Tender to the World by Carolyn Whitney-Brown

Author:Carolyn Whitney-Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2019-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

4

Secret Agency and Surprising Subjects

Tender: a train’s fuel-source located behind the locomotive

In 2013, Jean Vanier received the Pacem in Terris Award that honours a global peacemaker. At the rather august ceremony, Vanier took a remarkably festive stance in his acceptance speech as he articulated how the core members shape the spirit of L’Arche:

Bishop Amos, many of those to whom you awarded this prize before me were heroes for peace. Some were imprisoned for their courage and determination for peace; some were assassinated. How is it you turned to us? We are a strange and crazy bunch in L’Arche. The road of peace which we have learned in L’Arche is a very simple one. You see, we are not very austere or stressed, struggling to be heroes. We eat wonderfully, we drink merrily – of course Coca-Cola, orange juice and, now again, wine and beer, moderately – we sing loudly and frequently out of tune, and we dance wildly and we play as much as possible. Feast days, birthdays are all occasions for parties and for fun. We pray with all our heart but not long hours. We do put our trust in God who is watching over us. Of course we do work in our workshops, and therapies can be serious and hard work. Each person is called to grow in inner peace and wisdom and of course we all grow to old age as time comes. There are sometimes heavy days when the wind blows strong and we feel we are floundering, but at the last moment the gentle hand of God saves us. The heart of L’Arche is to rejoice and to celebrate unity.1

Vanier describes here how the people of L’Arche are agents of social transformation, “pacem in terris,” peace on earth, through their life together.

What L’Arche can offer the United Church has “more to do with a way of being than a lesson to be learned,” asserts disability theologian John Swinton.2 He adds, “when you look at L’Arche, to some extent you see something of the nature of God. The Church should not look like L’Arche but should understand what L’Arche looks like and why it looks the way that it does.” Like the often-overlooked locomotive tender that fuels the engine, core members are the power behind L’Arche, the fuel providing the energy of each community. L’Arche looks the way it does because of the agency of individuals with intellectual disabilities living in community.

Philosopher Richard Kearney claims that stories shape both agency and community, noting how Aristotle “argued, in his Poetics, that the art of storytelling – defined as the dramatic imitating and plotting of human action – is what gives us a shareable world. It is, in short, only when haphazard happenings are transformed into story, and thus made memorable over time, that we become full agents in our history.”3 L’Arche communities worldwide excel at imitating what Kearney terms “the haphazard happenings” of their lives together. Anyone who has spent time in L’Arche has seen core

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