Customer Reviews

From Brokenness to Community (Harold M. Wit Lectures)

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Vanier is a rare, authentic individual. I don't know of a smaller book that is so large on wisdom. If you ask those that have been through a formation program for the gem of their experience, it often comes in the form of "embrace your shadow." From Brokenness to Community makes the same point.

Vulnerable, we become approachable. Community is possible.
Aware of our shadow, we become less judgmental. Community is possible.

The residents of Vanier's community have severe physical and mental handicaps which soon test the souls of "regular" community members who support them. Once anger, jealousy, rivalry and impatience is exposed, it can be acknowledged and dealt with. The "evil" is not so much in the community as it is in ME. Contact with the handicapped residents is healing, transformational. People become "real." Community results from the relationship established among authentic people.

"Elitism is the sickness of us all...Healing takes place at the bottom of the ladder, not at the top."

-Jack H. Bender, author of Disregarded: Transforming the School and Workplace through Deep Respect and Courage

After nearly 20 years, Vanier's words still ring true. His insights are at the heart of the gospel. One of his more powerful observations is that Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, not those who serve the poor. We all need to attend the "university of the poor" to learn of our own brokenness and so enter into community.

This book takes only couple of hours to read, but will take years of living to digest.

This book will blow your doors off if you let it.

The book is so simple - two lectures delivered just around 1990. Less than 50 pages (43 total) and in a small framework. Yet, it is arguable the best and most powerful $6 purchase one might ever make. Twenty years after these lectures it rings as true as ever because it gets at the core of Christlikeness - humility toward self, exaltation of the lowly, the poor, the rejected and marginalized (though Vanier's focus is on the mentally handicapped - a great work that he does - it applies to every person marginalized by a culture; even those within churches! But, especially the poor and rejected).

I am mindful of Luke 14, Mt. 25 & 1 Cor. 12 as I read this.

My advice: buy it; read it; meditate on it; ingest it; pray for insight and sacrifice and humility (above all) to find ways to reach the downtrodden in this world. Then, recommend it to your friends.

In this short read, Jean Vanier touches on some of the primary heart issues with which people struggle. He is talking directly from his experience with his wisdom from the experience of working with and loving disabled people. One theme is give your life to others and see how God has designed us to live in community. The thoughts I had while reading is how to diagnose my own heart and my motives. Once my own agenda is stripped away and my actions are solely for others, which is rare, then I can see my own heart and superficial humility - and then there is an opportunity for real growth. This should be on the bookshelf of anyone seeking to serve others. There are many nuggets of wisdom in his words regardless of the people in your life: children, parents, coworkers, neighbors, etc.

This deceptively brief yet measurelessly profound collection of talks given by the late, great Jean Vanier as part of the Harvard Divinity School's Wit Lecture series, after invitation by the great Catholic theologian Father Henri Nouwen, has been happily presented by the fine and faithful Catholic publishing house Paulist Press, from Mahwah, New Jersey, first printed fifteen years ago. Time now to read and pray with this book as we seek reconciliation and community with one another, in repentance and forgiveness, as Our Holy Father exhorts us, compelled by the mystery of the Eucharist, in his recent Sacramentum Caritatis: el Sacramento de la Caridad: una Exhortacion Apostolica Postsinodal

Father Henri Nouwen, renowned and prolific author of such spiritual classics as Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, Spiritual Journals: The Genesee Diary, Gracias!, the Road to Daybreak and Clowning in Rome Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and Contemplation, as well as so many others, gladly writes the inroduction to this book, putting clearly and concisely the spiritual and social significance of this work. Ronald F. Thieman, Professor at Harvard Divinity, then delivers an historical and theological presentation of the two lectures, which were given in Cambridge Massachusetts in November of 1988, the twenty fifth anniversary of the Kennedy killing.

Although now nearly twenty years have passed since the delivery of these lectures, we need them now more than ever, as our broken world breaks more and our hearts turn against our brothers and our sisters and our neighbors, as we forget the commandments of Our professed Lord Jesus Christ to Love our Enemies and to do good to those who harm us, to love one another as He has loved us.

This book, though brief draws us to fulfill the climactic and closing words of Our Holy Father's Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis mentioned above as, compelled by our participation in the Holy Eucharist, we are compelled in all humility to seek reconciliation and forgiveness with one another, and a more just and peaceful world.

The great Jean Vanier therefore illustrates this path from Brokenness to Community, which is the Kingdom of Heaven, in his usual direct and compassionate manner, full of examples from his worldwide communities of the broken, the disabled, the rejected and the hurt, finding made real one with the other God's Love for once and for all in their long, lonely lives. I wish an audiobook of these lectures were available, even though we have now lost forever in this world the great and prophetic voice of Jean Vanier, not only as mine own eyes grow dim, but for that Word to suffuse me and to inspire me and to carry me towards the humility of reconciliation and compassion, the seeking of forgiveness and of God's Love.

Please, you will not be disappointed by this brief book, now so affordable, a bargain at any price, for how may we measure the cost of GOd's Love? Come from our divided and individual brokenness into the joy and peace of God's Community with this book in hand, reading every step of the rugged way.

A good book to have.