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Essential Aspects for Assistants
"The secret of L'Arche is relationship: meeting people, not through the filters of certitude, ideologies, idealism or judgments but heart to heart; listening to people with their pain, their joy their hope, their history; listening to their hearts beat." — Jean Vanier
One of the basic tenets of L'Arche is that we are called to growth and maturity through relationships of mutuality. The journey towards wholeness is not just for people with disabilities but for all of us. We invite you to step away from the North American culture and discover a new way of looking at things. Will you choose to live the challenges, the pain and joys of community?
Today, we see there are four essential aspects for assistants in L'Arche:
- Discovery of the gifts of people who have a developmental disability
- Desire to create Christian Ecumenical Community
- Desire to learn from the wisdom of L'Arche
- Desire to grow in wholeness
Community asks much of you, but it also has much to offer! During your journey with L'Arche, we will regularly bring you back to these four points, to see how you are doing.
1. Discovery of the gifts of people who have a developmental disability.
Needless to say, the most important aspect of L'Arche is the gradual discovery that the person with a disability has so much to teach me. I am not here only as an assistant, but I also need to be "assisted" particularly in the ways of the heart. This is a gratuitous relationship and we each have something to give the other. I also am handicapped, and fundamentally, we are the same.
Every day, the core members will challenge you, and you will be challenged in how you relate with them. "Core Member" is the term used at L'Arche for the members of our community who have a developmental disability, because they are at the core of the community. It is in this relationship that you will discover L'Arche. It is there that your heart will be challenged, formed, and affirmed.
2. Desire to create Christian Ecumenical Community.
Community is not restricted to my individual house. The whole community welcomes, gives life and security, and calls each one to growth. Community does not come naturally; it requires love and effort. We are each responsible to create community with the whole body of L'Arche Hamilton.
3. Desire to learn from the wisdom of L'Arche.
We are part of a big family and we have much to learn from one another. "L'Arche" has been living community since 1964. If we desire to live in L'Arche, it implies that we are choosing to learn from the wisdom of L'Arche. Some aspects of L'Arche will be affirming and some will be challenging to our pre-conceived ideas. Stay open, read, discuss, and learn from the immense experience of community life around the world.
4. Desire to grow in wholeness.
We call you to journey towards wholeness, to integrate all you have lived in the past, with who you are today and what you are living today. Community should call you to journey inward, to discover in silence and solitude God's call for you. It should also call you to find someone to "accompany" you, to help you understand this call and interpret all that you are living. It will challenge you to be disciplined enough to create a new "rhythm of life" that is life giving for you and those you live with.
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