Our Life Together: A Memoir in Letters

By any measure, Jean Vanier has led an astonishing life. He is the founder of the international movement of L’Arche communities as well as Faith and Light, organisations that bring together people with developmental disabilities and the friends who share their lives. He espouses the philosophy that the marginalised, weak and lonely can teach us great things and that true spirituality can only come from our relationships with the less fortunate. Our Life Together contains over four decades of Vanier’s letters to friends and to both L’Arche and Faith and Light communities all over the world. The call of the disadvantaged brought Vanier to the heart of some of the world’s great moments of upheaval: India during the Emergency Period; South Africa during apartheid; Lebanon during its civil war; the USSR in 1989, on the eve of its collapse; the West Bank during the First Intifada; the Philippines at the birth of democracy there; Rwanda on the eve of genocide. His letters bear witness to these turning points in history and also show his personal thoughts on the quest for peace, his own faith journey and the need for interfaith dialogue. With an insightful introduction by the author, Our Life Together is inspirational and infused with a sense of unity. It reveals a candid portrait of a man who seeks to understand what it is to be a whole, compassionate human being.