The View from This Seat (supplementary blog)

[My May 25 regular blog post was about the book that I am summarizing much more fully here. Click here to read the much shorter blog article titled “Pondering Pachyderm Perambulation.”]

This is a very scholarly book that, after the Preface, begins with “Introduction: Revisiting an Old Tale.” That “old tale,” is “The Elephant and the Blind(folded) Men.” Although Thatamanil doesn’t mention it, perhaps that tale is best known in the U.S. because of what the American poet John Godfrey Saxe called “a Hindoo fable” in his 1872 poem “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” (That poem in its entirety is included at the end of this summary.)

After that important 19-page introduction, the first numbered chapter is “Religious Difference and Christian Theology: Thinking About, Thinking With, and Thinking Through.” A careful reading and understanding of the author’s points there helps the reader to understand the scholarly discussion of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism in the next two chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the complexity and misunderstanding of the concepts of religion and the religious, which according to the author have often been problematic.

After dealing in chapter 6, “The Hospitality of Receiving,” with the thought and practice of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., the following chapter is the author’s contribution to constructive theology as he writes about “God as Ground, Singularity, and Relation: Trinity and Religious Diversity.” The book concludes, then, with the ten-page chapter titled “This Is Not a Conclusion.”

Author Thatamanil

John J. Thatamanil was born in Gerala, India, and migrated to Brooklyn with his parents when he was eight years old. In India and then in the U.S. he was affiliated with the Mar Thoma Church, which, it is claimed, can be traced back to Thomas, one of Jesus’ twelve apostles, who went to India to evangelize. In addition to his personal knowledge of Hinduism, the indigenous religion of India, the author also has deep, first-hand knowledge of Buddhism, and in the Preface he informs his readers that he continues both “Buddhist practice and Christian worship” (p. xvii).

He earned the Ph.D. degree at Boston University in 2000 and is noted for his scholarly study of Christian theologian Paul Tillich. The influence of Tillich is evident at various places in the book. After several years as a professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, in 2011 Thatamanil became an Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions at Union Theological Seminary.

The Central Issue

Thatamanil’s first sentence in the Introduction identifies the central issue of the book: “Is religious diversity fundamentally a problem?”—and he particularly seeks to deal with the question of whether it is, or should be, a problem for Christians. He tips his hand, though, when in the epigraph at the beginning of the Introduction he cites Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words spoken at Union Seminary in 1965: “In this aeon diversity of religions is the will of God.”

The author wants to see religious diversity as promise rather than as problem. “That,” he states, “is the question Circling the Elephant sets out to explore” (p. 1). A strong advocate of harmony and mutual acceptance, Thatamanil says, “To imagine religious diversity as promise instead of problem is to refuse those who seek to turn diversity into divisiveness” (p. 2). Positively, he emphasizes that the world needs “religious diversity in order to register and receive the rich multiplicity of the divine life” (p. 5).

It is in this setting that the old fable is considered, and the author states that if the tale is suitably reformulated, it is “appealing because it gives theologians a way to imagine real diversity as a positive good” (p. 6). So, after discussing five problems with the old allegory, Thatamanil states, “This book is a Christian exercise in pachyderm perambulation” (p. 11).

The foundational first chapter is “Religious Difference and Christian Theology: Thinking About, Thinking With, and Thinking Through,” and he begins with discussing “Should Religious Diversity Be a ‘Problem’ for Christians? (pp. 21~29). He concludes this important topic by saying that there are “robust reasons for believing that we need not only our neighbors but also their [religious] traditions if we are to move more fully into the life of God.” Thus, “Only a ‘relational pluralism’ in which the salvific power of our various traditions [is] mobilized and animated through relationship and mutual transformation can serve as an adequate foundation for a theology of religious diversity.”

So, focusing on this central issue, Thatamanil declares: “This book articulates the hope for a comparative theology of religious diversity” (p. 34). And at the end of chapter 1 he explains that he seeks “to formulate a theology of religious diversity that makes interreligious learning and mutual transformation possible (p. 40).

Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism

For many years now, Christian theologians of religion have identified and written about three positions that are widely known as exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Thatamanil discusses these three positions in his second and third chapters, negatively evaluating all three except for what he proposes as “relational pluralism” in the third chapter. Before presenting his specific assessments/criticisms, though, he reiterates his central position near the beginning of the second chapter: “A theology of religious diversity that celebrates attentive learning might move away from regarding religious diversity as a problem to be solved and recognize religious diversity as a promise to be received” (p. 42). Thus, he is positive about relational pluralism as he notes that it is marked by a “taste for multiplicity” and shows its “delight in the gifts of other wisdoms” (p. 103).

The last part of the third chapter is “A Concluding Warning: The Trouble with Religion,” and this is his springboard into the next two chapters.

Analyzing “Religion” and “the Religious”

Near the end of chapter one, Thatamanil states: “We need theological projects that remind us that the invention of ‘religions’ and the invention of races were historically coterminous and part of a single, albeit multifaceted, imperial project” (p. 39). Thus, the third chapter is his criticism of the use of the word/concept “religion” and the next chapter explains how he prefers to use the adjective “religious” rather than the reified noun. He thinks that there is “little empirical resonance between the way Western scholars imagine religion and the way religious identities are actually lived out on the ground” (p. 127).

At the end of the fourth chapter, the author writes, “To be religious is not to belong to a timeless cultural-linguistic framework with a deep and stable transhistorical grammar but to seek comprehensive qualitative orientation by the creative use of contested and porous traditions that are always composed of what they are and what they are not” (p. 151). That is his lead into the fifth chapter: “Defining the Religious: Comprehensive Qualitative Orientation.” The subtitle expresses his attempt to explain what being religious is all about.

Thatamanil writes, all in italics,

Any qualitative interpretation of the felt character of the universe . . . I take to be religious when such an interpretation is accompanied by a commitment to practices that shape communal and personal comportment in the universe as so interpreted. Conversely, commitment to practices that so shape communal and personal comportment, such that they imply and generate a qualitative interpretation of the felt character of the universe . . . is also religious (p. 164).

It needs to be noted that the author recognizes that “secular institutions and activities continue to perform religious work.” He thinks that the religious “refuses to be confined to the sphere of religion or the religious even though moderns have come to think of comprehensive qualitative orientation as the special prerogative of what we now call religions” (p. 172). Thus, he has brief sections on “Economics as Religion” (pp. 183~7) and “Capitalism as Religion” (pp. 187~190).

Learning from Other Religions

Chapter 6 is “The Hospitality of Receiving: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Interreligious Learning.” In some ways, since it deals with well-known people and events, this is one of the easiest chapters in the book to read and understand—but perhaps it is also the most problematical.

Thatamanil highly evaluates Gandhi’s learning and internalizing Tolstoy and his teaching about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and then in turn praises MLK, Jr., for using what he learned from Gandhi. He concludes, “Even traditionalist Christians can confess that God has disclosed God’s self most fully in the Christ and yet also believe that one’s Hindu neighbor may see dimensions of that fullness that Christians have not yet appreciated” (p. 211). While that may well be so, that is quite different from what he wrote, with reference to MLK, Jr., on the previous page: “. . . no tradition affords more complete or efficacious access to ultimate reality than any other.”

A New Formulation of the Trinity

One of the author’s major purposes in this book is presenting a new formulation of what Christians have traditionally called the doctrine of the Trinity, and this is what he sets forth in the seventh chapter, “God as Ground, Singularity, and Relation: Trinity and Religious Diversity.”

It is difficult to summarize his argument succinctly, so suffice it to say that he expresses the traditional Christian concept of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by forwarding the concept of “God as ground, singularity, and relation” (p. 217)—and he says that this formulation “is just one Christian theologian’s venture at redescribing the elephant after a series of forays into Buddhist and Hindu traditions” (p. 220). However, the idea of God as the ground of being is based on German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Christian theologian Paul Tillich as well as on the Hindu emphasis on the nonduality of Brahman and atman.

Thatamanil’s discussion of singularity is mostly based on the ideas of Christian mystics and the theologian John Duns Scotus (1266~1308). Also, in formulating the third part of the Trinity, the author uses the word Spirit some, but never refers to Holy Spirit. He does emphasize this as his central point: “Relation names the truth that nothing whatsoever is what it is apart from its relation. To be is to be in relation” (p. 240). (He might have introduced the Bantu/South African concept of ubuntu here, but he didn’t. Thich Nhat Hanh’s emphasis on “we inter-are” could also have been included here, but it is not mentioned until the last chapter, on p. 251—and Nhat is misspelled there and in the index.)

