Community Integration 520 The more a community deepens and
grows, the more integrated it must be in the neighbourhood. When it begins,
the community is integrated within the four walls of its house. But
gradually it opens up to neighbours and friends. Some communities begin to
panic when they feel that their neighbours are becoming committed to them;
they are frightened of losing their identity, of losing control. But there
are times to knock down the walls of a community. This is how a small
community can gradually become the yeast in the dough, a place of unity for
all and between all.
Projects 519 It is important that people in community have
their own projects and responsibilities which allow them to take initiative.
But it is important too that these projects are confirmed by the community.
Otherwise they will go against the flow of the community; they will be
projects of individuals who either want to prove that they know better than
the community or else are saying they do not fit into
it.
Creating Community 518 A community is only being created when
its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that
they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope,
like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it
sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the
greatness of humanity lies in the acceptance of our insignificance, our
human condition and our earth.
ジャン・バニエ
コミュニティゆるしと祝祭の場p182
Community Evolves 517
A community is called to birth and must live first of all; it grows, deepens, evolves with time, but all must not be
planned beforehand. As people join the community they have their say in its
development; they bring their insights and inspirations. Events modify the
way things are done; little by little a common vision is
forged.
Day by Day in Community 516 A community which is just an
explosion of heroism is not a true community. True community implies a way
of life, a way of living and seeing reality; it implies above all fidelity
in the daily round. And this is made up of simple things - getting meals,
using and washing the dishes and using them again, going to meetings - as
well as gift, joy and celebration; and it is made up of forgiving seventy
times seventy-seven.
Community means communion of heart and spirit; it is a network of relationships. This
implies a response to the cry of our brothers and sisters, especially the
poorest, the weakest, the most wounded, and a sense of responsibility for
them. And this is demanding and disturbing. That is why it is very easy to
replace relationships and the demands they bring with laws, rules and
administrative devices. It is easier to obey a law than it is to love
people. This is why some communities are swallowed up by rules and
administration instead of growing in gratuite, welcome and
gift.
Finding Rebirth 512
Strangely enough, as anguish rises up in us, a new freedom comes to birth. We discover more deeply the small,
innocent, trusting child within us; we discover new
life.
When we can put words to past events and
feelings we discover that we were not responsible for everything that went
wrong. We can be more objective, putting things and situations into their
proper perspective. As we look at past experiences more truthfully, we
demystify them. We free ourselves from the 'monsters' and 'demons' that
exercised power over us, crushing life and making us feel
guilty.
Childhood Pain Resurfaces 510 Our childhood fears and anguish
begin to resurface; all that we went through when we were mistreated, abused
or unfairly rejected, when we witnessed unbearable conflicts around us,
which we thought were our fault. We could not express these awful, morbid
feelings, feelings of hate toward our parents and ourselves, because we were
so small. We concealed them at the bottom of our hearts. Never having been
expressed, these feelings have remained hidden in the memory of our body and
heart. They have gnawed away inside us, poisoning our whole being,
condemning us and making us feel guilty. In order to survive, we had to
forget them and hide behind solid walls.
The Role of a Competent Guide 509
When we descend into this place of darkness we need to be accompanied by someone who is competent.
Otherwise, we won't have the strength to look at our shadow areas and to
cope with them. They are too frightening! But in gentle dialogue with a
competent person, we will gradually connect with this world which up to now
has been hidden from our consciousness.
Seeking Help 508 There comes a moment, when, with the help of a
competent psychologist, we maybe have to look more closely at the powers of
darkness hidden within us. No longer can we run away from them, but we must
try to discover their origin and why they have such a hold over us. If we
are to find healing and inner peace we have to face up to the real
questions, to put names to them.
Rest 507 Perhaps you have children who need to be fed and
collected from school, a husband or wife who is hard to please, or a
difficult and demanding job. Each one of us has responsibilities and things
that have to be done. We cannot just go off on a holiday. And yet true inner
freedom cannot be found unless the body is given time to rest. If our bodies
and minds are tense and stressed, then the real work of liberation cannot
happen.
We are all called ... 430
We may not all be called to do great things that make the headlines, but we are all called to love and be loved,
wherever we may be. We are called to be open and to grow in love and thus to
communicate life to others, especially to those in
need.
Finding Balance 429
You have to find a good balance. You must not become old before your time! It is not necessary to worry endlessly
about your health when you are still young. Learning to live means finding
this balance. It is knowing how to make choices, opting for that which makes
you live in peace and communion and avoiding that which worries and upsets
you.
Looking After Yourself 428 You will discover how fragile and
vulnerable your life, your body and your heart really are. You cannot do
just anything. You have to look after yourself and treat yourself gently,
enjoying relaxation, relationships, peace and prayer which will help you
stay in the light.
Distinguishing Light from Darkness 427 Little by little you
will learn to distinguish between the ways of peace and light and the ways
of darkness. If you want to live in peace and light there are certain things
and certain people to avoid; perhaps some so-called friends and neighbours
who, because of their own anxieties or difficulties, create turmoil or
distress in you.In the same way, certain television programmes or magazines
can disturb you and bring you anguish. Avoid the poison in your life that
brings you turmoil.
There is a real danger that these powers of sadness and inner emptiness, and the need to throw ourselves into
feverish activity or kinds of entertainment, will control us. We try to
forget by keeping busy no matter what. For as soon as we stop, the anguish
creeps in and the guilt resurfaces. Many people are able to keep going by
doing that. They cannot stop, frequently because stopping seems too
dangerous.
Distinguishing Your Real Self 424 To the extent that you no
longer identify yourself with your depression and that you distinguish
between your deepest, real self and the feelings of sadness and guilt which
well up, then you have the key to healing and
resurrection.
Discovering your Two Parts 422
Instead of saying, 'I am no good. I can't do anything, I want to disappear and die,' you will learn,
little by little, to say, 'I feel sad and I feel like dying, and I don't
know where this is coming from.' So you gradually discover these two
different parts within you: the secret, hidden self which is the source of
your being and your life, and the other, wounded self which sends messages
of sadness, death and rejection to your
consciousness.
Trust as a Key 421
In order to open a door we need a key. In order to open the door of our hearts and to discover the meaning and
rhythm of life, we need a key. We can let ourselves remain locked up in a
prison of sadness and refuse to live. So we need a key to open a door to
life, the door to liberation. This key is trust: to trust that deeper than
all the feelings of sadness and death, lies our hidden, true self, which is
unique and important. It has a destiny, which is growth to the fullest life
possible.
Part of a Beautiful Universe 420 You are not all alone. You are
a part of this beautiful universe where each element has its place; each one
is important. This world has existed for millions of years. The sun rises
every morning and sets every evening. The stars shine brightly far above the
clouds and the storms. They are so beautiful and so marvelously arranged!
You are a part of this immense and marvelous
universe!
Saying 'Yes' 419
[Our] 'yes' to life may initially be a passive 'yes', born of lassitude and of regrets, but it can eventually
become a 'yes' of openness, of acceptance, a 'yes' of joy. This 'yes' to
life, which springs from the deepest part of us, is not a naive or
idealistic 'yes''; it is not saying yes to a dream or illusion. It is a
'yes' to our deepest self, a 'yes' to our past, to our body, to our family,
a 'yes' to our inner storms, our winters, our pain; a 'yes' also to the
beauty of life, to sunshine, to fresh air, to running water, to children's
faces, to the song of birds. It is the 'yes, to our destiny and our growth.
It is the 'yes' to our own true beauty, even if, at certain times, we cannot
see it.
We Have a Choice 418 One of the differences between we human
beings and animals is that animals are perfectly adapted to their
environment. We can either accept or reject ours, depending on our inner
wounds and failures that have been imposed upon us. We can be open or closed
up; we can say 'yes' to life and try to guide it in a healthy way, or we can
say 'no, it is too hard!' And even try to destroy
it.
Believe Spring will Come 417
Just as the vine has to be pruned in order to bear more fruit, so too each of us has to be pruned. There are
moments of grief and disappointment that are like rough and painful times of
pruning so that there might be more life. But when it is winter and it is
very cold, when the vine has been pruned, stripped of its branches, we find
it difficult to believe that spring will come again and that life is lying
dormant but will soon re-emerge.
Winter is a season 416 Sometimes there are more radical,
violent wounds. Death seems close. When we are hurt, we tend to close in on
ourselves. It is winter. The ground becomes hard. And sometimes winter lasts
a long time.
We Each Have Cycles 415
Yes, each one of us with our bodies, our hearts, our minds, is beautiful. Each one of us has our own cycle of
growth which brings with it ups and downs, summers and winters, good times
and bad times; setbacks and times of drought are part of life. They are
phases we have to go through, and a new start is always
possible.
ジャン・バニエ 鬱を越えて
The Vulnerability of Children 414 Some people think that
children do not feel anything, that they do not suffer from the ambiguities
and contradictions of the adults living around them. But that is not true.
Children have extremely vulnerable hearts. They need the truth and cannot
tolerate injustice or lies.
