When I travel north to L'Arche Ottawa, I have an extended time of solitude in the car. The visuals are lovely - rock cliffs, rushing rivers and streams, open fields that are sometimes fallow and at other times full, and the ever-changing colors of north country maple, elm, ash, beech, aspen and oak trees - turning my drive into an extended meditation. Travel time, at least so far, has been one of the unexpected gifts of being connected to this community. Like they say in AA: wherever you go, you have to take yourself with you. So each month, as I settle into the groove of the journey, I have 13+ hours (round trip) of quiet time to listen to what's rushing around inside my head and my heart. It has become my hermitage on wheels, my 21st century pilgrimage, and I look forward to it. One of the contemporary authors on pilgrimage, Phil Cousineau, put it like this: "In each of us dwells a pilgrim. It is the part of us that longs to have direct contact with the sacred... (for) that which you looking for may be calling you to seek." That rings true for me: in the silence of this journey, I listen to the noise within as it moves slowly towards silence; in the music I play in the car, I get clues as to what is hurting as well as grateful in my heart; and in preparing for travel, I discover how frantic or grounded I am in real time. Like Thomas Merton observed: The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.
This month was centered upon three inter-related commitments: 1) structured quiet time for the L'Arche assistants to reflect on their experiences; 2) talking and listening to the whole community's hopes and fears for the future; and 3) inviting house leaders to share their wisdom with the spirituality team re: what we can do to support their lives in community with core members as well as assistants. Given my quiet time in the car, I came to see that our discernment this week was the practical union of the spiritual and the material. It was a way of giving shape and form to Words of faith becoming Flesh. Or, as Psalm 85: 10 says: "Steadfast love and faithfulness will embrace; justice and compassion will kiss." Jean Vanier is clear that true community unites heaven and earth:
Some people may find material chores irksome; they would prefer to use their time to talk and be with others. They haven't yet realized that the thousand and one small things that have to be done each day, the cycle of dirtying and cleaning, were given by God to enable us to communicate through matter... We are all called to do not extraordinary things, but very ordinary things, with an extraordinary love that flows from the heart of God... A community which has a sense of work done well, quietly and lovingly, humbly and without fuss, can become a community where the presence of God is profoundly lived... and in this the community will take on a whole contemplative dimension.
Our first day was about telling our stories, going inward in silence to listen for the stirring of the Spirit, and then sharing aloud part of our discernment. It was a tender and vulnerable day filled with laughter and tears. Over and again I heard us say that we were each called to L'Arche to help others. Yet sometime early on we discovered that we, too were in need of help. Healing. Love. And more often than not, it has been our core member friends who have led us into our deepest blessings. Vanier writes: We have to realize that this wound [of loneliness] is inherent in the human condition and that what we have to do is walk with it instead of fleeing from it. We cannot accept it until we discover that we are loved by God just as we are, and that the Holy Spirit in a mysterious way is living at the center of the wound.Throughout the first day of retreat this was woven into our private and silent times, our small groups and conversations, our larger gatherings as we listened carefully, and at our evening meals with their ordinary grace. It was for me as if we were channeling Vanier: To reveal someone’s beauty is to reveal their value by giving them time, attention, and tenderness. To love is not just to do something for them but to reveal to them their own uniqueness, to tell them that they are special and worthy of attention.
The second day started with an intense three and a half hour public process to hear what the whole community - core members, assistants and leaders - hoped for and feared as L'Arche Ottawa ripens over the next four years. This was the culmination of personal reflection and small group conversations that had already taken place. Each table of ten talked together - and I found this to be holy ground saturated with trust. As the day progressed, we ate together, rested in quiet, experienced some beautiful dance moves through the leadership of a Persian dance instructor, and then celebrated various core members and assistants anniversaries.
One of the L'Arche traditions is to make a stole for those living in community. This symbol comes from the liturgical stoles of the Christian church worn by deacons, clergy and readers. Not everyone knows that the stole has its origins in the acts of Jesus as recorded in St. John's gospel. On the night before his betrayal, Jesus gathered his friends for a meal, and before sharing supper he knelt at their feet and washed away the dirt from the day's journey. While doing so, he wore a towel, symbol of a humble servant, and this became both the liturgical stoles of worship as well as L'Arche's symbol of our life in community. On each stole are tactile objects that portray part of each person's story. What a genuinely brilliant way to celebrate a person's gifts! Our day together ended with a liturgy of Eucharist. Afterwards, I shared a simple supper with another house and played a few tunes on the guitar.
Day three was grounded in listening to house leaders consider how our local spirituality team might support their life in community. For an hour we "checked in" with one another, sharing honestly what was on our hearts with clarity and openness. Then the house leaders shared their reactions to the question: "What do you need to deepen the spirituality of L'Arche in your unique home?" I was struck again with the willingness to listen to one another carefully rather than control the conversation or talk over one another. The house leaders were explicit: they did not need more tasks; rather they looked for well-crafted suggestions as to how they might integrate conversations and prayers shaped by the values of L'Arche into their existing practices. Two themes quickly rose to the surface: no one needs MORE to do, and, everyone yearns for the suggestions offered in our discussion to become real. Without both our time will have been wasted and disappointments will deepen. I couldn't help but think of the way Vanier put this in Community and Growth: Many people believe that community life is made up of a series of problems to be solved. And consciously or unconsciously, they are waiting for the day when all the tensions, conflicts, and problems . . . will be resolved and there will be no problems left! But the more we live community life, the more we discover that it is not so much a question of resolving problems as of learning to live with them patiently. Most problems are not resolved. With time, and a certain insight and fidelity in listening, they clear up when we least expect them to. But there will always be others to take their place!
In my homily at Eucharist, I started by saying: "When I was very young, I asked my grandmother, a pastor's wife, when might I see the face of God?" As a rational, Unitarian mystic, she wasn't able to answer my 6 year old question to my satisfaction. I added that it had taken me 60 years to find the answer, but I finally found what I was looking for at L'Arche. (Think U2.) This community has shown me how to find the face of the Lord in one another. When God's love shines out from out hearts, we discover eyes to see and ears to hear. It is the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy: This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. This prompted one of my dearest friends from the Mountainview home, Terry, to say out loud: "We are Jesus in a wheelchair." God knows he was right.
Driving home early the next moorning (so that I might avoid the impending snow storm) I kept thinking about
Vanier's insights as shaped by Terry's confession:
A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.
I believe that my connection with L'Arche Ottawa is bathed in gifts - including the long drive - but so much more, too. Phil Cousineau got it right: "I am convinced," he wrote, "that pilgrimage is still a bona fide spirit-renewing ritual. But I also believe in pilgrimage as a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler. With a deepening of focus, keen preparation, attention to the path below our feet, and respect for the destination at hand, it is possible to transform, even the most ordinary journey into a sacred journey, a pilgrimage."
At breakfast this morning, as Di and I spoke of my time away, she smiled at me and said, "Hmmmm, think you've found your new calling in retirement? I've wondered if the feeling had passed. But judging from the look on your face in those pictures from the retreat, there's NO question: this IS your calling!"Je le pense aussi, ma plus chèrie, je le pense aussi ...
At breakfast this morning, as Di and I spoke of my time away, she smiled at me and said, "Hmmmm, think you've found your new calling in retirement? I've wondered if the feeling had passed. But judging from the look on your face in those pictures from the retreat, there's NO question: this IS your calling!"Je le pense aussi, ma plus chèrie, je le pense aussi ...
special thanks to the Spirituality Committee and Community Life Leader, Henrietta Kelemen for bringing this retreat to fruition
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