Community and Growth
By: Jean Vanier

Paulist Press / 1991 / Paperback / 331 pages
Darton Longman and Todd / 2006 / Hardcover / 352 pages

Jean Vanier has authored some 30 books that reflect the many causes and concerns that have come together to shape his life.  Educated in England, France and Canada, Vanier entered the Royal Naval College, in Dartmouth, England in 1942. Three years later he went to sea with the British Navy, later transferring to the Canadian Navy as an officer on the H.M.C.S. Magnificent. In 1950 he went to France to study philosophy and theology and earned a PhD from the Catholic University of Paris.  His doctoral dissertation explored Aristotle’s understanding of what constitutes true happiness.

While in France, Vanier, founded L’Arche in 1964.  “L’Arche” has become a global network of compassion, offering homes, personal care and support to people with developmental disabilities: www.larche.org.

Currently, l’Arche operates in some 150 communities in 35 countries on 5 continents. The mission of L’Arche is “…to make known the gifts of people with intellectual disabilities, working together toward a more human society.” Vanier continues to live as a member of the original L’Arche community, which is located in Trosly-Breuil, France.

His book, Community and Growth, serves as a kind of down-to-earth manual exploring the sacred potential of life in a faith community.  It’s packed with Vanier’s reflections on the challenges and opportunities of living authentically within a Christian community.  For folks who belong to a local church (or Cathedral) congregation, it may be helpful in reading this book to substitute Vanier’s use of the word “community,” with the word “church.”

Community and Growth speaks directly to the day to day realities and vulnerabilities of a church community. Originally written in French in 1979, various revised editions have been published in English over the years, the most recent in 2006.

Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to be happy–in fact, the opposite.

The idea of “community,” like the idea of “church” can mean different things to different people.  For those who have struggled with the problems and frustrations of community and/or church-life, this book is essential reading.  Vanier’s writing is neither theoretical prose, nor a lofty academic treatise.  Instead, his ideas are grounded by wisdom and insights gleaned at the front lines, after years dedicated to serving those less fortunate than himself.   Vanier writes that our faith communities should be places of acceptance and mission, marked by joy, compassion and celebration.

He refers to the “gift” and the “anti-gift” within community. Some see themselves as ‘saviours’. They may have the intelligence to understand and exploit the failings of community, but they can cause much hurt and damage, i.e. the anti-gift.  Vanier suggests that the proper way to come into community is to feel at ease there, to be ready to serve, and at the same time, to be respectful of the existing ethos and traditions. The gift of being available to serve, writes Vanier, can be modeled and shared in love, from one person to another. It nourishes the thinking heart and feeling mind of the community.

Quotes from Community and Growth:

“Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to be happy–in fact, the opposite.”

“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.”

“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. If our own life is luxurious and wasteful, we can’t approach poor people. If we love people, we want to identify with them and share with them.”

“Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus.”

“If people in a community live only on the level of the human, rational, legalistic and active aspects and symbols of their faith – which give cohesion, security and unity – there is a serious risk of their closing in on themselves and of gradually dying. If, however, their religious faith opens up, on the one hand to the mystical – that is, to an experience of the love of God present in the community and in the heart of each person – and, on the other hand, to what unifies all human beings, especially the poor, the vulnerable and the oppressed, they will then continue to grow in openness.”

“Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are old people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticize everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shriveled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child’s heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of compassion and forgiveness. They become a community’s hidden treasures, sources of unity and life. They are true contemplatives at the heart of community.”

More on Jean Vanier

Gregg Finley

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

By Parker J. Palmer
Jossey-Bass / 2000 / 117 pages

Parker Palmer is an author, educator, and activist who writes about teaching, life in community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He is the founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal, based in Seattle, USA. couragerenewal.org.  Palmer is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

This book is constructed around a searching question:  “Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?”  With this, Parker Palmer begins a thoughtful meditation on finding one’s true calling.  Let Your Life Speak is a candid reflection on how to find truth and fulfillment while living authentically amid the complexities of the 21^st century.  No matter how lofty a person’s intentions may be, Palmer argues that vocation comes from listening to and accepting the “true self,” with its limits as well as its potentials.