Depression 413 Depression, that dark and painful force which
invades the deepest part of our being and spreads throughout our whole body,
has its origins in the wounds of our childhood that we have never wanted to
own or to name. But they re-emerge at given moments into our consciousness,
paralyzing us with feelings of sadness, guilt and
confusion.
ジャン・バニエ 鬱を越えて
A Special kind of Meal 412 A silent meal, by candlelight and
against a background of good music can create a very warm community
atmosphere. Silence also encourages reflection and inwardness. And it
doesn't exclude sensitive non-verbal communication which can sometimes forge
unity more strongly than words.
The Plague of Self-Service 411 Self-service is the worst of
inventions. There we are, all with our own tray, own little bottle of wine,
own little sachets of sugar, salt and pepper. It's terrible to assume that
everyone is going to eat and drink a standard quantity, and do it alone into
the bargain. How much more human to have a nice big bottle from which
everyone can pour as much as they want, and one nice big dish so that
everyone can make sure that the others have what they need. Then meals are
no longer a solitary and egotistical business but a time when each person
shares and loves.
Meals 410
Meals must not be times for contentious discussion or serious educational attitudes. Working meals are not to be encouraged
either. A meal is a time for relaxation of the body and the spirit. Laughter
is excellent for the digestion.
Humility 409
Unity grows from the soil of humility, which is the safeguard against schisms and division. The spirit of evil is powerless
against humility.
A Spirituality of Life 408 [When we start helping the weak and
the poor to rise] everyone will begin to change. Those who have power and
riches will start to become more humble, and those who are rising up will
leave behind their need to be victims, their need to be angry or
depressed....This is the spirituality of life, that helps people to rise up
and take their place. It is not a spirituality of death. Jesus wants those
who have been crushed to rise up and those who have power to discover that
there is another road, a road of sharing and
compassion.
Jean Vanier, Living Gently in a Violent
World. pp.
71-72
Giving Life 407
People who are old or sick and offer themselves to God can become the most precious members of a community -
lightning conductors of grace. There is a mystery in the secret strength of
those whose bodies are broken, who seem to do nothing all day, but who
remain in the presence of God. Their immobility obliges them to keep their
minds and hearts fixed on the essential, on the source of life itself. Their
suffering and agony bears fruit; they give life.
Spiritual Growth 406
I discover more and more the marvelous way in which responsibility leads to spiritual growth. Of course it is a cross,
and some people mope and groan under it. Others see responsibility as
something deserved which brings prestige and advantages. But if we are aware
of the gravity of responsibility and what it means to carry people, and if
we accept the cross with all its implications, this is a marvelous way to
grow.
Not Shameful 405
Depression is not a shameful illness that has to be hidden from ourselves and others. It is alright to suffer from it; it
is part of our being and part of the story of our lives. But this does not
mean that we should allow ourselves to sink into a morbid sadness. In order
to find new life we have to react! We do not have to become slaves to these
feelings which rise up in our consciousness, but we must learn to manage
them so that we can be gradually liberated from
them.
The Struggle 404 There is a struggle inside you between these
two parts. It's as if at times your heart becomes a battlefield! The secret
part, full of light, seems so small and weak in the face of the discouraging
and morbid part, which seems enormous and overwhelming. However, if you
light a small candle in a dark room, everything is lit up. It is a matter of
trusting in this little light in the deepest part of your being which can
gradually chase away the darkness.
Respecting Depression 403
A real friend, a good counselor, knows how to respect depression. It is a natural phenomenon that has its own
particular rhythm. We should not try and make a person emerge too quickly
from it. People suffering from depression need to feel loved just the way
they are and not only on condition that they come out of it. It takes time
to get back on one's feet.
ホイットニー・ブラウン著 「Essential Writings」より引用
Problems 401 Many people believe that community life is made up
of a series of problems to be solved. And consciously or unconsciously, they
are waiting for the day when all tensions, conflicts, and problems brought
by marginal people and structures will be resolved and that there will be no
more problems left. But most problems are not resolved. With time, and a
certain insight and fidelity in listening, they clear up when we least
expect them to. But there will always be others to take their
place!
Machines 331 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.
Meetings 330 Community life implies a personal commitment which
is made real in meetings between people. But we are very quick to flee from
these meetings. They frighten us just because they commit us. We flee into
administration, law, rules, the search for 'objective truth'; we flee into
work and activity. We flee from meeting people; we would rather do things
for them. But if we are to love, we have to
meet.
Sometimes when people knock on my door I
ask them in and we talk, but I make it clear to them in a thousand small
ways that I am busy, that I have other things to do. The door of my office
is open, but the door to my heart is closed. If we have other things to do
that can't wait, we should say so - but open our heart all the
same.
The Human Heart 328
Love can never be static. A human heart is either progressing or regressing. If it is not becoming more open, it is
closing and withering spiritually.
Material Things 327
One of the signs that a community is alive can be found in material things. Cleanliness, furnishings, the way flowers
are arranged and meals prepared, are among the things which reflect the
quality of people's hearts. Some people may find material chores irksome;
they would prefer to use their time to talk and be with others. They haven't
yet realized that the thousand and one small things that have to be done
each day, the cycle of dirtying and cleaning, were given by God to enable us
to communicate through matter. Cooking and washing floors can become a way
of showing our love for others. It is celebration to be able to
give.
The Gift of the Poor 326
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 handicap or who 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.
The Gift of Animation 324
It is always important in a community to have people who have the gift of animating, of giving life to a meeting
or celebration. The best way to prepare for an event is to spend time
beforehand just listening to the inner music and the needs of the people who
would be there.
The Anti-Gift 323 A community is founded on the trust its
members have for each other. This trust is very fragile and very weak. There
is a place in all our hearts where doubt lives. People who sow discord have
a flair for finding that place and feeding the doubt, which is how they can
destroy community. And that is an anti-gift.
ジャン・バニエ
コミュニティゆるしと祝祭の場 p414
The Gift of our Physical Selves 322 We have to remember that we
have a body which has its own laws, and that the physical has its effect on
the spiritual. We have to respect our body and its needs, and care for it
even more than a craftsman cares for his tools. Our body is more important
than a tool. It is an integral part of our being, of our
self.
ジャン・バニエ
コミュニティゆるしと祝祭の場 p407
The Gift of Wonderment 321
People who have spent a long time in community tend to forget what is beautiful in it. They may have lost the
gift of wonderment. They need to be renewed by listening to the sense of
wonder in the younger people who feel called to commit themselves to the
community. The sense of wonderment in the young can blend with the fidelity,
wisdom and ability to listen of the older members to make a community which
is really beautiful.
ジャン・バニエ
コミュニティゆるしと祝祭の場 p406
The Gift of Listening 320
This is an important gift in
community. But if we are able to listen, we must offer security. An
assurance of confidentiality is an essential part of being a listener. This
means knowing how to respect the wounds and the sufferings of others and not
divulging these.
The Point of Community 319
We must always remember; a community is never an end in itself; it is each individual person who is important.
And people can grow in holiness and communion with God in the midst of a
broken, dying community, and through persecutions of all
kinds.
An Orchestra 318
A community is like an orchestra: each instrument is beautiful when it plays alone, but when they all play
together, each given its own weight in turn, the result is even more
beautiful. A community is like a garden full of flowers, shrubs and trees.
Each helps to give life to the others.
Learning to Grow 317
We have to learn to draw on our suffering, distress and setbacks so that we can grow spiritually. It is so easy for us
to get locked into frustration, anger and
depression.
Harmonizing Masculine and Feminine 316 To exercise authority
one has to grow in wholeness, seeking continually to harmonize the masculine
and the feminine. For many years I have exercised authority together with
women. I have seen how we help each other. I had certain gifts which were
less developed in them, as they had gifts which were less developed in me.
It is good for men and women to exercise authority
together.
Family Celebration 315 It is so important for a family to
celebrate all together. It is so important for the children to laugh and
play and sing with their parents and to see their parents happy to be
together..
No Exclusion 314 At the heart of celebration are the poor. If
the least significant is excluded, it is no longer a celebration. We have to
find dances and games in which the children, the old people and the weak can
join equally. A celebration must always be a festival of the poor, and with
the poor, not for the poor.
Deeply Marked by India 313
My trips to India that began in 1969 deeply marked my life. I discovered a whole world of poverty that I had
never seen before in my life. At the time of the civil war in Bangladesh, I
visited Calcutta and met Mother Teresa and her sisters; hundreds of
thousands of refugees were flooding into India ...
In India I also discovered the vision and work of Mahatma Gandhi, especially
his spirituality. In him I found a prophet for our times, a man of God, a
man of prayer, a man deeply concerned about the life of the poorwho saw the
"untouchables as "harijans, children of God.
Jean
Vanier, "The Ark," p. 55, Quoted in "Jean Vanier: Essential Writings," by
Carolyn Whitney Brown, p.
