I have in some small way learned to inhabit my body and to see it not just as a channel for therapy but as a way of revealing my heart and of being in communion with others' really don't read the same. Preaching about the importance of love and communion while using your status as a spiritual leader to abuse women casts a big fucking shadow over the whole thing (to say the least). Then I found out halfway through that the guy sexually abused a bunch of women.

Dropped the class but heard several people say good things about it (including 'it changed my life!') so wanted to give it a read. Was enrolled in a class which had this book on as mandatory reading. Love how Vanier champions the beauty and value of every human being. How easy it is to fall into the illusion of a beautiful world when we have lost trust in our capacity to make our broken world a place that can become more beautiful.' We refuse to listen to the cry of the needy. We shun our own weakness and the weakness in others. We all want to be in a happy place, where everyone is nice and good and can fend for themselves. Civilization is, at least in part, about pretending that things are better than they are.

We all want to turn away from anything that reveals the failure, pain, sickness, and death beneath the brightly painted surface of our ordered lives. ' We are all frightened by the ugly, the dirty. When we do include them, they add richly to our lives and add immensely to our world.' 'I also believe that those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us. Some quotes to give you a feel for Vanier's perspective on humanity: I could not possibly say enough about it. Jean Vanier, a man I thoroughly respect, the founder of L'Arch, a community for the intellectually disabled.

Becoming human vanier