Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.
Interpretation
Community reflects the possibility of love and happiness beyond material wealth.
In this quote, Jean Vanier emphasizes that the existence of community demonstrates the potential for love and connection in a world often driven by materialism and conflict. He suggests that true happiness stems from relationships and communal ties rather than financial wealth, signifying that love and fulfillment can flourish even in challenging circumstances.
In practice
During a speech on community service, one might quote Jean Vanier to emphasize the importance of love and relationships over wealth.
One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.
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.
True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.
In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.
We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.
When we begin to believe that there is greater joy in working with and for others, rather than just for ourselves, then our society will truly become a place of celebration.
One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city - as I once did for a couple of years.
You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.
Busy people tend to forgo the one activity - TV watching _ that is most lethal to community involvement
Business, labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources that are vital in helping to build a more robust global community.
We're all in this together. I learned that lesson growing up in West Philly. When I shoveled the sidewalk my parents didn't let me stop with our house. They told me to keep shoveling all the way to the corner. I had a responsibility to my community.
We see community organizations as major service providers and economic drivers rather than as recipients or distributors of charity, and coordinators of volunteers. Today they constitute what's referred to as 'the social economy'.
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