Dear Jean, I was distressed to learn that you suffered a heart attack last month, but was also relieved to hear of your improving health and current sabbatical. Did you sense my thoughts and prayers? Did they help? Did you need them? Did you want them? It’s not terribly courteous to question peoples’ “thoughts and prayers” these days. Scroll down…
Tag: jean vanier
Dear Jean: 50 Years Apart…Less 2 Days
Dear Jean, I rather like the reality that you were born on September 10 in 1928 and I was born on September 08 in 1978. Not quite a perfect fifty year span, but two days shy is close enough for me to qualify it as a perfection. I haven’t reached forty yet, so I can’t write a clever blog post…
Dear Jean: Water and Innocence
Dear Jean, It’s been an age since I’ve written to you. I’ve been remiss. I listen to your talks and read your books, and I would love one day to meet you. I’m sure enough pilgrims wander towards L’Arche already, however, that you likely don’t need this reluctant mystic tugging at your sleeve. Still, I wanted to offer up an…
Dear Jean, Week 7: I Don’t Birthday Well
I don’t “birthday” well. Erin Thomas: b. September 08, 1978 Jean Vanier: b. September 10, 1928 We are nearly a perfectly golden fifty years apart. You have spent the majority of your life celebrating people who have been left uncelebrated and unloved. Today, we celebrate you as a wise, humble man who submitted himself to the love of God through…
Dear Jean, Week 6: “Painting is the Song of the Heart”
Dear Jean, I’m sitting here in front of my computer on a cool drizzly day supposedly writing my final arts therapy paper. If I’m honest, I have managed to format my paper, type a working title, eek out an introduction, and… …stop everything else and write to you. Clearly I need a break from an academic look at art, and…
Dear Jean, Week 5: Is Fear Really Sinful?
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. -1 John 4:18 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. -Psalm 23:4 I…
Dear Jean, Week 3: The Homeless Prophet
“The poor are always prophetic. As true prophets always point out, they reveal God’s design. That is why we should take time to listen to them. And that means staying near them, because they speak quietly and infrequently; they are afraid to speak out, they lack confidence in themselves because they have been broken and oppressed. But if we…
Dear Jean, Week 2: It’s Complicated
Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships with parents, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we want, yet it is what we…
Dear Jean, Week 1:Heavy Wounds, Heavy Hearts
“To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore unlovable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.” -Jean Vanier, Becoming Human Dear Jean, I hope you don’t mind me calling you Jean. Perhaps you prefer Monsieur Vanier? Mr. Vanier? Father…