LIFE IN COMMUNITY An illustrated and abridged edition of Jean Vanier’s classic
COMMUNITY AND GROWTH
First published in English in 2019 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd 1 Spencer Court 140 – 142 Wandsworth High Street London SW18 4JJ Text © 2019 Jean Vanier Illustrations © Seán O’Brien The right of Jean Vanier to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998. With thanks to Isabelle Aumont, Chris Asprey, Heather Coogan and Amy Merone. Published under licence from Mame, Paris, publisher of the first edition in French, La Communauté, (2017). ISBN: 978-0-232-53398-9 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Designed and produced by Judy Linard. Printed and bound by Imak Offset.
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 7
Building community
43
Be patient
45
THE CALL 13
Tensions lead to growth
47
The adventure of life in community 15
Being patient with ourselves
49
The call
17
Accept and forgive
51
Freedom and commitment
19
53
The risk of loving
21
Forgiveness, seven times seventy-seven
Community: a place of caring
23
Beneath the masks
25
Community: a different way
27
Community is given to us
29
Everyday heroism
31
United in God’s eyes
33
GROWTH 35
Trust 55 Loving and leaving
57
NOURISHMENT 59 The power of communion
61
Meals 63 Solitude and prayer
65
Nourishment for growth
67
Looking after ourselves
69 71
From ideals to reality
37
Surpassing friendships …
39
The pleasure of giving … the joy of receiving
… and enmities
41
Commitment 73
5
EVERYDAY LIFE 75
MISSION 99
Being oneself
77
101
A diversity of gifts
79
The risk of closing in upon ourselves
Individual gifts
81
Community and family
103
The gift of oneself
83
Welcoming with discernment
105
Offering, giving, nourishing
85
Open to the world
107
Welcoming the stranger
109
Listening to the poor
111
The vocation of welcoming
113
You are valued
115
Giving life
117
Envy 87 Express yourself
89
Everyday living
91
Young and old, living together
93
Taking care of the community
95
Feeling responsible for others
97
6
Celebration! 119 Let’s go!
121
L’ARCHE
123
INTRODUCTION
A
few days ago, a young man asked me what a community is. When I responded by asking him, ‘What do you think?’ he said, ‘It’s a group of men and women who are closed in on themselves.’ No, it’s precisely the opposite. To be closed is what a sect is, but not a community. A community is a group of men and women who love and respect one another, and genuinely look out for each other. They meet or live together for the sake of a common, Godgiven mission. That mission can be very varied: welcoming those in difficulty in Jesus’ name, working for peace in situations of grave unrest, living a life of prayer and contemplation for the sake of the world, being a sign in society that people of difference can live joyfully together, uniting and working together for the sake of the planet, etc.
*** At first sight, community life seems wonderful: a true ideal. But let’s admit it: it’s not easy to live alongside people who are very different than ourselves. I myself have been living in a L’Arche Community for more than fifty years. Our aim is to live together: people with intellectual disabilities and others who come to be with them. Each member of a community has their own temperament, their weaknesses, their faults, their wounds, their story, their defence mechanisms, often as a consequence of childhood experience. People of different ages, cultures, religions, abilities or disabilities, live together, each one with their own story. So it is not always easy to live and work together, while loving and respecting one another, and truly listening to each other. Everyone in the community may well have good intentions. However, even if each person has freely chosen to be there, and wants to live the life of
7
the community, nevertheless we are all unique, and are capable of loving and welcoming others only in our own individual way, and to a greater or lesser extent. In every person, there is a gap between the desire to love and accept everyone else, and the reality of loving them as a brother or a sister in everyday life. So the community is not an ideal, where each person is discovered to be perfect; for we are all human beings, and each of us has our weaknesses and difficulties in opening ourselves up to others in relationship. And so community becomes a place of healing and liberating our hearts, a place where we gradually learn to love and forgive one another from day to day. In community life, there are always times of conflict and difficulties in relationship. That is why a community is a place of belonging for the sake of becoming. We belong to each other for the sake of a mission: in order that each of us would become freer, happier, more deeply human, more mature, more responsible, more capable of loving and accepting those who are different to us. In other words, living together is a journey on which each person agrees to resist closing in on themselves, on their own ego, in order to be more open to others. That implies a sort of conversion, a change of values, a transformed life that is open to God and to God’s love. And that conversion or transformation does not happen once and for all, it needs to happen again and again each day, through prayer and individual effort. It involves a daily struggle against egocentric impulses, which are caused and perpetuated by tiredness and failures of various kinds, which can occur at any moment. That is why each person needs the strength that comes from the heart of Jesus, in order to continue the journey towards transformation.