35
A Shout of Love 312
When people come to honor success and power or to give out prizes to winners, they do not celebrate. They clap and
applaud. They are proud if the winners come from their club or group or
family or country. In some way they identify with the winner and feel they
are the best. But there are so many who do not win, who have no success or
power. Celebration is a shout of love, and of openness, not a feeling of
power or superiority.
ジャン・バニエ
コミュニティーゆるしと祝祭の場 p. 504
Other People 311
Sartre is wrong when he says that hell is other people. It is heaven that is other people. They only become hell when
we are locked into our own egoism and darkness. If they are to become
heaven, we have to make the slow passage from egoism to love. It is our own
hearts and eyes that have to change.
The Rich Cousin 310
Are there any norms in this question of poverty? One thing is sure - a community which gets richer, has everything
it needs and is completely self-reliant, will become isolated, just because
it needs no help. It will close up in itself and its wealth. It loses its
radiance. It will be able to do things for its neighbors, but they will be
able to offer nothing in return. There will be no exchange or sharing. The
community will become the rich cousin. To what will it witness
then?
Celebration 309 Forgiveness and celebration are at the heart of
community. These are the two faces of love. The poorer people are, the more
they love to celebrate. The festivals of the poorest people in Africa last
for several days. They use all their savings on huge feasts and beautiful
clothes. These feasts nearly always celebrate a divine or a religious event.
They are sacred occasions. In richer countries we have lost the art of
celebrating. People go to movies or watch television or have other leisure
activities; they go to parties but they do not
celebrate.
ジャン・バニエ
コミュニティーゆるしと祝祭の場 p. 499
Celebration Includes Remembering 308 There is always an element
of sadness in celebration. We cannot celebrate without alluding to it,
because there are people on this earth of ours who are not celebrating, who
are despairing, anguished, starving and mourning. That is why all
celebration should end with a silence in which we remember before God all
those who cannot celebrate and who are in pain
today.
Learning 307
During those first months (of L'Arche), I learned a great deal. I was beginning to discover the immense amounts of pain hidden
in the hearts of Raphael, Phillippe, and so many of their brothers and
sisters. I sensed how their hearts had been broken by rejection,
abandonnment, and lack of respect. At the same time I was beginning to
discover some of the beauty and tenderness of their hearts, their capacity
for communion and tenderness. I was beginning to sense how living with them
could transform me....
Jean Vanier, quoted in Jean
Vanier: Essential Writings, ed. C. Whitney Brown, p.
32
Joy II 306
I am sure that poor people can be joyful. At times of celebration they seem to overcome all their suffering and frustration in
an explosion of joy. They shed the burden of daily life and they live in a
moment of freedom in which their hearts simply bound with joy. It is so too
with people in community who have learned to accept their wounds,
limitations and poverty. They have discovered liberation. They do not have
to hide away. They are free.
Visitors are often astonished at the joy they sense at L'Arche. It surprises me too because I know how much suffering some people
in our communities are carrying. I wonder then if all joy doesn't somehow
spring from suffering and sacrifice. Can those who are rich and live in
comfort and security with everything they need, and refuse to be close to
those who are suffering, be truly joyful?
A Symbol 304 Celebrations certainly have a role in helping
people to accept the sufferings of everyday life by offering them the chance
to relax and let go. But to see them as nothing but a form of escapism is to
fail to understand human nature. Our human hearts need something beyond the
limitations and frustrations of the daily grind. We thirst for a happiness
which seems unattainable on earth. We crave the infinite, the universal, the
eternal--something which gives a sense to human life and its irksome daily
routines. A festival is a sign of heaven. It symbolizes our deepest
aspiration--an experience of total communion. .
Laughter 303
Laughter is the greatest of relaxations. And there is something funny about humanity. Little as we are, poor as we are, we are
called to be brothers and sisters of God. It seems so ludicrous and
wonderful, so crazy and so ecstatic. Everything seems upside
down!
Rejoicing 301 Celebration is a specific act of a community as
people rejoice and give thanks to [God] who has bonded them together and is
looking after them and loves them. They are no longer individuals locked up
in their own loneliness and independence. They are one body and each of them
has their place in the body. Celebration is a cry of joy from all of them
covenanted together, for they have been led through the passage of
loneliness to love, of discouragement to hope.
The head of a company shouts unfairly at one of his employees. The employee feels bruised and wounded, but he does
not dare answer back. He goes home seething with rage. Supper is not ready,
so he screams at his wife, taking out all his anguish and suppressed anger
on her. She does not dare answer back. Instead, when she sees her son about
to take something from the fridge, she shouts at him. He says nothing; he is
frightened of being smacked, so he goes out into the road and kicks a dog.
The dog chases the cat, who runs and kills the mouse. This is the way that
agression is passed on from person to person.
Highs and Lows 228 In this universe, we have the high and the
low, the sun and the mud, the beautiful and the hideous. Very quickly, we
human beings divide ourselves into groups that clearly define pure and
impure, good and bad, competent and incompetent, the virtuous and the
sinners.
私たちは輝いている p48
I won! 227
The need to win is often so strong. What
fierce arguments we are prepared to enter into, just in order to prove that we are
right!
Guilty or Not Guilty 226
Poor people embarrass and upset us. They arouse conflicting feelings
of pity, anger, inner discomfort and perhaps a kind of more or less recognised guilt.
They reveal our refusal to stand by one another. It is no surprising that
the rich defend
themselves and try to hide poor people behind the walls of slum areas.
あなたは輝いている p43
For Crying Out Loud 225
The Psalmist tells us that God hears the cry of
the poor. We human beings are afraid of this cry; it undermines
our comfort, our security and our well-being. We avoid the poor; we do not
want to look at them.
Cultural Models 224
Competition awakens energies; it helps people to develop
their potential, and in so doing to develop the potential
of society and of humanity. But while some people win, the majority lose. A
culture thus develops in which those who do not succeed are
rejected.
Aristotle says that when a person does not feel loved,
he or she seeks to be admired. To be neither loved nor admired is like
death.
People will do anything to find someone who will affirm them and make them
feel valued.
A minister of the Pentecostal Church of Russia once said to me: 'When we were in prison - Christians of different
denominations - we were united. But now we are free, we no longer talk to
each other. New walls stand between us. We learned how to live together in
prison, but we don't know how to cope with
freedom.'
My companions and I walked in silence asking God to take from our hearts our prejudices and our capacity to hurt
others, especially those different from ourselves or weaker. Human beings
can so easily become caught up in hatred and fear and falsehood, refusing to
see and accept our common humanity.
Throughout the Gospels there is a contrast between
those who are well-integrated in society but are too busy and those
who are excluded from society and have too much
time.
Living
Gently in a Violent World, p.30
Living Gently in a Violent World 219
We gathered to say how beautiful she was, how much
she had brought to us. Her sisters came, and we
wept and laughed at the same time. We wept because she was gone, but we
laughed because she did so many beautiful things.
When I reflect on the Gospel vision, I find that it is incredible.
It is a promise that we human beings can get together. It is a vision of unity, peace and acceptance. It is a promise
that the walls between people and between groups can fall, but this will not
be accomplished by force. It will come about through a change of heart -
through transformation. It will begin at the bottom of the ladder of our
societies.
The story of L'Arche begins with a huge gap of injustice
and pain. It is the gap between the so-called ''normal'' world
and the people who have been pushed aside, put into institutions, excluded
from our societies because they are weak and vulnerable. This gap is place
of invitation in which we call people to respond.
Is There Any Room for Me? 213
People can justify a vision of society which
is like a pyramid. This vision, however, is so often
perverted, with those ''on top'' crushing those ''on the bottom''. Pyramidal
societies become places of harsh competition and struggle. Jesus came to
change this type of society into a body where each person has his or her
place.
Rocking the boat 212
Some people like to rock the boat, to do the unexpected,
unusual thing just to schock others and draw their
attention. People with disabilities, however, do not go against the norm to
schock others. It is just their way of being, flowing from their intuitive
sense of inner
freedom.
The broken and the oppressed have taught me a great deal
and have change me quite radically. They have helped me discover
that healing takes place at the bottom of the ladder, not at the
top.
What is the impossible? It is liberation. To liberate
people from the demons of fear, of loneliness, of hatred and of
egoism that schackle them. To liberate people so that they also can love,
heal, and liberate others.
When someone has lived most of his or her life at the
last place and then discovers that Jesus is there at the last place as
well, it is truly good news. However, when someone has always been looking
for the first place and learn that Jesus is in the last place, it is
confusing!
What about religions? 208
Some people see religion as the root cause of much wreckage and conflict. My own feeling is that it is not so. At
the heart of most, if not all, religions there is a call to become full of
the compassion and goodness of God.
To love someone does not mean first of all to do things
for that person, it means helping her to discover her own
beauty, uniqueness, the hidden light in her heart and the meaning of her
life.
Martin Luther King said that people cannot stop despising
others
- as well as other groups of people - unless they accept what is despicable in themselves. What is it we all despise in ourselves?
