L'Arche at Fifty: One heart at a time

“We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time.”

-Jean Vanier, Becoming Human

2014 marks the 50^th anniversary of one man’s act of compassion, which blossomed into something beyond his wildest dreams.

Jean Vanier, 2013

Jean Vanier was born in 1928 to a prominent Canadian family. His father, Georges Vanier, was Canada’s 19^th Governor General. As a young man, Jean Vanier embarked on a career in the Royal Navy, but in 1950 felt a strong inner calling to do something else with his life. He began to study theology and philosophy, completed his PhD and taught for a number of years at the University of Toronto. Through a friendship with a priest named Fr. Thomas Philippe, he became aware of the plight of thousands of people institutionalized with developmental disabilities. In a 1996 BBC interview, he recalled how it was incomprehensible to him that someone could appear on this earth but be unwanted. Vanier left academia in 1964 and travelled to France, where he began visiting psychiatric hospitals, which he later described as “warehouses of human misery.” In one such place, he befriended two young men named Raphael and Philippe, who, after the death of their parents, had been moved into an institution without their consent.

Vanier decided to invite these two men to make a home with him in the village of Trosly-Breuil, where he bought a simple stone dwelling with no indoor toilets and a wood-burning stove. It was a radical decision, one that he knew was irreversible, but as Vanier explains in his gentle, bemused way, “I knew it was right.” The three men worked and cooked and cleaned and ate together, as any family does – and therein lies Vanier’s big idea: not to do things “for” people with disabilities, but rather to do things “with” them. He dared to imagine a community where people of different abilities could come together and live as companions, embracing each other’s gifts and imperfections. He chose the name L’Arche, which is French for ‘the ark’; to symbolize the boat Noah built for safety and refuge. Vanier’s idea is at the centre of L’Arche’s new campaign: “Discover With” (www.discoverwith.ca), in celebration of his invitation to Raphael and Philippe, fifty years ago.

Jody and Laurie

Today there are 146 L’Arche communities around the world in 35 countries, in which people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together. One such community is in Calgary. It has five homes in close proximity, with easy access to each other. L’Arche Calgary also supports an Independent Living Program as well as a Day Program with activities such as music and art therapy. Members of L’Arche Calgary see each other often at prayer nights, group dinners and parties, and many volunteers and visitors take part in their programs and events. Garth Reesor is L’Arche Calgary’s Executive Director.

“When people think of L’Arche,” says Reesor, “the focus is often on providing a home for people with disabilities. But there is a bigger vision that goes far beyond that. L’Arche is about engaging people in our vision to bring about a more tolerant society. It’s about sharing our core values with the larger community around us – values about living together in peace, learning from one other, and acknowledging that every person has something important to offer. It’s about personal growth and transformation – which is ultimately what changes the world. ”

Rachelle Namak is one person whose world was profoundly changed because of L’Arche:

A Place in the Ark

By Rachelle Namak

The tale of Noah and the flood terrified me as a child: a vengeful God, an inescapable wrath…and above all, limited space in the Ark. I knew with a bleak certitude that I would not be one of the chosen and I would drown. That fear of drowning has haunted me all of my life. I struggled to learn to swim, to keep my head above water.

Shula

When my daughter Shula was born, I sensed immediately and intuitively that she would never be able to swim on her own and that it fell to me to keep the flood at bay. Shula was diagnosed with profound autism when she was two-and-a-half years old.

Floods come to us in many forms but there is always loss and loneliness and devastation. For me it was the dire dismissals of medical professionals, the disintegration of family ties, the breakdown of my own health, the desertion of friends… and, above all, the sense of diminishing strength and the ever-threatening waves.

Community is the only refuge and shelter from the storms of life. Some are blessed to find community within family, and others are blessed to find community through bonds of compassion and shared vulnerability.

I first heard the story of Jean Vanier and L’Arche when I was an 18 year-old university student, and it made a deep impression on me. When Shula was thirty years old, I re-discovered the L’Arche community. I never dreamed that she would be able to live there because I thought her autism was too severe. Much to my surprise, she was accepted at L’Arche. It literally saved my life.

The L’Arche logo is a tiny craft afloat on a sea, sheltering the most vulnerable of humanity. To the L’Arche community I send this message: There are many of us afloat in a sea of uncertainty and loss. To reach out to the vulnerable and create a place of warmth and security is the greatest work of mercy we can do on this earth.

I give thanks that my daughter has found a place in the Ark.