Jean Vanier and L'Arche

From Loneliness to Belonging

To celebrate is to give thanks for the gift that God has given us in having brought us together from a place of loneliness into a place of belonging. I know that you have accepted me and I you. I know your gifts and also your darkness. Yet I accept you not expecting more and not weeping because you are not exactly what I wanted you to be. So to celebrate is to give thanks for all that you are and all that we are together.

- Jean Vanier, Quoted by K. Spink in Jean Vanier and L'Arche, p 68

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Taking Root

The more a community grows and gives life, sometimes by sending some of its members far away [to help elsewhere], the deeper its roots must grow into its own soil. Expansion has to be accompanied by deepening. The more a tree grows, the stronger its roots must be; otherwise, it will be uprooted by the first storm.


- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 155

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Giving Life

People who are old or sick and offer themselves to God can become the most precious members of a community - lightning conductors of grace. There is a mystery in the secret strength of those whose bodies are broken, who seem to do nothing all day, but who remain in the presence of God. Their immobility obliges them to keep their minds and hearts fixed on the essential, on the source of life itself. Their suffering and agony bears fruit; they give life.


- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 155

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Hey Ivy- tell us all about L'Arche.

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It's very cool

There are communities in several countries, and what they do is have mentally or physically handicapped people living in community with able-bodied people in a family/home atmosphere.

That way, these folks do not get warehoused and forgotten in some institution, but they get to be treated as Jesus would have them be treated, as human beings who can give and receive love. (Sometimes they do not have any earthly family, or sometimes their family has abandoned them.)

There is a Scripture in one of Paul's letters about how the church is to bestow the greater honor on its weaker members--because these individuals are essential to the Body of Christ.

It seems like they remind so-called "normal" people how to be human, that weakness & brokenness are necessary to keeping our humanity....and being human is a precious gift indeed.

And our quote for the day is.....

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Communities of the Old

Some communities are composed entirely of old people. Their time of expansion seems to be over and it is probably now too late for a young person to come into them. The gaiety and peace of these communities is sometimes astonishing. Their members know that their community is dying but they don't mind. They want to live fully and to the end. In other communities, by contrast, old people are in terrible anguish in the face of their sterility. They have not discovered that this sterility can be transformed into a gift of life by offering and suffering.

- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 156

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Cool

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The Cry of a Community in Pain

Sometimes during a meeting of the International Council of L'Arche, we speak of one of our communities as a problem. It has been in crisis for such a long time; assistants do not want to stay and the people with a handicap are not well, and so on. We forget that before being a problem, the community is poor and in pain. In some mysterious way God is present there. The cry of a community in pain is also the cry of the poor. We must approach such a community with great love and respect.

- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 156

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Providence

The experience of Providence grows stronger with time, with the discovery that God has watched over the community in times of trial which could have destroyed it. Serious tensions have been resolved, people have arrived exactly when they were needed, there has been unexpected financial or material help, someone has found inner freedom and healing. Then the experience of God is no longer personal but communal, and this generates peace and luminous certainty. But this recognition of the action of God in community life demands a very great fidelity.

- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 157

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Contradictions

We human beings are made up of contradictions. Part of us is attracted by the light and by God, and wants to care for our brothers and sisters. Another part of us wants frivolity, possessions, domination or success; it wants to be surrounded by approving friends, who will ward off sadness, depression or aggression. We are so deeply divided that we will reflect equally an environment which tends towards the light and concern for others, and one which scorns these values and encourages the desires for power and pleasure. As long as our deepest motivation is not clear to us and as long as we have not chosen the people and the place of our growth in its light, we will remain weak and inconsistent, as changeable as weathercocks.

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