Isn't it our radical poverty, our utter helplessness in many situations, our
need of others, our mortality, and our capacity to hurt
others?
Going Against a Cultural Norm 203
Sometimes today people have difficulty
with the phrases "the poor" and "the weak". The words "poor" and
"weak" go against certain cultural norms that want everyone to be strong and
powerful. Weakness is frequently considered a defect. However, little
children are weak; they cannot fend for themselves. People with sever
intellectual disability are weak; they cannot cope all alone. This does not
mean that they have no value. We all have our limits and handicaps. We all
need each other. But some people recognize their poverty; others do
not.
Generosity must flow into an encounter, a meeting. But
this meeting
must go even further. It is more than just about telling one's story.
It must grow into a friendship and the friendship must in turn grow into a commitment because you are my brother or
my sister.
Jean Vanier, Religion &
Ethics Newsweekly, PBS, May 26, 2006
Loving someone does not simply mean doing things for them; it is much more profound. To love someone
is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance; it is to
understand them, understand their cries and their body language; it is to
rejoice in their presence, spend time in their company and communicate with
them. To love is to live a heart-to-heart relationship with another, giving
to and receiving from each other.
Hope and Love 131
I marvel sometimes when I visit families with a son or a daughter who has a severe handicap. The parents are living each
day, and sometimes the whole day, with little help or times of rest. They
are not admired or honoured for what they are doing; sometimes they are even
criticised for not having aborted their child or put him or her into an
institution, outside the general run of society. We in l'Arche have days
off; we get help and encouragement from professionals and clergy. We even
receive salaries. And often people see us as wonderful and generous people.
And yet, isn't it those families who are living love and truth and humility
and abandonment to God in a special way? Isn't it all those families in the
ghettos of large cities struggling to feed their children who are radiating
a truth bout our humanity? People who have chosen to live in community have
much to learn from all those people throughout the world who are living love
in a simple hidden way, and who are there welcoming and
forgiving.
Finding Happiness 130
The beauty of human beings lies in their capacity to accept who they are, just as they are; not
to live in a world of dreams or illusions, in anger or despair, wanting to
be other than they are, or trying to run away from reality. They realize
that they have the right to be themselves. And there, they discover that
they are loved by God, that they are unique and important for God and that
they can do things for others. We may not all be called to do great things
that make the headlines, but we are all called to love and be loved,
wherever we may be. We are called to be open and to grow in love and thus to
communicate life to others, especially to those in
need.
A New Vision 129
Let's rethink a new vision for our world, based on every human person as important. And that means we
will have to change. We move from a world of competition where I have to
appear the powerful one, which means crushing others, to becoming the
cooperative one, the understanding one, the listening one, so that we can
build something together.
Jean
Vanier Belonging: The Search for
Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
Spirituality 128
We have to find a spirituality which is not running away form suffering
but entering into suffering and discovering a presence of God,
and a presence of people, in pain
Jean Vanier Belonging: The
Search for Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
Awakening the Beautiful 127
Power and strength can separate people; whereas weakness and recognition of weakness
and the cry for help brings people together. When you are weak, you need
people. It's very easy. When you are strong you don't need people, you can
do everything on your own. So, somewhere the weak person calls people
together. And when the weak call forth the strong, what happens is they
awaken what is most beautiful in a human person--compassion,
goodness, openness to another and so on. Our weakness brings people together.
Jean Vanier
Belonging: The Search for Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
Maturity 126
What is a mature man or woman? What does it mean to be fully
human?
We are focused much more in terms of success and diplomas, and so we have to re-find the language of human
maturity. What does it mean to be fully human?
Jean
Vanier Belonging: The Search for
Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
What Do We Want? 125
The important thing is to keep the eyes on what we want to grow into. Do we want to grow toward
greater community, greater openness, greater compassion, greater listening?
Or do we want to just be a tree that's more powerful so that I'm the biggest
tree and all the other little trees are stupid? It's all about this question
of growth.
Jean Vanier Belonging:
The Search for Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
Culture as a place of Belonging 124
There is something very profound about culture as a place of belonging, a place of
security, a place of celebration, a place where we can be poor and weak and
strong together because the group protects the weaker ones, protects the
more fragile ones.
Jean Vanier
Belonging: The Search for Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
Entering a New Age 123
We are entering in a totally new age where either we're going to move into universalism and a
quest for greater love--love that needs to discover one's culture, to
discover one's language, to be proud of culture, to love one's culture but
to be open to other people's culture, and this has to do with welcoming
difference.
Jean Vanier Belonging:
The Search for Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
Cultures 122
Is culture a dangerous thing? There is a whole global movement of destroying culture. Because the big
problem today is, for some people, Christianity and Islam. Or it's Buddhism
and something else. So we have to breakdown culture for a new humanity to
rise up. The theory sounds great. But it is not as easy as that. If I don't
belong, well who am I?
Jean Vanier
Belonging: The Search for Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
The History of Humanity 121
The history of humanity is one group breaking off from another group creating their
rituals, creating their language and so on--and then wars. Very quickly, my
culture's better than your culture, my way of doing things is better than
your way of doing things. Now, let's rethink a new vision for our world
based on every human being as important--and that means we have to
change.
Jean Vanier Belonging: The
Search for Acceptance Windborne Production
Video
ジャン・バニエ Windborne
Production Video製作のDVD 「Belonging: The Search for Acceptance」より
Linked through our Wounds 120
I see my wounds in the wounded person with a handicap. That is also my fragility. Often we
are in a covenant because of our wounds. We are linked through them and
there is a real fraternity between us because we are no longer on a
pedestal.
ジャン・バニエ
An Insight from Jung 119
Carl Jung in one of his letters says this: I find you Christians a very good people. When you
see somebody in prison, you see Jesus. When you see somebody hungry, you
give him food and see Jesus. When you see someone naked, you see Jesus. But
what I don't understand is why you don't see Jesus in your own poverty. Why
is it that you see him in the poor that are outside of you but you don't in
the poor one that is inside of you?
Disabled persons can reveal to me my tenderness. But
they can also reveal to me my hardness.
They can reveal to me a world of darkness in me and a capacity to hurt that
I don't want to admit and which I don't want to accept. But the discovery of
my wounds, of my own brokenness, is a source of peace if I accept it,
because then I do not have to pretend that I am what I am not. I do not need
a mask.
One of the first principles of society is to protect us from pain.
Our own pain and the pain of others. Our society, each one of us, we are terribly frighten of pain. So
we must do everything to hide from pain and cover it
up
Wholeness and the Inner War 116
I cannot think of taking the speck of dust out of my neighbor's eye unless I'm
working on the log in my own. Evil is here in me. Warfare is inside my own
community, and I am called to be an agent of peace there. But warfare is
also in me and I am called to seek wholeness inside of myself. Healing
begins here, in myself. Wholeness and unity begin inside of myself. If I am
growing toward wholeness, then I'll be an agent of wholeness. If our
community is an agent of wholeness, then it will be a source of life for the
world around it.
An Important Insight 115
There is a danger, in issue-oriented groups not based on
community, that the enemy is seen as being the one outside of the group.
The world gets divided between the "good" and "the bad".
In issue-oriented groups, the enemy is always outside.
We must struggle against all those who are outside of our group. All those
who are of the other party.
True community is different
because of the realization that the evil is inside - not just inside the
community, but inside me.
We must learn to celebrate. I say learn to celebrate,
because celebration is not just a spontaneous
event. We have to discover what celebration is. Our world doesn't know much
about celebration. We know quite a bit about parties, where we are
artificially stimulated with alcohol to have fun. We know what movies and
distractions are. But do we know what celebration is? Do we know how to
celebrate our togetherness, our being one body? Do we really know how to use
all that is human and divine to celebrate together?
Collaboration certainly should find its basis in communion
but frequently it
does not. We can work together without really caring for each other or being
bonded together in love and communion. . . We work together for a common
goal. Communion however, is bonding, caring and sharing which flows and
finds its fulfillment in celebration.
Avoiding Becoming Paralyzed 112
If children can become paralyzed by fear, and teenagers by a lack of hope and self
confidence, adults are sometimes paralyzed, more or less consciously, by
guilt which leads them to shut themselves off from others and prevents them
from giving life and being responsible.
Yearning for Solidarity 111
I am sensing a yearning for solidarity, a cry coming from
people for togetherness and for
love. For too long we've been walking on the road to independence. We're
beginning to feel our loneliness. We're beginning to see that we can only
live if we're together. We have had enough of loneliness, independence and
competition.
ジャン・バニエ From
Brokenness to Community
Being the Best 110
I remember visiting a school in Canada where there was a big poster:
"It Is a Crime Not To Excel." There was another poster of one
car overtaking another which said: "Are You in the Passing Lane?"
Right from an early age we cultivate this feeling that it is a crime not
to be the best.
Belonging should always be a means to personal
becoming. It is accepting the risk of dying to aggressiveness and rivalry in
order to discover a new freedom and a new fecundity - a new way of giving
life to others, but still to belong to others, to be in "one body" with
them.
