Lessons Learned from L’Arche

I thought that I might talk about some of the lessons for the Order of Malta which have been learned from working with members of L’Arche. 

I know that Rich has been quite active in L’Arche and has been promoting it as a work of the Order, but for those of you who might not be familiar with it, L’Arche is a network of 61 homes in the United States, and  other homes in 38 countries throughout the world that are each made up of individuals with intellectual disabilities and individuals without such disabilities.  They live together in such communities on a more or less equal basis, consisting typically of four members with intellectual disabilities (called “core family members”) and perhaps four members without disabilities (called “assistants”), and many, many people who come in to help or provide administrative support.  There are four such homes in the Greater Washington DC area, two in Adams-Morgan and two in Arlington.  And there is a fifth under development at the Reeves Farmhouse in Arlington.

L’Arche had its beginning in 1964 when a French Canadian layman named Jean Vanier moved into a house in France with two men with intellectual disabilities.  Vanier wrote many books about his experience and was the acknowledged intellectual leader of the movement. 

But after he died, it came out that he had had sexual relationships with seven women of the communities, none intellectually disabled.  L’Arche conducted an investigation and published the results of that, and in some homes lost membership; in others, there was no loss in membership, as seems to have been the case in the Washington DC and Virginia groups. 

I feel that it was a grievous blot on L’Arche but it in no way affected my participation in or regard for L’Arche.  I believe that no one is as good as their best deeds nor as bad as their worst.  I still read Vanier’s books and find a lot of wisdom in them.  Still, you might feel differently.  Fair warning.

Anyhow, I am not a regular at L’Arche but I have spent quite a few mornings and evenings there, have  been there for birthday parties and joined retreats.  I have one core member who calls me often during the day to check in.  But I am going to talk to you about things that apply not just to people with intellectual disabilities (though many of us may know one or more of those folks – my own sister, who died two years ago year at age 82 was one such), but things that would apply to all of us even if we know no one with a disability.  I'm going to talk about listening in general – first as applied to L’Arche and next as applied to listening to anyone.  These are lessons that I believe have resonance for the Order of Malta.

The first thing that I have learned from L’Arche: I thought originally that I was going there in order to help the “poor people” who were there. I was going, in a word, to help the poor. These individuals, and I'm talking about the core members now, are, every one, a child of God. That is their most important identifying characteristic. They are all short in some ways of perfection – but who isn’t? And so, I began to reflect who among us has weaknesses, is flawed. And most important, who is not?

In doing that, I learned that I myself was poor.I was vulnerable, I had weaknesses. Now that’s no great discovery, least of all for anybody who knows me; I have weaknesses? What a surprise!

But yes, I have weaknesses so I could go down the ladder, be with people who also had weaknesses, be with people who need affirmation just as I need affirmation – well, that did come as a surprise to me.

For one thing, I can be crabby and irritable. All the characteristics I am describing this morning, I found first in myself. How often have I brushed off those who needed my attention? All these things, which count as only one of my weaknesses, came to the fore.

I had been thinking that this was foolish for me to listen to these people – and I was reminded of the words of St. Paul:  “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside….For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.” 

And that led me to try to just be with these folks, not to try to do something for them, just to be with them. Funny thing, I've often been to Lourdes on pilgrimage with the sick, and the same thing was true there, just to be with these folks was the important thing.

In every community, there are marginal people, people, that is to say, people who do not quite fit into the body. Perhaps this is because they have fits of anger or despair. They often feel useless, unloved, persecuted. And yet, we are called to listen to them. These are people inside and outside the L’Arche communities. I think of the old saying, every man and woman you meet is carrying an enormous burden of which you know nothing; be kind, always.

You know, this has relevance for the Order, too.We can opt always for the bigger project, the greater good, and we can ignore the person, the lost or miserable person, the “sad sack” who is right in front of us.

So my lesson here was not to try to do anything big, not to hurry, not to interrupt, not to change the drift of the conversation so I could say something incredibly moving or to recite my own experience. No, just to listen. Just to be with these folks as one who has disabilities and vulnerabilities and weaknesses in common with them. 

Because who knows, this person – disabled or not – might view my listening as one of the first times in his life that he was really listened to? After all, he has been ignored most of his life, cast aside, told he is of no use to anyone.  And you have just given him what, as the French philosopher Simone Weil said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

And I thought: if this is the key to listening to the intellectually disabled, could it also be the key to listening to everyone else, to my co-worker who doesn’t seem worth listening to, to my spouse or children?  To the person to whom I am delivering coffee with Bob Holman or listening to at one of our ex-offender ministries?  While we are a step above them in terms of the security of our lives, we are, after all, when it comes to essentials -- on the same level as they are.