*** It must be admitted that we live in a society where children are very quickly pushed by their school towards achieving things as individuals. They need to get good marks, to be winners on the sports field, to appear to be the best at
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many things, to be appreciated and recognised by parents and teachers alike. And not to succeed is to risk being punished. So many people in our society find themselves in a perpetual battle to succeed, to get a good job, to get promoted, to receive honours and recognition. We live in a competitive world. There are also people who, because of health problems, education, their family or social background, do not succeed to the same degree. They feel humiliated, are considered inferior, and harbour in their hearts a great deal of anger, and sometimes anguish. An individual or individualistic mind-set, the need to appear better than everyone else, according to the values of one’s family or society – all that is opposed to the way of life in community, where what is needed is openness to others, and values such as love, service and hospitality towards those who are different. Indeed, constantly focusing on ourselves or on our own group puts strain on our relationships with other people, and sometimes on relations between different groups; and this strain leads to fear, violence, hatred and various forms of war. That is how terrible rifts and splits open up in society, between individuals and social, political or religious groups.
*** Certain communities carry out a genuine peace mission, by seeking to tear down the walls that separate people and groups from each other. The perspectives that underpin these communities are based in the conviction that each person is precious, wherever he or she is from, and belongs to the great human family spread throughout the world. Each person is a child of God.
*** In his book on Pope Francis, AndrĂŠ Ricardi says that every community is founded on a story and on a hope for some kind of utopia. This utopia is the dream of a
9
world that might be possible, where everyone loves each other, and where there is no hatred or fear. This utopian hope for peace in the world is at the heart of every community. In creating the universe, didn’t God want all human beings to be united? L’Arche’s mission is undoubtedly to assist and welcome people with learning disabilities, to help them live a better life. But beyond that mission lies a utopia: that every man and woman throughout the world would become more fully human – happier, more mature, more loving.
*** It takes time time – a whole lifetime, in fact – for each member of the community to move away from an egocentric perspective and open up to others, to become a brother or sister to all. It takes God’s strength, spirituality, and daily nourishment, to have the energy needed to work for true community and for its mission. Indeed, everyone in community can easily fall prey to tiredness, discouragement, even depression, causing them to close in on themselves. Each one of us needs to take care of ourselves, our health and well-being, to get enough rest, to receive the spiritual nourishment we need to sustain our motivation to love. That is also true for the community as a whole, if it is to grow in faithfulness to its mission. In the 1960s and 1970s the time was ripe for starting new communities. Many people wanted to oppose various forms of heavy-handed authoritarianism in Church and society, in institutions and corporations, and were looking for a new approach. So, in May 1968, people were crying out for a new democratic society. Many people also wanted, idealistically, to live in community, without realising the difficulties entailed in that way of life. A good number of these idealistic communities quickly died. L’Arche managed to survive during those years, because the mission to live with people who had been excluded and marginalised helped to strengthen our life in community.
10
Today, people are crying out again for community life, because so many of the younger generation are starting to become disillusioned with individualism and with a form of personal freedom that separates us from each other. They find themselves trapped in the anguish of loneliness. People are also becoming aware that the major crisis facing humankind today lies in the terrible separation, and the shocking gap, that exists between the wealthy and well-off, and those who live in poverty and deprivation.
*** This book is intended to offer some of the ingredients necessary for living a genuine community life, that feast of brotherly and sisterly love, where people of difference encounter each other and are transformed. Community attempts to combine growth towards personal freedom with shared life, in a space where everyone receives the security, mutual support and friendship they need. Thus, a new vision is emerging, where community life, notwithstanding all its difficulties, is the path of hope we need for transforming hearts and creating a more peaceful world. The chapters in this book first appeared in a complete edition of the book Community and Growth, first published by DLT in 1979. This work is a new edition of extracts from that book, alongside artwork by Seán O’Brien, who is a professional illustrator. Each illustration depicts in the form of an image the content of the text next to it. The book was inspired by a group of friends from two organisations, APA (Association pour l’amitié – Association of Friends) and Lazare, which are communities where homeless men and women live alongside volunteers. They wanted members of their communities, many of whom respond more readily to expressive images than to written texts, to be able to use my book as a training tool for community life. L’Arche Communities, which also welcome many people who are unable to read, were obviously part of this initiative as well.