To accept the risk of personal consciousness
and growth to inner freedom can be painful; it is never easy
to follow the light inside of oneself when others do not seem to
agree.
ジャン・バニエ From Brokenness to Community
The Myth of Community 107
There is a myth about community, just
as there is a myth about marriage. The myth of marriage is "they lived
happily ever after." The reality of marriage is that it is a place where a
man and woman are called to sacrifice their egos on the altar of their
desire to create one body. Community also means death to ego, in order that
people might grow to become one body, truly belonging to each other, not in
a closed way but in a mysterious way where each one is growing in inner
freedom. - Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community,
p.32
I pray for you in this passage into
the New Year. May God bless us all and give us his strength and love so that
we may be instruments of peace and hope for our divided world. May God keep
us faithful to our mission. Pray for me.
ジャン・バニエ Our
Life Together
Approaching Another Year 1228
As I grow older I am discovering more the
gift of my own poverty and weakness. When we are strong we can often do
it alone. When we feel weaker, when we live loss and anguish, we are more
aware of our need for God, for others, for community. I realize more and
more that the only thing that is really important is the new commandment,
"Love one another as I have loved you." May each one of us, and each one of
our communities, grow in this love.
It is good and important to rejoice and
give thanks and to mark the feast with good meals and gifts. But
how to keep our hearts open? What can we do so that Christmas can be truly a
celebration of love and sharing, so that those who are more fragile and
alone are honoured and have a place?
Celebration is nourishment and resource. It makes present
the goals of the community in symbolic form, and
so brings hope and new strength to take up again everyday life with more
love.
Celebration expresses the true
meaning of community in a concrete and tangible way. So it is an essential
element in community life. Celebration sweeps away the irritations of daily
life; we forget our little quarrels. The aspect of ecstacy in a celebration
unites our hearts; a current of life goes through us
Forgiveness and celebration are at
the heart of community. These are the two faces of love. Celebration is a
communal experience of joy, a song of thanksgiving. We celebrate the fact of
being together; we give thanks for the gifts we have been given. Celebration
nourishes us, restores hope, and brings us the strength to live with the
suffering and difficulties of everyday life.
There are quite a number of pseudo-communities
where there is a strong sense of belonging, but a death of personal
becoming. A community which is called to keep people open is a vulnerable
community that takes risks. It does not hang onto its own security and power
obliging people to stay.
A source of conflict can arise
between caring for people and caring only for oneself. To really care for
the growth and freedom of other people means to sacrifice our own freedom.
It means to discover that our greatest freedom is to help others walk to
freedom.
ジャン・バニエ From
Brokenness to Community, p.31
The Problem with Aggressive Competition 1220
Another source of
conflict is in learning to give space to others so that they may grow,
rather than competing with them and lording over them. Our world is a world
of competition. We have all been taught to live in a competitive world and
to win, to be a success, and to move up the ladder of promotion and to get
ahead. It is hard then in community to stand back in order to help others
grow and exercise their gifts. There is then in community a loss of
aggressive competition cultivated in our societies.
Community is a place of conflict: conflict
inside each one of us. There is first of all the conflict between the values of the
world and the values of community, between togetherness and independence. It
is painful to lose one's independence, and to come into togetherness - not
just proximity - to make decisions together and not all alone. Loss of
independence is painful, particularly in a world where we have been told to
be independent and to cultivate the feeling that "I don't need anyone
else."
Another thing that people with disabilities
have revealed to me is their incredible capacity for creating community and
bringing people together. Experience has shown that one person, all alone,
can never heal another. A one-to-one situation is not a good situation. It
is important to bring broken people into a community of love, a place where
they feel accepted and recognized in their gifts and have a sense of
belonging. That is what wounded people need and want most.
ジャン・バニエ From
Brokenness to Community, p.28
What We Don't Know 1217
Many people know they have a head because
they have learned that two and two are four. They know that they have hands
because they can cook eggs and do other things. Many know they have a
sexuality because they have experienced strong emotions. But what they do
not always know is that they have a well deep inside of them. If that well
is tapped, springs of life and of tenderness flow forth. It has to be
revealed to each person that these waters are there and that they can rise
up from each one of us and flow over people, giving them life and a new
hope.
The broken and the oppressed have taught
me a great deal and have changed me quite radically. They have helped
me discover that healing takes place at the bottom of the ladder, not at the
top.
ジャン・バニエ From
Brokenness to Community, p.23
Simple Prayer 1215
Many people in L'Arche are close to God, and
yet they are so little and poor. They have known rejection and have suffered
a great deal. I am always moved as I hear them speak of God. When somebody
asked one of our men, Peter, if he liked to pray, he said that he did. So
the person continued and asked him what he did when he prayed. He replied:
"I listen." Then the person asked what God says to him. Peter, a man with
Down`s Syndrome, looked up and said: "He just says, 'You are my beloved
son.'
I think we can only truly experience the
presence of God in and through our own poverty, because the kingdom of God
belongs to the poor, the poor in spirit, the poor who are crying out for
love.
ジャン・バニエ From
Brokenness to Community, p.20
Whose Poverty? 1213
People may come to our communities because
they want to serve the poor; they will only stay once they have discovered
that they themselves are the poor.
I discovered something which I had never
confronted before, that there were immense forces of darkness and
hatred within my own heart. At particular moment of fatigue or stress, I saw
forces of hate rising up inside me, and the capacity to hurt someone who was
weak and was provoking me! That, I think, was what caused me the most pain:
to discover who I really am, and to realize that maybe I did not want to
know who I really was! I did not want to admit all the garbage inside me.
And then I had to decide whether I would just continue to pretend that I was
okay and throw myself into hyperactivity, projects where I could forget all
the garbage and prove to others how good I was.
Elitism is the sickness of us all. We all
want to be on the winning team. That is at the heart of apartheid and every
form of racism. The important thing is to become conscious of those forces
in us and to work at being liberated from them and to discover that the
worst enemy is inside our own hearts not outside!
As I began living with people like Raphael and Philip, I began to
see all the hardness of my heart. It is
painful to discover the hardness in one's heart. Raphael and the others were
crying out simply for friendship and I did not quite know how to respond
because of the other forces within me, pulling me to go up the ladder. But
over the years, the people I live with in L'Arche have been teaching and
helping me.
They have been teaching me that behind the need for me
to win, there are my own fears and anguish, the fear of being devalued or
pushed aside, the fear of opening up my heart and of being vulnerable or of
feeling helpless in front of others in pain; there is the pain and
brokenness of my own heart.
When I was in the navy, I was taught
to give orders to others. That came quite naturally to me! All my life I had
been taught to climb the ladder, to seek promotion, to compete, to be the
best, to win prizes. This is what society teaches us. In doing so, we lose
community and communion.
Some of the men and women I have been living
with for a number of years now are still in quite deep anguish.
They are more peaceful than they were, but there are still moments when
anguish surges up in them. The essential at such moments is to walk with
them, accepting them just as they are, to allow them to be themselves. It is
important for them to know that they can be themselves, that even though
there are wounds, and pain in them, they are loved. It is a liberating
experience for them to realize they do not have to conform to any
preconceived idea about how they should be.
We all know well that we can do things for
others and in the process crush them, making them feel
that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to
reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in
them.
Communion means accepting people just as
they are, with all their limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their
beauty and their capacity to grow: to see the beauty inside of all the pain.
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."
How to be a Friend to Someone in Pain 1205
Those of you who have had the privilege of accompanying people in
distress and inner pain know that it is not easy to walk with them, without
having any answers to their problems or solution to their pain. For many
people in pain there is no solution; for a mother who has just lost her
child or for a woman who has just been abandoned by her husband, there is no
answer, there is just pain.
What they need is a friend willing to walk with them in all that pain.
They do not need someone to tell them to try to forget the pain, because
they won't. It is too deep. When a child has experienced rejection, you can
say all sorts of nice things to the child, but that will not take away the
pain. It will take a long time for that pain to diminish and it will
probably never completely disappear.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.16
苦しんでいる人への寄り添い方
災難や内なる痛みに苦しんでいる人に寄り添う恵みをいただいてる人は
その人たちの問題の答えを持っているわけでも痛みを解決する方法が分かるわけでもなく、
彼らと共に歩むのは易しいことではないと分かっています。苦しんでいる多くの人たちに
解決策はなく、子供を亡くしたばかりの母親にも、夫に捨てられたばかりの女性にも
答はなく、あるのは痛みだけです。
彼らが必要としているのは、その痛みの中を喜んで共に歩んでくれる友人です。
誰かにその痛みを忘れるよう努力しなさいと言われたいのではありません。
忘れられないからです。苦しみが大きすぎます。子供が自分の存在を拒絶されたとき、
その子にあらゆる優しい言葉をかけてあげられますが、その子の苦しみを
取り去ってあげることはできません。その痛みが消えるまでには長い時間がかかりますし
おそらく完全に消え去ることは決してないでしょう。
ジャン・バニエ
�From Brokenness to Community
Belonging Together 1204
Living with men and women with intellectual disabilities has helped me
to discover what it means to live in communion with someone. To be in
communion means to be with someone and to discover that we actually belong
together. Communion means accepting people just as they are, with all their
limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their beauty and their
capacity to grow: to see the beauty inside of all the pain.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.16
互いに繋がること
知的ハンディを持つ男女と共に生活することは、誰かとひとつになる交わりを生きることの
意味を私に気付かせてくれました。ひとつになる交わりを生きることは誰かと共にいること、
そしてお互いが繋がっていると気付くことです。一つになる交わりとは、限界や内なる痛みを
抱えているだけでなく賜物、美しさ、そして成長する力も持っている、ありのままの
その人を受け入れることです。すべての痛みの内側にある美しさを見ることなのです。
ジャン・バニエ
�From Brokenness to Community
Resurrection 1203
My experience has shown that when we welcome people from this world of
anguish, brokenness and depression, and when they gradually discover that
they are wanted and loved as they are and that they have a place, then we
witness a real transformation - I would even say resurrection.
