My time in
l'Arche is coming to a close. Two communities (Portland & DC), three roles (respite, assistant, and home life coordinator), and 23 months later, I am finishing up my time -- at least for now. Since graduating from college in 2006, this has been my way of life: preparing massive nightly meals, flossing teeth, playing silly games, administering
meds, watching Oprah on the couch, filling out droves of paper work, baking cookies, attending multiple weekly meetings, singing songs, shoveling snow off the driveway, dropping people off at work, praying after dinner, sweeping the floor, buying a ton of groceries, leading prayer nights, going on retreats. The day-to-day changes, the various challenges and opportunities, the multiple avenues of growth have proven to be really good fit for my personality. I thrive on change, on each day being different. Monotony tends to deaden my soul.
This life has been a strange mixture of stay-at-home parent, social worker, pastor, and event coordinator. Good, practical life skills earned, for sure, not to mention learning how to posture myself towards the vulnerable and how to identify/come to terms me with my own vulnerabilities. There was a time where this sort of work was frightening and foreign. Though I felt I embodied certain abstract notions of kindness and positivity before coming to l'Arche, I never understood myself as the type of person who could love others in practical, physical ways. Nor could I have ever described myself as a patient person, a listener, a selfless caregiver, a gentle presence. In fact, I think most people who come into
l'Arche wouldn't immediately characterize themselves in these ways. And those that do will find that they've never had opportunity to practice patience, forgiveness, generosity. We just don't live in a society where these virtues can naturally be practiced. They have to be conjured up, dusted off, put to good use, else they will atrophy and dissolve.
L'Arche is a place where we can be more fully human. It is a place where we can practice the long-forgotten disciples of simplicity, peace-making, and presence. And it is a place where we can express our hopes, fears, joys, and pains in real, tangible ways.
L'Arche provides us, core members and assistants alike, with the opportunity to live righteously in a way that our larger society cannot. We cannot expect the woman in front of us at the post office to treat us with dignity and respect, because this is not the culture of
bureaucracy. There, efficiency is paramount, as well as detachment, isolation, and autonomy. We cannot expect the driver behind us on the Beltway to practice selflessness, because this is not the culture of the Beltway. In these places, we have no common culture that informs our behavior or tells us how to love one another. We may have basic common courtesy, but it's a politeness rooted in Kant's Social Contract, not in the theological narrative of the Church.
In a more broader sense, we need the Church to be our common culture, the Body that informs our way of being and doing, of buying and voting. Just as
l'Arche has established a way of life for its community members (based on the
Beattitudes), the Church must provide a place for us to act out the tenants of our faith. This is why disputes within parishes or dioceses that are settled in a secular court provide no witness for the Church as an alternative culture. This is why parishes that are more comfortable modeling themselves off of the social and fiscal policies of the Republican or Democratic parties have lost their prophetic voice.
L'Arche's uniqueness to the surrounding culture, as well as to any other organization that cares for the
developmentally disabled, is so telling. People come to
l'Arche and are changed because they've never experienced anything like it before - not in their places of work, their families, or even their churches. Guests who come to dinner talk of their experiences as "brief encounters with Jesus." Core members enter
l'Arche after years of living at home or in institutions, and finally, finally they become fully alive. Assistants come to serve and find that they, too, are experiencing healing and growth as they never have before.
L'Arche is a different place, an alternative way of being. And it's appeal is wide-spread.
Yes, yes, my time in
l'Arche has taught me about myself, about relationships, and community, and loving in tangible ways. But most profoundly,
l'Arche has provided me with a vision of what the Church Universal ought to be. It's said that
l'Arche is not a solution but a sign to the world, pointing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. More often than not, the Church believes that She Herself is the solution, when in fact She is called to be the vessel of God's Good News, pointing others towards that which is greater than Herself. If the Church was less concerned about solving problems and more concerned about faithful witness, orthodox theology, and communal identity as a people bound up in the narrative of the Christian faith, perhaps our experience of church would be more transforming, life-changing, challenging, and
disciplining, just as
l'Arche is. Perhaps the Church would finally start acting like the Church.
