Vanier - Becoming human

ALSO BY JEAN VANIER

An Ark for the Poor
Community and Growth
Finding Peace
From Brokenness to Community
The Heart of lArche
I Meet Jesus
Jesus, the Gift of Love
Made for Happiness
Our Journey Home
The Scandal of Service
Seeing Beyond Depression
Befriending the Stranger
Encountering the Other
Our Life Together

Jean Vanier

Copyright 1998, 2008 Jean Vanier
and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Vanier, Jean, 1928
Becoming human / Jean Vanier

(CBC Massey lecture series)
Includes bibliographic references.
eISBN 978-0-88784-845-2

1. Philosophical anthropology. 2. Humanity.
I . Title. II . Series.

BD450.V26 2008 128 C2008-901251-8

Cover design: Bill Douglas @ The Bang
Cover photograph: Irene Borins Ash

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

LIKE ALL OF US, I have my story. Mine began as a young person of thirteen when I journeyed from Canada to England and joined the Royal Naval College in 1942. It was the middle of the war with Nazi Germany, and I had decided to prepare myself to serve on warships. I spent eight years in the navy. I left the navy in 1950 searching for another road to peace. I went to live in a small Christian community near Paris. We worked manually, we pursued studies in philosophy and theology, and we prayed together.

Then in April 1964 I went to visit a holy priest a man of God. He was chaplain to a small institution for people with intellectual disabilities. It was there I discovered the plight of men and women who had been put aside, looked down upon, sometimes laughed at or scorned. They were seen as misfits of nature, not as human beings.

Touched and hurt by the way so many were treated, I was able to buy a little house in a village north of Paris and to welcome two men with disabilities from a sad and violent institution. Philippe Seux and Raphael Simi had each had a viral disease when they were children. The result of their illnesses had left them with significant disabilities. They never went to school, and when their parents died they were put into this dismal asylum.

And so the first community of LArche was born. Today, forty-four years later, there are 134 such communities in thirty-five different countries. In these communities men and women with disabilities can develop in a spirit of freedom. We live together those with disabilities and those who wish to have a deep and sometimes lasting relationship with them. We laugh and cry and sometimes fight with one another; we work, we celebrate life, and we pray together.

Believe it or not, it has been this life together that has helped me become more human. Those I have lived with have helped me to recognize and accept my own weaknesses and vulnerability. I no longer have to pretend I am strong or clever or better than others. I am like everybody else, with my fragilities and my gifts.

Becoming Human may seem a strange title. Arent we already human? How can we become what we already are? Like all animals, we are conceived, we are born, we grow, we give birth to others like us, and we die. What then is different?

We humans are conscious of our growth from the nakedness of birth to the nakedness of death, and we are conscious of the freedom we have to orientate our lives in one direction or another. This freedom can lead us into anguish and a fear of becoming, or it can lead us into growth and new life.

So human beings are in continual evolution. Every generation wants to achieve more than the preceding one. We are in a culture of competition. The strong, the beautiful, the intelligent, and the capable are magnified and extolled. The weak and the vulnerable are often put aside. Our world is characterized by the huge gap between the rich and the poor, the oppressors and the oppressed, and by continual horrible conflicts between national, ethnic, and religious groups.

This struggle, which has existed in various forms throughout history, is in me and in each one of us. But history has also seen women and men rise up, seeking new ways of creating peace and unity amongst people and helping the oppressed to find new life through wisdom and love and a consciousness of their value.

So to become human implies two realities. It means to be someone, to have cultivated our gifts, and also to be open to others, to look at them not with a feeling of superiority but with eyes of respect. It means to become men and women with the wisdom of love. For this, we often need help. For many, as for myself, religion can be a gentle source of strength and love, as can a mentor or wise friend.

We cannot know what crises await humanity because of the way we have treated our earth, because of our greed and our lack of respect for life or for others, because of the immense inequalities in living standards and opportunities between people, or because of world conflicts and the misuse of power.

But the future of humanity is not just in the hands of politicians and of corporations but in our hands. Peace will come through dialogue, through trust and respect for others who are different, through inner strength and a spirituality of love, patience, humility, and forgiveness. Little by little, a culture of competition will be transformed into a culture of welcome and mutual respect. The crises that will come will then not just be moments of danger but opportunities for dialogue and unity, and solutions will emerge.

I am on the eve of my departure, but young people are just entering into this adventure of becoming. This new generation is searching for ways to live a new vision. They are finding inspiration in Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Etty Hillesum, and so many others. My hope is that more and more of us will seek this road of peacemaking by living in the reality of mutual acceptance, building places of belonging where each one is helped to grow in freedom from fear and the different forms of egoism that can drive us apart, and where we can all learn to celebrate in forgiveness.

Jean Vanier
Trosly-Breuil, France
March 2008

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT the liberation of the human heart from the tentacles of chaos and loneliness, and from those fears that provoke us to exclude and reject others. It is a liberation that opens us up and leads us to the discovery of our common humanity. I want to show that this discovery is a journey from loneliness to a love that transforms, a love that grows in and through belonging, a belonging that can include as well as exclude. The discovery of our common humanity liberates us from self-centred compulsions and inner hurts; it is the discovery that ultimately finds its fulfillment in forgiveness and in loving those who are our enemies. It is the process of truly becoming human.