Their tense, angry, fearful, depressed body gradually becomes relaxed,
peaceful and trusting. This shows through the expression on the face and
through all their flesh. As they discover a sense of belonging, that they
are part of a family, then the will to live begins to emerge. I do not
believe it is of any value to push people into doing things unless this
desire to live and to grow has begun to emerge.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.15
復活
私の経験から分かったことは、苦痛や壊れた関係、うつ状態にいた人たちを私たちが受け入れ、
自分たちはそのままの姿で必要とされ愛されており、自分たちの居場所があるのだと
彼らが少しづつ気付きはじめると、私たちは真の変容、復活と言えるほどの変化を
目の当たりにします。緊張し、怒り、おびえ、元気のなかった彼らの体は少しずつ
リラックスし、穏やかで信頼に満ちたものになります。それは彼らの表情と体全体を
通して表現されます。自分がそこに属している、家族の一員であるという感覚を
持つようになると、生きようとする意志が湧き起こってきます。私はこの生きて
成長しようとする意思が生じていない限り、人々に無理やり何かをさせようとするのは
価値があることだと思いません。
ジャン・バニエ
�From Brokenness to Community, p.15
Rejection is the Deepest Suffering 1202
For many years now I have had the privilege of living with men and
women with disabilities. I have discovered that even though a person may
have severe brain damage, that is not the source of his or her greatest
pain. The greatest pain is rejection, the feeling that nobody really wants
you like that. The feeling that you are seen as ugly, dirty, a burden, of no
value. That is the pain I have discovered in the hearts of our people.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.13
拒絶されることはもっとも深い苦悩
もう何年もの間、私はハンディを持つ男性や女性と共に生活する恵みをいただいてきました。
たとえ脳に重い障害を持っている人でも、彼らのもっとも深い苦悩はそれから来るものではないと
いうことに私は気付きました。もっとも深い苦悩は拒絶されること、ありのままの自分では
誰からも必要とされない、という感覚です。自分が醜く、汚く、重荷で、何の価値もないという感覚です。
それこそ、私たちの仲間の心の中にある痛みだと気付きました。
ジャン・バニエ
From Brokenness to Community
The Suffering of Not Having a Home 1201
Our L'Arche communities are also places of pain because they are
founded on people who have been through a great deal of anguish. Today, in
richer countries, hospitals and asylums may be cleaner, but the same men and
women are still there crying out for a home and for love. Big institutions
cannot be a home. Sometimes people have been put in residences, but
frequently these residences are not a home either, and they are not well
accepted by neighbors.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.13
家庭を持てないことの苦しみ
私たちのラルシュコミュニティは痛みの場所でもあります。なぜなら、
これらのコミュニティはとても大きな苦悩を経験してきた人たちでできているからです。
現在、より豊かな国々では、病院や施設は以前より清潔になっているかもしれませんが、
そこにいる変わらない人たちは家庭や愛を求めてまだ泣き叫んでいるのです。
大きな施設は家庭にはなりません。住宅に入れられる人たちもいますが、
たいていの場合これらの住宅も家庭ではありませんし、隣人から快く受け入れられている
わけでもありません。
ジャン・バニエ
�From Brokenness to Community
Idealization 1130
When we talk of the poor, or of announcing the good news to the poor,
we should never idealize the poor. Poor people are hurt; they are in pain.
They can be very angry, in revolt or in depression.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.12
理想化
貧しい人について話す時、または貧しい人に福音を知らせる時、
貧しい人を理想化するべきではありません。貧しい人は傷つき、苦痛の中にいます。
彼らはとても怒っていたり反感を抱いていたり、あるいはうつ状態のときもあります。
ジャン・バニエ
From Brokenness to Community
The Beginning of L'Arche and the First Learning 1129
In 1964 I took from an asylum two men, Raphael and Philip, and we
began to live together. I did not know I was founding the first of many L'Arche
communities. I simply felt called to live with these two men who had
suffered rejection and a lot of inner pain, and perhaps with a few others
like them. When I had begun living with them, I soon discovered the immense
pain in their hearts.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.11
ラルシュのはじまりと最初の学び
1964年に、私は施設にいた2人の男性、ラファエルとフィリップを連れて
一緒に生活しはじめました。たくさんあるラルシュコミュニティの最初の１つを
私が築くことになろうとは思いもしませんでした。私はただ、人から拒まれ
たくさんの心の痛みに苦しんできたこの二人、そしておそらく彼らと似たような
境遇にある何人かと共に生きるよう呼ばれている、と感じただけでした。
彼らと共に生活しはじめて間もなく、彼らの心には計り知れないほどの痛みが
あることに気付きました。
ジャン・バニエ
From Brokenness to Community
The Gift of Life 1128
Just yesterday I was with my community in Trosly: a beautiful
community made up of many very simple people, all of them quite limited in
their capacities. Most of them can neither read nor write; they move slowly
or clumsily. Some cannot even speak or walk or eat on their own.
And I come here to tell you how much life these people have given me,
that they have an incredible gift to bring to our world, that they are a
source of hope, peace and perhaps salvation for our wounded world.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community, p.9
命の贈り物
ちょうど昨日、私はトローリーのコミュニティにいました。大勢の、そのほとんど
が能力にかなり制限のある、とても素朴な人たちが集まる美しいコミュニティです。
彼らのほとんどは読み書きができず、とてもゆったりとぎこちなく動きます。
話すことや歩くことも、自分で食べることすらできない人もいます。
私は、彼らがどれほど大きな命を私に与えてくれたかを伝えるため、そして
彼らが私たちの世界にもたらしてくれる素晴らしい贈り物を持っていること、
彼らは希望と平和の源であり、おそらく私たちの傷ついた世界にもたらされる
救いであることをみなさんに伝えたいために、私はここに来たのです。
ジャン・バニエ
�From Brokenness to Community
Dealing with our Negative Feelings 1127
One of the serious needs in our world today is to learn to walk with
our aggression. So often instead of dealing with our negative feelings
directly we direct them towards others who are innocent.
-Jean Vanier, Essential Writings, (p. 63 quoted from The Challenge of
L'Arche)
否定的（マイナス・負）な感情と向き合う
いまの世界で切実に必要なことの一つは、自分の攻撃性とのつきあい方を学ぶことです。
私たちはしばしば、自分の負の感情と直接向き合うかわりに、その感情を無関係の他人に
向けてしまいがちです。
ジャン・バニエ
Essential Writings
（The Challenfe of L'Arche（ラルシュの挑戦）のp63から引用）
Entering the Mystery of Pain 1126
It is important to enter into the mystery of pain,
The pain of our brothers and sisters in countries that are at war,
The pain of our brothers and sisters who are sick, who are hungry, who
are in prison;
Brothers and sisters who do not know where they will sleep this night;
It is important to enter into the pain of all those for whom no one
cares and who are alone; all those who are living grief and loss.
- Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger, p.87
痛みの神秘に身を投じる
戦争をしている国々にいる兄弟姉妹の痛みや、病気、飢え、獄中にある兄弟姉妹の痛み。
痛みの神秘に身を投じるのは大切なことです。
今夜寝る場所もない兄弟姉妹、誰からも気に掛けられず孤独な人々、
哀しみと喪失を生きるすべての人々の痛みに身を投じるのは大切なことです。
ジャン・バニエ
Befriending the Stranger
（見知らぬ人と友となる）
The Greatest of Risks 1125
Because I fear your grasping hand calling
me to the unknown of love, because I fear my emptiness, my poverty,
my call to death, I fear myself, I
close my heart(h), I shut myself from you, my despairaing brother. Your
presence is a call. Do I turn away or do I
dare? Love is the greatest of all risks. Do I dare leap into the cool,
swirling, living waters of loving fidelity?
Our lives are fleeting moments in which
are found the seeds of eternal peace, unity and love as well as the
seeds of war, dissension and indifference. When will we rise and awaken to
the choice before each of us, to water and to give light to one or the other
of these two seeds?
