L'ARCHE CARRY ME

Isn’t it shocking when a cliché turns out to be true?

From December 2005 to Feb 2007 I was a live-in Assistant at L’Arche, a Christian community centered on the lives of people with disabilities (whom we refer to as the ‘Core Members’ of the community). There I lived for over a year in a common house, working with and sharing my life with 5 adults with various developmental disabilities.

And that is the key to the L’Arche philosophy, that we share our lives with our Core Members, rather than functioning as ‘staff’. The L’Arche model is more like a family than a conventional group home.

Every Sunday our house would attend Mass together at the local parish. I remember one Sunday after mass an unsuspecting priest wandered over to us as we were getting our jackets on (having noticed our wheelchair and people with Downs’ Syndrome). He said hello, we introduced ourselves, and I briefly explained L’Arche to him. His response was; “Oh, isn’t that nice… you take care of them!”

Just then out of nowhere swooped in a senior member of our community, who happened to be standing within earshot, to rebuke the priest: “No—THEY (Core Members) take care of THEM (Assistants)”. Now I had heard of this idea floating around the L’Arche culture, and assumed it was simply a pious nicety from the pen of our founder, Jean Vanier. It couldn’t possibly be true… could it? How were these poor people—some who couldn’t even move their palsied bodies, speak or tie their shoes—possibly be taking care of ‘normal’ people like me?

It wasn’t until nearly a year later that I understood what these words truly meant. By then I had left the community and moved on. Well, I was trying to. After months of job searching, with all the anxieties of unemployment, I finally found myself working in a group home for kids with behavioral and psychiatric problems. It was a horrible job and I was utterly miserable. I felt like a guard in a junior jail.

However throughout this dark time I continued to visit L’Arche—but now these visits were beginning to take on a new meaning. I realized that throughout these struggles, L’Arche was becoming my place of refuge, of communion, and of understanding… Whereas the rest of the world saw me as unemployed and drifting, my friends at L’Arche only saw me as their old friend. They didn’t see the stigma of failure that I felt plaguing me, but accepted me for who I was.

It was then that I deeply felt ‘L’Arche’ live up to its name; French for ‘Ark’, as in Noah’s Ark, a refuge from the storm of the world. But I was wrong to assume L’Arche was but a vessel to carry those with disabilities; for all along it was I that was being mysteriously carried.