Near the end of this chapter, Thatamanil emphasizes his main point that we need to be engaged in “the work of learning about our neighbors, the work of learning from our neighbors so that we might ourselves learn more about God” (p. 247).

The Conclusion which is Not a Conclusion

The eighth and last chapter of Thatamanil’s book is titled “This is Not a Conclusion.” That is partly because “interreligious learning is an endless process because there is always more to be known” (p. 249). In summarizing the thrust of his book, though, the author writes, “Circling the Elephant repudiates religious isolationism and calls for thoroughgoing vulnerability” (p. 251), and he asserts that “we can no longer think of religious traditions as isolated blindfolded persons, each focused on one aspect of the elephant because each tradition, in its spiraling around ultimate reality, begins to interpenetrate each other” (p. 253). Further, “We must circle the elephant together if we are to understand each other, let alone the elephant.”

THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT

A HINDOO FABLE

I.

IT was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

II.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me!—but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

III.

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘t is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

IV.

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:

“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

V.

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

VI.

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

VII.

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

VIII.

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

MORAL.

So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

~John Godfrey Saxe (1816~87)

[This is a book review that was posted today, February 8, 2021, on the website of Englewood Review of Books.]

A Review of Another Life is Possible: Insights from 100 Years of Life Together

Clare Stober, Editor (Hardback: Plough Publishing House, 2020).

Reviewed by Leroy Seat

“This is a beautiful book . . . beautiful in the images it gives of simple and harmonious relation with an environment, but beautiful also in its chronicling of lives that have been held and healed in this shared enterprise of the Spirit.” So says Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, in the Foreword of the excellent new book that briefly chronicles the one-hundred-year history of the Bruderhof (x-xv) but mainly tells the stories of one hundred people who live(d) in Bruderhof communities.

There are vast differences between the “pomp and circumstance” of the Anglican Church and Westminster Cathedral and the simplicity of the Bruderhof in the way they live and worship. But for a century now the Bruderhof, started in 1920 by Eberhart and Emmy Arnold, has maintained an intriguing paradox of separation from the world and engagement with the world. Indeed, as Archbishop Williams remarks, the Bruderhof’s “intellectual hospitality” is “as warm as the literal hospitality the visitor experiences.”

This beautiful book is also a large book—9” x 12”—that was “created” (authored/edited) by Clare Stober (b. 1955) of the Fox Hill Bruderhof community near Walden, New York, and is filled with striking pictures by British photographer Danny Burrows, who traveled around the globe visiting Bruderhof settlements. He submitted over 3,000 photos for use in the book, and about 200 of them are used in this work that is beautiful largely because of Burrows’s photos.

The Bruderhof has an interesting mix of simple, non-pretentious living and an emphasis on high quality, such as is seen in their Community Playthings, children’s furniture they have been building and marketing since the 1950s as a main source of their income. This centennial book about the Bruderhof is beautiful and of high quality, just as are the chairs, tables, and other wooden items they make for children—and there are several references to and pictures of Community Playthings in the book.

Author Stober’s own story is told briefly on pages 17-19. She was a successful entrepreneur who built a graphic design and advertising agency near Washington, D.C., but about thirty years ago she gave that up to join the Bruderhof with no personal income at all. In the book, many residents of Bruderhof communities tell how they left “successful” stations in life to experience the new, fulfilling life that is possible in those communities.

The first of the 100 profiles in Another Life is Possible is, most appropriately, of Eberhard Arnold, who with his wife Emmy founded the first Bruderhof house in 1920. On eight pages with seven photographs, the biography of the Arnolds and the beginning of the Bruderhof in Sannerz, Germany, about 50 miles northeast of Frankfurt, is succinctly told.

Interestingly, the profile following that of the Arnolds is that of Sung Hoon Park, a Korean man. The Bruderhof house in Korea was not established until 2018, and it is still the only one in Asia. Currently, there are more than 3,000 people living in twenty-eight Bruderhof settlements on four continents.