In the paths of our existence, there are at times obstacles, rocks barring the road. If these obstacles
appear too great or if we, through fatigue or other reasons, are deflated,
then we sit and weep, unable to advance, unable to return. Some failure has
damaged our **elan. An unfaithful friend, failures in exams, in work, we no
longer feel that blossoming dynamism. We carry our bodies like lumps of
lead. We slumber into a world of disillusionment, apathetic, listless. But
then comes change: winter changes to spring, we meet a friend, we rest,
forces awaken in our bodies, life seems to surge once more, as the morning
sun, calm, unswerving, certain, never faltering.
He who clutches desperately to security, to every day habits, work, organization, friends, family, no
longer lives. More than security, life needs adventure, risk, dynamic
activity, self-giving, presence to others.
Love as Essential to a Child's Growth 1121
A tiny child needs not only food and shelter
but something more -- much more -- a feeling of love,
that someone cares for him, ready to die for him, that he is really loved,
that he is important, precious. And, so he begins to live and begins to
sense the value of his being. And, so it is that life rises in him and he
grows in confidence in himself and in his possibilities of life and of
creation.
It takes time to grow to a maturity of the heart. Little by little, as
we live and work with others, especially if we
are well-guided, we learn to break out of the shell of selfishness and
self-centredness where we seek to be brilliant and to prove our goodness,
wisdom and power. We receive and give the knocks of life. We all have to
discover that there are others like us who have gifts and needs; no one of
us is the centre of the world. We are a small but important part in our
universe. We all have a part to play. We need one another.
ジャン・バニエ Becoming
Human
Belonging Leads Us to Important Learning 1030
It is because we belong with others and see them as brothers and sisters in humanity that we learn not
only to accept them as they are, with different gifts and capacities, but to
see each one as a person with a vulnerable heart. We learn to forgive those
who hurt us or reject us; we ask forgiveness of those we have hurt. We learn
to accept humbly those who point out our errors and mistakes and who
challenge us to grow in truth and love. We support and encourage each other
on the journey to inner freedom. We learn how to be close to those who are
weaker and more vulnerable, those who may be sick or going through crises or
are grieving. As we accept our personal limits and weaknesses, we discover
that we need others and we learn to appreciate others and to thank
them.
ジャン・バニエ Becoming
Human
The Remarkable Power that We Each Have 1028
The belief in the inner beauty of each and every human being is at the
heart of L'Arche, at the heart of all
true education and at the heart of being human. As soon as we start
selecting and judging people instead of welcoming them as they are - with
their sometimes hidden beauty, as well as their more frequently visible
weaknesses - we are reducing life, not fostering it. When we reveal to
people our belief in them, their hidden beauty rises to the surface where it
may be more clearly seen by all.
ジャン・バニエ Becoming
Human
Belonging in a New Way 1027
We all belong to the universe; we all receive from it and give to it; we are all parts of a whole. The danger for people
today is to forget that and to think that they are the centre; that everyone
else is there for them. People must die to this form of destructive egoism
and be reborn in love, where they learn to receive from others and to give
to them.
ジャン・バニエ Community
and Growth
*My vision is that belonging should be at the heart of a fundamental
discovery: that we all belong to a common humanity, the human race. We
may be rooted in a specific family and culture but we come to this earth
to open up to others, to serve them and receive the gifts they bring to
us, as well as to all of humanity.
ジャン・バニエ Becoming
Human
A Growing Sense of Belonging 1025
The longer we journey on the road to inner healing and wholeness, the
more the sense of belonging grows and deepens.
The sense is not just one of belonging to others and to a community. It is a
sense of belonging to the universe, to the earth, to the air, to the water,
to everything that lives, to all humanity. If the community gives a sense of
belonging, it also helps us to accept our aloneness in a personal meeting
with God. Through this, the community is open to the universe and to
humankind.
ジャン・バニエ Community
and Growth
The Profound Beauty of Genuine Communion 1023
Communion is mutual trust, mutual belonging;
it is the to-and-fro movement of love between two
people where each one gives and each one receives. Communion is not a fixed
state, it is an ever-growing and deepening reality that can turn sour if one
person tries to possess the other, thus preventing growth. Community is
mutual vulnerability and openness one to the other. It is liberation for
both, indeed, where both are allowed to be themselves, where both are called
to grow in greater freedom and openness to others and to the
universe.
Community As Caring - Further Thoughts 1022
[Another] thing people with disabilities
have revealed to me is their incredible capacity for
creating community and bringing people together. Experience has shown that
one person, all alone, can never heal another. A one-to-one situation is not
a good situation. It is important to bring broken people into a community of
love, a place where they feel accepted and recognized in their gifts, and
have a sense of belonging. That is what wounded people need and want
most.
- Jean Vanier, From Brokeness to Community, pp
28-29
We can give people the gift of their dignity.
We can help others just by the way we listen to them and speak with them. We
can show them by our own trust that what they have to say is important and
good. Community is caring for people, but of course as soon as we start
caring for people, we know that there are some people who will just drive us
up the wall. Some we will really like, because they think like us. Then we
risk falling into a world of mutual flattery. We are all so much in need of
affection that when somebody gives it to us we want to hold onto
it.
But flattery doesn't help anyone to grow. It doesn't bring
freedom but rather closes people up in themselves. We are attracted to
certain people, and others put us off. We don't get on well with them. They
trigger off our anguish....Some people threaten us, others flatter us. Some
meetings are joyful, and others are painful. When we begin talking about
caring for people, then we begin to see how difficult it can be. In
community we are called to care for each member of the community. We can
choose our friends but we do not choose our brothers and sisters; they are
given to us whether in family or in community.
- Jean
Vanier, From Brokeness to Community, pp
37-38
What meaning can
be found in life in the modern world? So many people today are searching, so
many seem lost and no longer have any kind of ethical reference points; so
many are dissatisfied with a purely materialistic life, with ephemeral
pleasures or with a quest for power and success.
Through my
experiences both before and in L'Arche I have discovered the importance of
two essential elements in human life that can give it meaning both for
people of goodwill who have no religion, and for people who are searching
for God, whatever their religion: being, and being open, having a clear
identity and being open to others. We establish an identity through the
place where we live, our family, culture, education and physical and
psychological state. But we establish it too through our choice of
profession, our gifts and abilities, our values and fundamental motivations
in life, through friends, through the commitments we make and through
searching for truth in ourselves and in life. Being open to others,
especially to those who are different from ourselves, is to see them not as
rivals and enemies but as brothers and sisters in humanity, capable of
bringing light and truth into our lives, and of living in communion with
us.
Openness does not imply weakness, nor a tolerance which ignores
truth and justice. Being open does not mean adhering to others' ideologies.
It means being truly sympathetic and welcoming to people, listening to them,
and in particular to people who are weak or poor or oppressed, so as to live
in communion with them.
What sort of society do we want? There are, for me, a few principles. A society that encourages us to break open
the shell of selfishness and self-centredness contains the seeds of a
society where people are honest, truthful, and loving. A society can
function well only if those within are concerned, not only with their own
needs or the needs of those who immediately surround them, but by the needs
of all, that is to say, by the common good and the family of nations. Each
one of us, I believe, is on a journey towards this openness where we risk to
love.
Growth toward openness means dialogue, trusting in others,
listening to them, particularly to those who say things we don't like to
hear, speaking together about our mutual needs and how we might grow to new
things. The birth of a good society comes when people start to trust each
other, to share with each other, and to feel concerned for each
other.
So many in our world today are suffering
from isolation, war and oppression. So much money is spent on the
construction of armaments.... Today as never before, we need communities of
welcome; communities that are a sign of peace in a world of war. There is no
point in praying for peace in the Middle East, for example, if we are not
peace-makers in our own community; if we are not forgiving those in our
community who have hurt us or with whom we find it difficult to live. Young
people, as well as those who are older, are sensitive to this vision of
peace. It must continually be announced so that hearts and minds are
nourished.
[Prophets of peace] have lived and proclaimed a path of
non-violence. They have been able to do this because they received support
and lived with a community of men and women of like minds and hearts. "When
I despair," said Mahatma Gandhi, "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."
To look forward, to want life, means
we have to be willing to look backwards and become more conscious of all
those who have hurt us, all that is broken in us and that has brought us
inner deaths, hurts that we may have hidden and stifled. It means that we
acknowledge the story of our origins, of our own lives, see and accept our
brokenness and the times we also have hurt others. When we have accepted who
we are and what we need in order to grow in compassion and peacemaking, we
can move forward to give life. To forgive is a gift of God that permits us
to let go of our past hurts.
Each one of us with our bodies, our hearts, our minds, is beautiful. Each one of us has our own cycle of growth which
brings with it ups and downs, summer and winters, good times and bad times;
setbacks and times of drought are part of life. They are phases we have to
go through, and a new start is always possible.
Throughout all these questions and difficulties
(and they were many!), I began to see more clearly the role
of people with intellectual disabilities, and thus the specific vocation of
L'Arche. Visitors were struck, as I myself had been, by these men who,
although they were so poor and rejected, were such bearers of life and love.
