Community and Brokenness

Today at my meeting I read a part of the book, "Community and Brokenness" by Jean Vanier. I was deeply encouraged and challenged by the chapter I read, so I decided the best thing to do is share what I read.

"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 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." 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."

"To be in communion with someone also means to walk with them. 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 solutions for their 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......"

"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 poor. And then they discover something extraordinary: that Jesus came to bring the good news to the poor, not to those who serve the poor! I think we can truly experience the presence of God, meet Jesus, receive the good news, 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."

As I read this chapter I realized that I want to make this my prayer. I came to Mission Year to serve the poor, but come July I want to discover that I too am poor.