to everything there is a season: grief and joy at L'Arche Ottawa...

It is a fiercely cold day in the Berkshires - piercing, wet and frigid - with a grey sky that masks even the hint of a horizon. A powdery snow is falling, too. Upon reading a comment last night from one of the founders of the L'Arche Ottawa community, it hit me: I need to practice what I preach concerning living a life of quiet balance. For the past few weeks I have been in an overtly grieving mode that will last as long as it lasts. Short-circuiting grief - or denying/distracting it - only means the anguish will continue to live within and will likely pop out again at the worst possible moment. Grief is a demanding master, yes? Joy Davidman used to tell her husband, C.S. Lewis, that the measure of love and joy we know now will later return to us in equal measures of anguish and grief. No other film clip I know captures this paradox better than the closing of "Shadowlands" with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

In the midst of this sorting and grieving, however, life continues to be filled with incredible mystery and beauty. The wisdom tradition of ancient Israel was clear that: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."

A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Jesus of Nazareth spoke this truth, too in a different way when he told his friends in the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you:  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, sending rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

That is: be mature and in-balance with the ebb and flow of good and evil, light and dark, joy and sorrow, hope and despair, life and death just as God is alive within this paradox. Do not be surprised that there is suffering. It is part of the circle of creation. Last Tuesday night, for example, after a full day of hard talk and discernment, I shared supper with the core members and assistants of the Mountainview house - and laughed and laughed and laughed. We sang some songs - "You Are My Sunshine" and "Lean on Me" - and told some jokes. And ate some delicious pancakes on Fat Tuesday. It was a grand time of simply being - not doing, not fretting, not grieving, not processing or planning - just being. And that is one of the God given gifts L'Arche has shared with me and so many others: the charism of being.

This got me going through some of the pictures I have taken of my times at L'Arche. And individually holding up to the Lord some of my friends in prayers of thanksgiving and gratitude.

 

 

Looking back over these photographs brings to my heart and mind the blessing that have been given to me at L'Arche. In her sobering and mature reflection on the revelations about Jean Vanier, On Being founder and host, Krista Tippett, put it like this:

Before I sat down with Jean Vanier, in the very early years of the show, we did something we called a “radio pilgrimage” to L’Arche. We went to one of the communities in the U.S. in a small town in Iowa. It was one of the most beautiful, life-giving experiences I have ever had. And when I say that, I’m thinking of the faces and the voices and the lives of the core members and assistants. This is the way L’Arche works. It’s community centered around people with mental and intellectual disabilities. People who in Jean Vanier’s lifetime — and he did help change this — were sent away into institutions. They weren’t treated as fully human and weren’t loved and cared for. So when I think of that community in Clinton, Iowa, and I think of the 50th anniversary celebration I attended, which was a gathering of people from communities from all across the U.S. — you know, Jean Vanier wasn’t there. It was all those people. I saw at that gathering, just a couple of years ago, all these 21-year-olds who were spending several years of their life in this community...  And what we’ve just learned about Jean Vanier takes nothing away from that.

That rings true to my experience: the community, the compassion, the presence of being, the intentionality of tenderness, and the commitment to being real in each moment endures - and I am so grateful.