The wide variety of persons profiled in this appealing book includes several past members, such as Latvian Else von Hollander (1885-1932), Bavarian Josef Stängl (1911-93), and Floridian Dorothy Mommsen (1922-2007). On the other hand, several profiles are of young men and women who were born in the 1990s—and there are no members born in the 2000s, for people must be 21 before becoming a member. Most of those people in their 20s grew up as children in a Bruderhof community and then joined after a year or more of living apart from the community, which most do after their 18th birthday.

Interspersed with the stories of those people, past and present, who are a part of Bruderhof communities are pertinent quotes from a wide variety of notable thinkers/writers of the past, such as Mother Teresa, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Dorothy Day, C.S. Lewis, Leo Tolstoy, and Francis of Assisi, among many others.

The 320-page book is organized around ten different themes, each of about 30 pages. Beginning with “What Money Can’t Buy” and “Working for a Purpose,” the following themes include “Building Justice” and “Seeking and Making Peace” as well as sections dealing with concrete issues, such as “What About Technology?”

Both from the stories and the numerous photos, it is quite evident that the members of the Bruderhof communities around the world love nature and love children. The seventh section of the book (174-205) is “Children and Education.” Profiles are of teachers and students in various parts of the world but especially in Mount Academy, the outstanding Bruderhof high school located about halfway between New York City and Albany. It also includes stories of special needs children, such as Ben, who was born with Down syndrome in 2002, and Luke, who died a few hours after his birth in 2015.

The children and most adults in the Bruderhof communities have little screen time—and yet the Bruderhof actively reaches out to others by means of the Internet. Three web links are given on the final page of the book, one being Plough.com, where a request can be made for the “Daily Dig,” a short quote from a wide variety of writers that is delivered by email every day to those who sign up for it.

Here are the final and important words of the Afterword, written by Paul Winter, the senior pastor of the Bruderhof communities: “Whatever our beliefs, let us hold on to the hope that another life is possible: the life of love, justice, and joy that every soul, in the end, longs to find.”

As Archbishop Williams writes in the Foreword, “The Bruderhof gently holds up a mirror to the Christian world and asks, ‘Why not this?’” That is a good question, and one that presses down on those of us who read and ponder the stories in this centennial book of the Bruderhof and gaze upon the beautiful photography intertwined with the well-worded written text.

This book belongs in every church library and on the coffee tables, or their equivalents, of anyone in the world thirsty for examples of wholesome, peaceful, and beneficial living.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (original Ger., 1946; original Eng. trans., 1959; Boston Press, 2014), 180 pp.

Foreword by Harold S. Kushner (2006)

“Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is one of the great books of our time” (ix).

“Terrible as it was, his experience in Auschwitz reinforced what was already one of his key ideas: Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. . . .

“Finally, Frankl’s most enduring insight, one that I have called on often in my own life and in countless counseling situations: Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.” (x).

“Experiences in a Concentration Camp” (pp. 3~87)

“I think it was Lessing who once said, ‘There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.’ An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior” (19).

“Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds” (41).

Frankl says that “everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms— to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (62).

“Dostoevski said once, ‘There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.’ These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom— which cannot be taken away— that makes life meaningful and purposeful” (62-63).

“Any attempt at fighting the camp’s psychopathological influence on the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward. Instinctively some of the prisoners attempted to find one on their own. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future . . . . And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task” (68),

“The prisoner who had lost faith in the future— his future— was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay” (69).

“As we said before, any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche’s words, ‘He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,’ could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners” (71-72)

“Logotherapy in a Nutshell” (pp. 91~125)

Logotherapy focuses “on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.)“ (92).

“Let me explain why I have employed the term ‘logotherapy’ as the name for my theory. Logos is a Greek word which denotes “meaning.” Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, ‘The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,’ focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man’s search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the on which Adlerian psychology, using the term ‘striving for superiority,’ is focused” (92-93). will to power

“In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

“ . . . . It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning” (106).

Frankl’s existentialism is expressed in many places, including here: “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment” (122). And, “Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible and of changing himself for the better if necessary” (123).

The 1962 version of the book ends with these significant words: “Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips” (p.125).

“POSTSCRIPT 1984: The Case for a Tragic Optimism” (pp. 129~145)

I found this to be an interesting statement: “The truth is that man does not live by welfare alone” (133).

