Published in the Westchester Guardian, July 2013
“L’Arche is indeed a place where many vulnerable men and women who are threatened by the judgmental and violent world in which they live can find a safe place and feel at home.” Henri J. M. Nouwen.
There are small glimmers of hope for humanity, small communities, where the weakest teach the strong about faith, strength and love. They will not be in our history books, they may not be known outside their local communities, they may not be remembered generations from the now, but they will leave a mark on the souls of many. These are special places where humanity exceeds the expectations of our human standards, but accomplishes what God expects from all of us. They will create a paradigm in the soul of any individual, community or society willing to reach out, willing to take that leap of faith.
Responding to the massive social problems of institutional isolation, Jean Vainer offered a home and friendship to two men with intellectual disabilities. Through this experience, he discovered, “Love and service is an irreversible life choice; and like those two men, he was transformed”. From this simple and powerful idea, in 1964, in the French town of Trosly-Breuil came the communities of Light and Faith and described below, L’Arche (French for The Ark).
This mustard seed will soon be celebrating 50 years of friendships, care and love in approximately 140 communities in 36 countries on six continents, from Uganda and Syria to the U.S. the United Kingdom and Canada. A community can consist up to eight homes in a specific city with each home having three to four core members and three assistants. A typical home can take three to five years to fully establish. Erie, Pennsylvania is the site of the first home in this country where there are now 18 communities. The greatest challenge is setting up a house, building mutual relationships and understanding one another. Port Jefferson, Long Island is the site of a future community facing the many challenges.
A simple idea, each community, independent and operated locally enables people with and without intellectual disabilities to share their lives in homes of faith and friendship. Those with intellectual disabilities, called core members and assistants share lives together, 24/7 and are transformed through relationships of mutuality, respect and companionship There are three factors vital in home life: eating together at the same table, praying together and celebrating together, to laugh, to have fun, to give thanks as one body, giving priority to relationships. “Everyone is a friend, teacher companion not clients, patients or recipients. Communities are either of one faith or inter-religious. Those that are Christian are either of one church or inter-denominational. Each community maintains links with the appropriate religious authorities and its members are integrated with local churches or other places of worship.” “Communities of faith, rooted in prayer and trust in God.”
Many U.S. communities are supported through government funding and fundraising, relying on the generosity of individuals, foundations, congregations and other establishments. Each is a registered 501(c) (3) nonprofit company.
The aims and principles of their Charter, abbreviated below, displays their love. Their words explain their principles better than I can. It’s worth a read.
Aims: 1.To create communities that welcome people with intellectual disabilities, responding to the distress of those who are too often rejected, giving them a valid place in society. 2. To reveal the particular gifts of people with disabilities and others by sharing their lives. 3. L’Arche knows that it cannot welcome everyone who has an intellectual disability. It seeks to offer not a solution but a sign that a society, to be truly human, must be founded on respect, welcoming the weak and the downtrodden. 4. In a divided world, its communities, its covenant relationships, between people of differing capacity, social origin, religion and culture, seek to be a sign of unity, faithfulness and reconciliation.
Fundamental Principles: 1. We all are bound together in a common humanity. Everyone is of unique and of sacred value. Everyone has the same dignity, the same rights: to life, to care, to a home, to education and to work. The deepest need of a human being is to love and to be loved. Each person has a right to friendship, to communion, to a spiritual life. 2. Human beings, as individuals, need an environment that fosters personal growth, enables relationships within families and communities, live in an atmosphere of trust, security, and mutual affection and be valued, accepted supported in real, warm relationships. 3. People with intellectual disabilities often possess qualities of welcome, wonderment, spontaneity and directness. They are able to touch hearts and to call others to unity through their simplicity and vulnerability. 4. Weakness and vulnerability in a person fosters a union with God and through weakness, recognized and accepted, the liberating love of God is revealed. 5. In order to develop the inner freedom, to grow in union with God, which all people are called, each person needs to have the opportunity of being rooted and nourished in a religious tradition.
They will not dispose unjust governments, bring down corrupt institutions or solve problems of global malnutrition, but they are changing the world one person, one home, one community at a time. “L’Arche gives witness to the vision that people of differing intellectual capacity, religion and culture can come together in units, faithfulness and reconciliation.” A sign of hope, a model of mutual relationship and friendship in a world that often rejects people who are weak, any sign of weakness. All who enter are sure to be transformed, enabling one with the audacity to go forward along an unknown road.
In many places the social stigma that prevailed in France and around the world in 1964 is still very much alive where isolation and segregation of ‘different people’ is still justified by the need to ‘protect them. Jean Vanier is now 83 and convinced than ever that those who are powerless and vulnerable attract what is most beautiful and most luminous in those who are stronger.
L’Arche’s information: “Living Gently in a Violent World” by Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier, and “The Road to Daybreak” by Henri Nouwen. Web sites: www.larcheusa.org. For the Long Island community see www.friendsoflarcheli.org.
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