It takes a lot of effort to learn to listen, too.  One of my friends says it is the hardest thing he’s ever done.  Just to keep quiet even when the conversation seems to be lagging – to be patient. 

The next thing I learned at L’Arche is to listen quietly, without judging.   This sounds simple; the core family members can be hard enough to understand.  It is difficult to think of them doing anything that you would judge.  But they do.  Perhaps they have an idea that to you sounds preposterous.  But you don’t judge.  You don’t interrupt, anticipating (you think) what they are going to say.  You don’t steer the conversation around to your own experience.  “’That reminds me of,’” says Henri Nouwen, is “a standard method of shifting attention from the other to ourselves….  That is why listening is so difficult.   It means our moving away from the center of attention and inviting others into that space.”

You just listen.  And you slow things down.  When you go to L’Arche, everything is slowed down.  That’s what it takes to get people dressed, move to another location, do all the things that you want to do.  So, slow and attentive.

And that, too, can be an example for the many other people we might listen to.  Some of them we think of like disabled individuals, maybe not with an actual handicap, but in the “second half” of humanity.  You know, the first half have something to offer me in exchange for my listening; the second half have nothing to offer.  If you're like me, you'd prefer to speed past the second category.  If you do spend time, you are immediately focused on helping to solve a problem.  Perhaps your natural empathy leads you to say, “Something exactly like that happened to me.”  But the other person doesn’t need you to talk about your problems; she needs you to listen to her problems.  She doesn’t always want a solution, at least not at this time.  She just wants to get her situation out, where you and she can look at it.  Maybe something will come out that you and she can work on together; maybe not. 

And there are a hundred ways of letting people know you aren’t really ready to listen.  I can be busy and say, yes, come in, but I am thinking: I don’t really have time for him.  Or I listen with my smartphone on the table.  But I am not really listening.

This (it seems to me) is a lesson for everyday life.  It’s true of anybody you want to listen to.  Even for those of you who don’t know any people with intellectual disabilities, you certainly know other people who could use a listen. You know the people I'm talking about.  Often, they are the folks you least want to listen to.  The ones who are full of woes about themselves.  The ones you inwardly groan when you see.  And maybe you can't listen to them most of the time, but every now and again?  Or it could be someone you really should listen to, like your spouse.  But you can't just breeze in, planning on a 3-minute talk, anxious to get the conversation around to your own experience, anxious (if truth be known) to be on your way.  No, listening – true listening – takes time. 

And this applies to people whom we help in Malta.  You know, and I do believe most of us do know, helping someone is not the same as accompanying him.  Handing a sandwich to him is not all there is.  I think we’ve all learned this at Lourdes, when some of the most valuable things we’ve done have come around the dinner table, not when we are celebrating Mass or on a procession.

Lastly, I've learned many things from L’Arche, but one final thing is this: when I enter L’Arche, I find myself thinking: I’d like to get closer to this person, but not too close.  You know what I mean?  I signed up for, let’s say, 3 hours every 2 weeks.  I don’t want this person to think he can call me whenever he wants, that he can lean on me to solve his problems.

(I should say parenthetically here that, as I mentioned before, there is one core family member who does call me, for about a minute or two during the day, to check in with me.I called her last night. I think that’s charming and not intrusive. But I might resist if I thought I was getting too close to her.)

And doesn’t that reticence carry over to my daily life, with non-disabled people?  (Or perhaps I should say, those who think they are not disabled?  For all of us have weaknesses and vulnerabilities, don’t we?)  That’s the problem with the man at the office whom we’d like to talk with, but we’d also like to set limits.  We don’t care to be drawn into his affairs too much.  And so, we don’t have the conversation at all, or if we do, we keep it on the surface.  Sometimes we do that with our children. 

It's like the man on the road to Jerusalem in the parable. He’s beaten up and needs help. The priest and the Levite pass him by; they have things to do in Jericho, doubtless important things. They don’t want to disrupt their agenda to help this man, lest they get involved in his agenda. But the Samaritan does.

That always reminds me of the homeless man begging on the street.I hear often enough that I should give him something but also say hello to him, give him my name, start a conversation with him. But no, I mostly do not make eye contact – like in New York City. Maybe I'm afraid of just knowing him a little too well. But if I do learn his name, if I take the trouble to learn a little about him, then…. Well, maybe I will be drawn into his affairs more than I wanted to, but then again, so was the Samaritan.

So there seem to me to be at least three lessons for Malta from L’Arche about listening, that really apply to listening when I am active in Malta, or across my life. Don’t judge: really listen to the other without leaping ahead to my experience, my solution. Go into it with the view that I am not helping the poor; I am the poor. And try to worry less about how I might get drawn into her life, and more about being an attentive listener.