Voyage of the Ark

I’m sure the folk in Inverness most pleased to hear of the recent award of the Templeton Prize – honouring living individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension – to Jean Vanier were those who live in the city’s L’Arche community.

Vanier, born Canadian in 1928 the son of a diplomat and future Governor General of Canada, turned his back on careers in the navy and academic philosophy and devoted his life to people with learning disabilities. He helped found both L’Arche (which now comprises 147 communities in 35 countries) and Faith and Light (1,500 communities in 82 countries.) They will benefit from the Templeton Prize money.

This gentle Roman Catholic with a powerful Christ-like presence is an apostle to our age, teaching and living, as Jesus taught and lived, a different way of being.

I’ve visited the L’Arche community in Inverness several times. I’m always impressed by the atmosphere of love and calm as people with learning disabilities and their friends live and share together.

Jean Vanier’s message is this: Our pursuit of success, as individuals and as a society, is often a way of masking deep uncertainties. We find it hard to acknowledge, let alone bring into the open our own brokenness. To spend time with people with learning disabilities – listening, really listening to them; caring about them, not just caring for them; entering into their joys and struggles – is to see their brokenness. And thus we come to acknowledge our own brokenness, and realise it’s OK to be broken, and encounter a healing love.

When we’re honest we find many ways in which we and those around us try to cover up our sense of brokenness – in workplaces and communities, and not least in churches. There’s activism – when we throw ourselves in to programmes and agendas, and are so busy that we scarcely have a moment to draw breath and be still.

There’s control – as we seek to control our environment and the people around us as a means of disguising the emptiness in our hearts, and the fear of losing control. There’s certainty – telling ourselves we hold all the answers, and shutting our ears to all evidence to the contrary, because we can’t bear unanswered questions. This is the driver behind religious fundamentalism in whatever faith tradition. (In contrast I love the quote I came across in a L’Arche context ‘Christian faith is not problem-solving, but mystery encountering.’)

There’s using everything – friends, contacts, leisure time, our abilities – as a means of furthering our own agendas, because we are too conflicted simply to enjoy the good things in life for their own sake. And there’s the quest for success – we’re driven to achieve, because we think if we’re successful people will like and respect us, and we might even learn to like and respect ourselves. We have not yet realised that, as Vanier teaches, each one of us is beautiful, each one of us is precious, each one of us is loved.

I know these diversionary tactics very well. I sit with someone who is frail and weak, and in my foolishness I think ‘I must try to show love to this person, but I really should be out there doing something productive.’ Can I learn the lesson expressed in another L’Arche quote, that ‘my saviour is the one who needs me;’ can I find healing in sharing love and brokenness with this dear person and realising that it is enough to be loved?

And in my busy-ness I find myself thinking ‘What about when you are old, when you can no longer be busy? How will you survive then?’ I mutter impatiently ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. One day I’ll really learn to live out the reality that being precious and loved by God and by others is all I need; one day I’ll realise that it’s OK to be still, loving and being loved.’ Why not today?

In reality we are all on a learning journey. ‘L’Arche’ means ‘the arc’ – both a symbol of hope, and a vessel such as the famous Noah’s Ark. We journey towards wholeness throughout our lives, healing and being healed, we voyage together on the Ark beneath the rainbow of hope.

And we are joined on the voyage by Jesus Christ, the only unwounded one, who submitted to wounding in order to bring us healing. This wounded healer journeys with each of us; he truly listens; his love for us is the source of our worth and our wholeness. Is he an exception to the principle that ‘my saviour is the one who needs me’ or can we be radical in our theology and say that seeing our wounds healed brings healing to the heart of God?

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 26th March 2015)