They are so different from intellectuals or people who have power, who often
live behind masks or think they are superior and hide their hearts. People
with intellectual disabilities are so spontaneous and true! Their thirst for
friendship, love and communion leaves no one indifferent: either you harden
your heart to their cry and reject them, or you open your heart and enter
into a relationship built on trust, simple, tender gestures and few
words.
Hidden in those who are powerless is a mysterious power:
they attract and awaken the heart.
Embracing Reality 1011
As people grow older and as their strength diminishes they often
become more accepting of their lives and of reality. However, old age can
make some people bitter and desperate; they become angry with life, with
themselves, with their weakness and with the awareness of the nearness of
death and the end of their lives.
It takes time to learn to embrace reality, to enter into a 'bonding'
with reality; a bonding with our own weakness and poverty.
- Jean Vanier, Befriending the Stranger, p.114
現実を受け入れる
人は年を重ねて体力が衰えてくるにつれて、自分の命や現実のことをより受け入れやすく
なるものです。しかし、老いることに苦しみ絶望する人もいます。今の生活や自分自身、自分の
弱さ、そして死と人生の終わりに近づいていることがはっきりしてくることに腹を立てるようになります。
現実を受け入れ、現実とつながり始めることを学ぶには時間がかかります。
自分自身の弱さと貧しさとつながるのです。
ジャン・バニエ Befriending the Stranger
The Capacity of Every Person to Grow 1010
Each person is important, each is capable
of changing, evolving, becoming a little more
open, responding to love and to communion. I would like to pass on to others
this faith in human beings and in their capacity for growth. Without it, our
societies are in danger of becoming purely paternalistic in their attitude
to those who are weaker, doing things for them rather than helping them to
stand on their own feet so that they can do things for themselves and then
open themselves to others. Our societies are in danger of rejecting those
who disturb them too much, and sometimes even wanting to get rid of
them.
Our lives are fleeting
moments in which are found the seeds of eternal peace, unity and love as
well as the seeds of war, dissension and indifference. When will we rise and
awaken to the choice before each of us, to water and to give light to one or
the other of these two seeds?
It takes time to grow to a maturity of the
heart. ... Little by little, as we live and work with others, especially if
we are well-guided, we learn to break out of the shell of selfishness and
self-centredness where we seek to be brilliant and to prove our goodness,
wisdom and power. We receive and give the knocks of life. We all have to
discover that there are others like us who have gifts and needs; no one of
us is the centre of the world. We are a small but important part in our
universe. We all have a part to play. We need one another.
He who clutches desperately to security, to
every day habits, work, organization, friends, family, no longer lives. More
than security, life needs adventure, risk, dynamic activity, self-giving,
presence to others.
The belief in the inner beauty of each and
every human being is at the
heart of L'Arche, at the heart of all true
education and at the heart of
being human. As soon as we start selecting and
judging people instead of
welcoming them as they are - with their sometimes
hidden beauty, as well as
their more frequently visible weaknesses - we are
reducing life, not
fostering it. When we reveal to people our belief in
them, their hidden
beauty rises to the surface where it may be more clearly
seen by all.
Belonging to Something Greater 1005
We all belong to the universe; we all receive from it and give to it;
we are all parts of a whole. The danger for people today is to forget that
and to think that they are the centre; that everyone else is there for them.
People must die to this form of destructive egoism and be reborn in love,
where they learn to receive from others and to give to them.
- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 17
より大きなものに属すること
私たちはみな、宇宙に属しています。みな、宇宙から受け取り、宇宙に与えています。
私たちはみな、全体の一部なのです。現代の人々にとっての危険は、このことを忘れて
自分が中心だと思うことです。自分のために他のすべての人々が存在していると考える事です。
人々はこのように破壊的な利己主義に死に、愛に再び生きるべきです。
そこで、人は他者から受け取り、他者に与えることを学ぶのです。
ジャン・バニエ
Community and Growth
Loss
When an activity or a person fills our lives, inspires us or gives us
a zest for life, their absence can plunge us into this feeling of total
emptiness. We live a kind of inner death. Life no longer flows forth in us.
We are filled with a sense of loss and of grief; a heaviness, which
resembles depression, permeates our whole being. This pain and this
heaviness are not a sickness but a normal, natural reaction to a loss that
touches the very meaning of our lives.
- Jean Vanier, Seeing Beyond Depression, p 9
喪失
私たちの人生を満たし、元気づけ、生きることへの熱意を与えてくれる活動や人物がいる場合、 それらを失った時に完全な虚無状態に陥ることがあります。すると、内なる死のようなものを 抱えて生きることになり、生活が順調に流れていかなくなります。 私たちは喪失感と哀しみに満ち、うつ状態のような重苦しさが自分の全存在のすみずみにまで 広がります。この痛みと重苦しさは病気ではなく、私たちの命の真の意義に触れる喪失に対する 正常で当然な反応なのです。
ジャン・バニエ 鬱を超えて
」
Balancing Hope and Pain in Celebration
Because we've been called together, we are a people of celebration, but
in our celebrations there is always a note of sadness because not all
the people in our world are celebrating. Not everyone is rejoicing. Many
today are being crucified in prisons and hospitals, or just downtown in
the slum areas. Many people are lonely and in pain. Along with the
celebration that rises from a community of thanksgiving, there is a note
of pain but also a note of hope. We have been drawn together by God to
be a sign of the resurrection and a sign of unity in this world where
there is so much division and inner and outer death.
- Jean Vanier, /From Brokeness to Community/, p 52/
祝いのうちに希望と痛みのバランスを取る
私たちは共にいるよう呼びかけられています。ですから、共にお祝いするのです。
しかし、お祝いの中にはいつも哀しみの気配があります。なぜなら現代の世の中ですべての人が
お祝いをしているわけではないからです。みんなが喜んでいるわけではないのです。
たくさんの人々が刑務所や病院、そして近くの繁華街のスラム地区で虐待されています。
たくさんの人々が孤独で、哀しみの中にいます。感謝の気持ちに集うコミュニティで
起きているお祝いとともに、哀しみの気配がありますが、同時に希望の気配もあります。
あまりに多くの分裂や心の死、肉体の死が起きているこの世界において
私たちが復活のしるし、そして一つになることのしるしとなるよう、神によってともに引き寄せられているのです。
- Jean Vanier, /From Brokeness to Community/, p 52/
Celebration--What Community is All About
Sometimes when I go to visit people, they keep the television on during
the meal. They may turn down the sound, but all through the meal there
is the intrusion of the television images. It makes it difficult to meet
and to share together. There is little sense of being called together by
God to love and nourish each other. We need to rediscover celebration.
That is what community is all about. ... Celebration is to share what
and who we really are; it is to express our love for one another, our
hopes, and to rejoice in being called together as parts of the same body.
- Jean Vanier, /From Brokeness to Community/, p 46/
お祝い。。。それはコミュニティのすべて
私が人を訪ねて行くと、彼らが食事中でもテレビをつけたままにしていることが時々あります。
音量は小さくするかもしれないけど、食事中はずっとテレビの画像が邪魔をします。
この状態は、人と出会い、共に分かち合うことを困難にします。お互いを愛し育むよう
神に共に呼ばれている、という感覚をあまり持つことができません。
私たちはお祝いするということを再びよく理解する必要があります。
それがコミュニティのすべてだからです。お祝いは私たちが本当の意味で何であるか、
誰であるかを分かち合うことです。お互いへの愛や自分たちの希望を表現することであり、
同じ体の多くの部分として共に呼びかけられることを喜ぶことなのです。
- Jean Vanier, /From Brokeness to Community/, p 46/
Celebration Requires Learning
We must learn to celebrate. I say learn to celebrate, because
celebration is not just a spontaneous event. We have to discover what
celebration is. Our world doesn't know much about celebration. We know
quite a bit about parties, where we are artificially stimulated with
alcohol to have fun. We know what movies and distractions are. But do we
know what celebration is? Do we know how to celebrate our togetherness,
our being one body? Do we really know how to use all that is human and
divine to celebrate together?
- Jean Vanier, /From Brokeness to Community/, p 45/
祝うことは学習が必要
私たちは、祝うことを学ぶ必要があります。学ぶ、と言いましたが、
それは、お祝いはただ単に自発的に生じる行為ではないからです。
私たちは、お祝いとは何かを理解する必要があります。
今の世の中は、祝う事の意味をよく分かっていません。
パーティのことなら良く知っています。楽しむためにアルコールを飲んで人工的な刺激を得るのです。
映画や娯楽がどんなものかも知っています。しかし、お祝いとは何なのかを
分かっているでしょうか？私たちが一つになること、一つの体であることを祝う方法を
分かっているでしょうか？私たちは本当の意味で、人間のものも神様のものもすべて使って
共に祝う方法を分かっているでしょうか。
- Jean Vanier, /From Brokeness to Community/, p 45/
