Later Life
In 1968, Jean Vanier gave the first Faith and Sharing retreat, a worldwide movement of the retreats where people from many walks of life are welcome. In 1956, he co-founded Faith and Light with Marie Helene Mathieu,an international movement of forums for people with developmental disabilities, their family and friends. Today there are over 1,800 Faith and Light communities in 80 countries around the world.
Until the late 1990s, Jean Vanier carried the responsibility for L'Arche in Trosly-Breuil in France and for the International Federation of L'Arche. He stepped down from these responsibilities to spend more time counseling, encouraging and accompanying people who come to live in L'Arche as assistants to those with disabilities. Vanier still makes his home in the original L'Arche community of Trosly-Breuil, France. He also travels widely, visiting other L'Arche communities, encouraging projects for new communities, and giving lectures and retreats.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“What is the flesh and blood compounded of
But a few moments in the life of time?
This prowling of the cells, litigious love,
Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)