Every journey, honestly undertaken, stands a chance of taking us toward the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.

Palmer’s career trajectory has taken him from earning a Ph.D. in sociology; to serving as community organizer in Washington, D.C.; to living in Pendle Hill, a Quaker commune, for a decade; to his present-day work as a writer, consultant, and traveling teacher. He shares that he has been able to refine his understanding of life-choices by various experiences such as quitting seminary, getting fired from a job, and dealing with a bout of severe depression.  Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others, he shares insights gained from seasons of darkness as well as times of personal fulfillment and joy.

Writing with compelling vulnerability, Palmer helps illuminate positive pathways for those seeking to find their true calling; their vocation.  Parker Palmer’s writing is like a walk through a sunny forest glade – fresh, lucid and live-giving.  He gives the reader valuable insights for the journey forward. Let Your Life Speak will be of interest to those with serious questions about their future direction. “Vocation is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received.”

Selected quotes from Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak:

“If we lived close to nature in an agricultural society, the seasons as metaphor and fact would continually frame our lives. But the master metaphor of our era does not come from agriculture – it comes from manufacturing. We do not believe that we ‘grow’ our lives – we believe that we ‘make’ them. Just listen to how we use the word in everyday speech: we make time, make friends, make meaning, make money, make a living, make love.”

“Every journey, honestly undertaken, stands a chance of taking us toward the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

 “Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

“Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up.”

 “Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”

“But if I am to let my life speak things I want to hear, things I would gladly tell others, I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else! My life is not only about my strengths and virtues; it is also about my liabilities and my limits, my trespasses and my shadow. An inevitable though often ignored dimension of the quest for ‘wholeness’ is that we must embrace what we dislike or find shameful about ourselves as well as what we are confident and proud of.”

“Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them than we are of breathing.”

Gregg Finley

Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
By Richard J. Foster
Harper Books / 1998 / 228 pages / Revised Edition

We read in the New Testament about the “Gifts of the Spirit” and the “Fruit of the Spirit.”

But, what do people mean when they use the term, “the Spiritual Disciplines?”  What is a ‘spiritual discipline’ and how does the practice of these disciplines affect a person’s maturity in the Faith, as well as the corporate expression of that maturity in a local church community?

Richard Foster explores this important terrain in his book, Celebration of Discipline.  Originally published in 1978, this volume has been republished several times, in revised and expanded form.  Considered to be one of the best modern handbooks to focused, faithful Christian living, Celebration of Discipline explores the essential spiritual practices used today, and down through the ages.

Richard J. Foster is the author of several bestselling books, including Celebration of Discipline, Streams of Living Water, Life with God, Freedom of Simplicity and Prayer. He is the founder of the American intrachurch movement, Renovaré, an organization committed to the renewal of the Church in our day.

Foster divides the spiritual disciplines into three categories and explains how each of these expressions of the Spirit contribute to the symmetry and fullness of a person’s life-journey. The inward disciplines of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study, offer avenues of personal examination and change. The outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, help prepare us to make the world a better place. The corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration, bring us nearer to one another and to God.

“Like a child exploring the attic of an old house on a rainy day, discovering a trunk full of treasure and then calling all his brothers and sisters to share the find, Richard J. Foster has ‘found’ the spiritual disciplines that the modern world stored away and forgot, and has excitedly called us to celebrate them.  For they are, as he shows us, the instruments of joy, the way into mature Christian spirituality and abundant life.” ~ Eugene H. Peterson.

Selected quotes from Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline:

“God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.”

“Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don’t.”

“Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification.”

“Of all spiritual disciplines prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.”

“To pray is to change. All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives.”

“The purpose of meditation is to enable us to hear God more clearly. Meditation is listening, sensing, heeding the life and light of Christ. This comes right to the heart of our faith. The life that pleases God is not a set of religious duties; it is to hear His voice and obey His word. Meditation opens the door to this way of living.

“Fasting must forever centre on God. More than any other Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us.

“Disciplines are not the answer; they only lead us to the Answer. We must clearly understand this limitation of the Disciplines if we are to avoid bondage.”

Gregg Finley