Community: A Place for Healing and Growth for All
By Jean Vanier
In 1976, we welcomed Claudia into our l’Arche community in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She was seven years old, blind and suffering from severe autism. We found her in a local asylum where she had been abandoned as a child. When she arrived in l’Arche, she used to scream a lot; she was totally confused; she had lost her center.
She did not know who she was or what she wanted. She had no idea what the community was about and who these people were who were welcoming her. How were we to help her rediscover her center, find peace of heart, grow in trust? And to what was Claudia calling us?
To feel lost, to be pushed aside, to have no place in a family or community is one of the greatest of all human pains. Anguish, terrible inner agitation, rises up. A sense of aloneness. An inner void. Confusion.
This is the plight of so many people with disabilities whom I have met in psychiatric hospitals and overcrowded asylums and institutions in various countries. It is the excruciating pain in the heart of the unwanted child-hurt, abandoned, perhaps abused.
Children are so fragile and vulnerable; they have no defense mechanism. As their empty, broken hearts grow, as the anguish increases, it permeates their whole body.
As they grow up and become adolescents, they may try to relieve the excruciating pain with drugs or alcohol. Or else they can become violent and destructive. Or they can escape from reality, into mental illness. When pain is too great, the powers of egocentrism invade every gesture. There is only “me,” seeking relief from inner agitation.
Hopefully, at some time in life, the young person in anguish has a meaningful encounter with someone who listens, who does not see him or her just as a nuisance or a problem but as a person. Authentic growth always begins with a personal encounter.
Such encounters can sometimes be but fleeting moments, soon forgotten, and even, one may think, illusions. However, if such encounters are repeated faithfully over time, then a bond of friendship gradually comes to birth. This friendship must, of course, be tested. Am I really loved? Is it possible that this other person really cares for me?
People discover that they are someone and can do beautiful things when they are loved, respected, listened to, seen as having value and encouraged to grow.
To love a person is to invite him or her into a network of relationships, a community. A child needs a mother and a father, brothers and sisters, cousins, and the wider community of friends. Healing deepens as we discover that we belong to something wider than a one-to-one relationship. We are part of a family, a community, a group of people bonded together. This bonding gives us a new and deeper security. We are different; we have different ages, temperaments and gifts, but we belong to one another.
The last time I visited the community in Honduras, Claudia was setting the table and walking in the yard singing to herself. She had found herself, and was in peace, through the day-to-day commitment of her caregiver, Nadine, through others in the community, and through the network of neighbors and friends.
People who have been deeply wounded as children or as adolescents can move from loneliness to community, from brokenness to healing-and this healing is not only for those whose brokenness is clearly visible.
In the gospel, Jesus tells the story of two sons. The youngest asked the father for their personhood. They need to learn that they do not have to remain hidden behind the walls of selfishness, possessions and power; they are called to discover the life that is within them and let this life grow to greater maturity. They are called to love others, to give life to them.
Each one of us needs to grow from brokenness to community. In community, we discover that we are bonded together. We can let down the walls that close us up in ourselves and learn to accept those who are different; we can learn to listen to others and to forgive; we can work through conflict. We can discover our deepest call: to love, to grow in compassion.
Sharing life together as a community, we can become a bridge between the able and disabled, the rich and the poor. Community is a place of growth for all.
The good news of Jesus is that He came to give us a new Spirit, to change our hearts of stone, built on fear, into hearts of flesh, built on compassion. This Spirit of love, the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, leads us to growth within a shared life in community.
Jean Vanier is the founder of the L’Arche community for the mentally handicapped and their helpers, which has nearly one hundred residential homes throughout the world. His writing has influenced much of WMF thought and commitment to community living. Jean Vanier lives at the L’Arche community in Trosley-Breuil, France. We highly recommend his books “From Brokenness to Community,” “Community and Growth” and “The Broken Body.”