and love or we can poison them with sadness and all sorts of criticism.[Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, page 185]
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JEAN VANIER'S Daily thought

>> Image from: Portraits - L'Arche Greater Vancouver (Juan Olaechea)
"The Walls Around Refugee Camps"
Some time ago I visited Slovenia, the little country in the former Yugoslavia with a population of about two million. Their government had welcomed tens of thousands of refugees from Bosnia and I was able to visit one of the refugee camps. The camp was a fenced-off area for a few hundred people, most of them Muslim. They had nothing to do all day but sit around and talk. They had sunk into complete apathy.
I was struck by the indifference of the local population towards these refugees. There were no physical walls between the camp and them but the psychological wall was enormous. If we try to help just a little bit, we find ourselves completely overwhelmed by the needs of people, so it seems necessary to leave them in their misery. In every country, there are situations similar to the one I saw in that refugee camp in Slovenia.[L'Arche Canada - 2016]
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