Interview: Beth Porter, author of Accidental Friends.

Can you briefly summarise the book? 

Accidental Friends begins with my discovery of L’Arche in 1980, and my own story holds the book together. I had never met a person with an intellectual disability. In fact, such people were generally hidden away in large institutions or kept at home by their families, who were often embarrassed to have them known. I found the people I met in L’Arche to be welcoming and charming, and their life together to be very attractive. Over the past four decades I have lived in L’Arche homes, helped lead a day program for seniors, and worked in L’Arche administration locally and nationally while remaining connected to my L’Arche home and friends. 

Life is very similar in L’Arche communities around the world, but this book centres mainly on my own  L’Arche Daybreak community in Richmond Hill, Ontario, the first community of L’Arche founded outside France. The book is about the people I lived with or came to know over the years, and about learning to be with each person. I include many stories—some humorous, some touching or poignant. I write of being drawn by the spirit of welcome and fun and the candour and enthusiasm of the people I met, by the quality of the young assistants who shared their life in L’Arche homes and day settings, and by the simple spirituality of L’Arche. My friendship with Michael, whom I met on my initial visit to Daybreak, and who wanted me to “Come back!” and with Ellen and a handful of other core members, as the people with disabilities are called, continues to deepen and is one of the threads that runs through the book.

How did you select the stories to include?

The stories I chose convey something of our daily life and of the personalities of the people with whom I spent time over the years. Some stories are humorous, some touching, some contain particular insights. When we gather in L’Arche, we often share stories of our life in community. The stories nourish us as individuals and are an important part of sustaining our community life. They enable us to laugh together and to savour moments that touched and perhaps shaped us individually or as a community. Some stories are about moments of stress or failure and, hopefully, of insight into our ourselves or the life of the community. For several years, I collected such stories—especially those that either touched me personally or revealed the creativity and zest for life of the core members (as the people with intellectual disabilities came to be called) and showed ways that they called forth the rest of us. Some stories came from other assistants. A few were sent out as L’Arche e-Stories when I worked with L’Arche Canada, the umbrella organization for the now thirty L’Arche communities in Canada.

What do you see as the roots of the L’Arche communities? 

L’Arche is first of all a response to a cry. Jean Vanier felt a call to try to do something to alleviate the loneliness and sense of rejection of people with intellectual disabilities, who were often warehoused in very large and barren institutions. However, he soon realized that what he was doing in welcoming a couple of men to create a home with him was in fact a source of blessing for him. He saw the mutuality in their shared life. These lonely men who could not do anything much for themselves, “the poor” if you like, were blessed with gifts of a sense of humour and care and an ability to give life to him. Their lives were an expression of the Beatitudes. He recognized the mutuality in their shared life. The experience of mutuality continues today to be at the heart of L’Arche.

L’Arche is a work of social justice, it is communal and it is faith-based without requiring people to embrace a particular faith tradition. L’Arche depends on a certain amount of gratuity on the part of the assistants. People who stay at L’Arche as assistants are not just interested in a job. They are the kind of people who are willing to go beyond themselves and to respond to unexpected needs. The flow of generosity and goodwill as well as the mutuality in relationships attracted me and has long attracted others to L’Arche. While L’Arche is not a religious community, many people come with a spiritual depth or at least an openness to spirituality, regardless of whether they embrace a particular faith tradition. They are able to understand what Jean Vanier has often taught—that forgiveness and celebration are linked together, essential components of a healthy community.

Sometimes people think of L’Arche as Roman Catholic because Jean Vanier is a Catholic and L’Arche was founded in France. But as L’Arche spread it became obvious that L’Arche need not be Catholic. The people who needed a home or who would come as assistants would reflect the composition of the local population. My community of L’Arche Daybreak in Canada, the first L’Arche community outside France, was founded by Anglicans, and among the early members were people who had no faith connection, people of various Christian denominations, and of the Jewish faith. In India, L’Arche welcomed Hindus and Muslims as well as Christians. Nevertheless, I suspect certain principles that Jean Vanier may have drawn from his Catholic education influenced the tone and structures of community life in L’Arche. One is the preferential option for the poor.

L’Arche has grown and become established around the world and, on the whole, L’Arche communities have remained when many other attempts at communal living have disintegrated. Without doubt, the fact that L’Arche exists to give homes and meaningful work or daytime activities to people who are still readily marginalized today accounts in considerable measure for its persistence and growth. People with intellectual disabilities are at the heart of every L’Arche community.

What was it that led you to return and stay after your first visit to L’Arche Daybreak?

When I first visited L’Arche Daybreak in 1980, I had been teaching English to university students, but my life felt compartmentalized. My contact with the students was transitory and I was looking for a place where I could make a contribution while living a more integrated life and growing spiritually. Coming to live in L’Arche for a few months was an easy decision. I was touched by the welcome I received and charmed by the people I met. However, deciding to stay in L’Arche was a gradual process.  For the first couple of years I kept open the option of returning to my teaching position. Meanwhile, I learned something of the Ignatian practice of discernment and, in time, I came to see that my being in L’Arche was good not just for L’Arche but also for me--I was growing in openness and losing some of my reserve—and that, indeed, I belonged to the people I was sharing life with. They were in a certain sense, “my people.” I was also becoming more aware of their care for me, my heart was opening more to others, and I was deepening in my relationship with God.  Spending some months in another L’Arche community made the call to return and stay at Daybreak clear to me.

You mention in the book the impact that Henri Nouwen had at L’Arche Daybreak, can you explain his influence?

Remarkably, Henri Nouwen was exactly who we needed in our community life at the time he came to Daybreak. The world was changing rapidly in the 1980s and Henri (he insisted we use his given name) was wise and pastoral and broad minded, a cosmopolitan. He brought significant experience of dealing with diverse groups of people from university students to the poor of central America to people suffering from AIDS and those ministering to them, to Peace Movement activists. He had an excellent education in counselling and he had a profound understanding of the human heart. He wore his own heart on his sleeve and could be easily wounded, yet he would rise above this. Henri was ever generous, with his time, his books and his resources.

Henri was a very good listener in meetings and could tie together a whole raft of seemingly diverse threads in a succinct summary that often suggested the movement forward to which we sensed we were called either individually or as a community. He opened us up as a community, to the wider world. He understood the gift of L’Arche to our divided and often superficial society and called us to see this gift and to announce it, as he did himself. He was also practical. For instance, he knew the value of belonging to a particular faith tradition, whichever it might be, and he encouraged those who were open to this, to make a choice.

How would you explain the value of L’Arche and the significance of founder Jean Vanier’s vision in the context of today’s society/world?

“Belonging” is the most important social value today, in Jean Vanier’s view. Our lives should be about making a better world—one where each person can find their place and put down roots and grow and contribute. To be effective, we need to do this work together. L’Arche is called to welcome those who are most vulnerable and in need of a place to belong. The work of L’Arche is to help those who are devalued by our society discover that they are valued and lovable and have gifts to bring to others. L’Arche will always be small, but over the years it has grown to be a sign of hope for many people around the world.

Beth Porter is author of Accidental Friends:Stories from my life in community, which is available now in paperback. She has been a part of L’Arche Daybreak community for nearly forty years.