The book's original title, "Open Your Arms," sums up in a few words the message Jean Vanier wants to share through his words and experience: open our arms, but above all our hearts, and learn to love each of our brothers and sisters as Jesus loves them.
This is not a novel or a conventional book of spirituality. It is a gradual discovery of the wealth that lives in the hearts of the excluded—and a call to Hope.
Through a series of snapshots that take us to Compiègne in France, to Calcutta near Mother Teresa, to Canada, to Africa, wherever L'Arche communities have taken root, two opposite worlds come into view: the world of wealth, the race for money and possession, and the world of poverty and want.
What joins these worlds is the presence of people seeking hope—young people longing for a better world, men and women who live "nonviolence" by creating communities where love reigns, where each person finds their place.
Is this, then, a utopian book?
No. Because Jean Vanier tells us of small communities that already exist, of young people who have made their ideal of justice and peace a reality by living alongside people wounded in body, in mind, in their deepest longings. He shows us a path lit by Christian Hope—a way to free ourselves from selfishness and fear, and to build here on earth a kingdom founded on Love.