“As logotherapy teaches, “there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love. . . .

“Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph” (137).

Again, Frankl asserts that if “one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude” (139).

Frankl avers that “there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.

“. . . . Just as life remains potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable, so too does the value of each and every person stay with him or her, and it does so because it is based on the values that he or she has realized in the past, and is not contingent on the usefulness that he or she may or may not retain in the present” (142).

 

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human (Anansi, 1998, 2008; 166 pp.)

{The following are some of the notable statements the author made through his book, but this is only a compilation of significant sentences, not in any sense a summary of the book or of the individual chapters.}

Introduction

Vanier declares that “life together” in l’Arche “has helped me become more human” (p. 2). He then explains that “to become human implies two realities. It means to be someone, to have cultivated our gifts, and also to be open to others, to look at them not with a feeling of superiority but with eyes of respect” (p. 3).

He ends this brief introduction by saying that he hopes “that more and more of us will seek this road of peacemaking by living in the reality of mutual acceptance, building places of belonging where each one is helped to grow in freedom from fear and the different forms of egoism that can drive us apart, and where we can all learn to celebrate in forgiveness” (p. 4).

I  Loneliness

Vanier avers, “Loneliness is part of being human, because there is nothing in existence that can completely fulfill the needs of the human heart” (p. 7). He goes on to write that there are five principles that have helped him.

“First: all humans are sacred . . . .

“Second: our world and our individual lives are in the process of evolving. . . .

“Third: maturity comes through working with others, through dialogue, and through a sense of belonging and a searching together” (p. 14). Then,

“Fourth: human beings need to be encouraged to make choices, and to become responsible for their own lives and for the lives of others. . . .

“Fifth: in order to make such choices, we need to reflect and to seek truth and meaning” (p. 15).

Later in the chapter, he emphasizes that the “belief in the inner beauty of each and every human being is at the heart of l’Arche, at the heart of all true education and at the heart of being human” (p. 23).

II  Belonging

One of Vanier’s core beliefs is succinctly stated: “We human beings are all fundamentally the same. We all belong to a common, broken humanity” (p. 37). He amplifies: “Weakness, recognized, accepted, and offered, is at the heart of belonging” (p. 40).

Here is another of his basic ideas: “A society that honours only the powerful, the clever, and the winners necessarily belittles the weak” (p. 46).

In one sub-section in this chapter is “Belonging Together in a Pluralistic Society,” Vanier states, “When religion helps us to open our hearts in love and compassion to those who are not of our faith so as to help them to find the source of freedom within their own hearts and to grow in compassion and love of others, then this religion is a source of life” (p. 63). This leads into his third chapter.

III  From Exclusion to Inclusion: A Path of Healing

Vanier writes, “Fear is at the root of all forms of exclusion, just as trust is at the root of all forms of inclusion” (p. 71).

In an important sub-section titled “The Heart,” Vanier asserts: “To treat each person as a person means that we are concerned for them, that we listen to them, and love them and want them to become more whole, free, truthful, and responsible” (p. 86). And the in the following sub-section, “The Way of the Heart,” he says that “people with intellectual disabilities led me from a serious world into a world of celebration, presence, and laughter: the world of the heart” (p. 89).

A later sub-section is a short one titled “To Become Human,” and in it Vanier states: “As the human heart opens up and becomes compassionate, we discover our fundamental unity, our common humanity.” And then he declares that “people with disabilities have taught me what it means to be human” and they have led him “into a new vision of society, a more human society” (p. 97).

IV  The Path to Freedom

Vanier asserts, “To be free is to put justice, truth, and service to others over and above our own personal gain or our need for recognition, power, honour, and success” (p. 108). And later, “Freedom does not judge or condemn but understands and forgives” (p. 118). He ends the chapter with these words: “This is the ultimate secret of liberation: to forgive and to be forgiven, and thus to become free, like little children” (p. 134).

V  Forgiveness

Continuing what he wrote in the last chapter, Vanier says that forgiveness is the “process of removing barriers; it is the process by which we start to accept and to love those who have hurt us. This is the final stage of inner liberation” (p. 136). The chapter, and the book, concludes: “We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time” (p. 163).