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Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us

Jean Vanier

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Jean Vanier
Age: 90 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: May 7
Naval Officer
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Genève
Often
Disabilities
Life
Exclude
People
Disability
Profound
Lessons
Normal
Teach
Society

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Love is an act of endless forgiveness.
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Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.
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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.
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Avoid the poison in your life that brings you turmoil.
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Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness
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When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don't need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest.
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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.
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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 life
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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.
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Wisdom is something that comes, little by little, through a lot of listening.
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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 humanity
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'Going home' is a journey to the heart of who we are, a place where we can be ourselves and welcome the reality of our beauty and our pain. From this acceptance of ourselves, we can accept others as they are and we can see our common humanity.
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Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.
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A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly.
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All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.
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Every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. (23-24)
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We don’t know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?
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The strong need the weak as much as the weak need the strong
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I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always...whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way.
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We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.
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