\u201cOver the last forty-two years we\u2019ve had many deaths, and we\u2019ve spent a lot of time celebrating death. It\u2019s very fundamental to our community,\u201d he wrote, referencing his experience in L\u2019Arche community of Trosly-Breuil, France\u2014where Vanier began the first of an international network of communities for people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities to live together in faith and friendship.<\/p>\n
As he recounted in his book Living Gently in a Violent World, \u201cTo celebrate death is to gather around and talk about the person\u2014about Janine, for example, who died recently. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Likewise, those of us who have been formed and inspired by Jean Vanier have hearts heavy with both grief and gratitude as we celebrate the beautiful things we learned from a leader who helped us all to become more human.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t often find people born into privilege and status, and highly educated, who then follow the downward path of Jesus. But as founder of L\u2019Arche International, Vanier spent decades in community with people with and without intellectual disabilities and embraced the joys, complications, and demands that go along with such a life.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jean Vanier, the founder of @larcheintl<\/a>, has died at age 90 https:\/\/t.co\/lrS71efJ3q<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) May 7, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n