JEAN VANIER
11
THE CALL T h e Fo u n dat io n s of Co m m u n i ty
Life in community is painful, but it is also a marvellous adventure and a source of life.
14
THE ADVENTURE OF LIFE IN COMMUNITY
T
his book tries to clarify the conditions which are necessary to life in community. It is no thesis or treatise. It is made up of a series of startingpoints for reflection, which I have discovered not through books, but through everyday life, through my mistakes, my set-backs and my personal failings, through the inspiration of God and my brothers and sisters, and through the moments of unity between us as well as the tension and suffering. Life in community is painful but it is also a marvellous adventure and a source of life. My hope is that many people can live this adventure, which in the end is one of inner liberation – the freedom to love and to be loved. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:9, 12 – 13)
15
They keep a foot in each camp and live a compromise, without finding their real identity.
16
THE CALL
T
his call is an invitation: ‘Come with me.’ It is an invitation not primarily to generosity, but to a meeting in love. Then the person meets others who are called and they begin to live community. To enter into a new covenant and belong to a new people, a community with new values, we have to leave another people – those with whom we have lived – with other values and other norms: wealth, possessions, social prestige, revolution, drugs, delinquency, whatever. This passage from one people to another can be a very painful uprooting, and usually takes time. Many do not achieve it, because they do not want to choose or to cut themselves off from their old life. They keep a foot in each camp and live a compromise, without finding their real identity. To follow the call to live in a community, you have to be able to choose. The fundamental experience is a gift of God, which sometimes comes as a surprise. But this experience is fragile, like a little seed planted in the ground. After the initial experience, you have to know how to take its consequences and eliminate certain values to adopt new ones. So, gradually, comes the orientation towards a positive and definitive choice for community.
17
Inner growth is only possible when we commit ourselves with and to others.
18
S
FREEDOM AND COMMITMENT
o in community everything starts with this recognition of being in communion one with another; we are made to be together. You wake up one morning knowing that the bonds have been woven; and then you make the active decision to commit yourself and promise faithfulness, which the community must confirm. Some people flee from commitment because they are frightened that if they put down roots in one soil they will curtail their freedom and never be able to look elsewhere. It is true that if you marry one woman you give up millions of others – and that’s a curtailment of freedom! But freedom doesn’t grow in the abstract; it grows in a particular soil with particular people. Inner growth is only possible when we commit ourselves with and to others. We all have to pass through a certain death and time of grief when we make choices and become rooted. We mourn what we have left behind.
19
We want to belong to a group, but at the same time ‌
20
E
THE RISK OF LOVING
ach person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships with parents, is different. In each one there is a yearning for community and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we most want, yet it is what we fear the most. Love makes us vulnerable and open, but then we can be hurt through rejection and separation. We may crave for love, but then be frightened of losing our liberty and creativity. We want to belong to a group, but we fear a certain death in the group because we may not be seen as unique. We want love, but fear the dependence and commitment it implies; we fear being used, manipulated, smothered and spoiled. We are all so ambivalent toward love, communion and belonging.
21
If community is belonging and openness, it is also loving concern for each person.
22
COMMUNITY: A PLACE OF CARING
I
f community is belonging and openness, it is also loving concern for each person. In other words we could say it is caring, bonding and mission. Three elements define it. In community people care for each other and not just for the community in the abstract, as a whole, as an institution or as an ideal way of life. It is people that matter; to love and care for the people that are there, just as they are. It is to care for them in such a way that they may grow according to the plan of God and thus give much life. And it is not just caring in a passing way, but in a permanent way. Because people are bonded one to another, they make up one family, one people, one flock. And this people has been called together to be a sign and a witness, to accomplish a particular mission which is their charism, their gift. The difference between community and a group of friends is that in a community we verbalise our mutual belonging and bonding. We announce the goals and the spirit that unites us. We recognise together that we are responsible for one another. We recognise also that this bonding comes from God; it is a gift from God. It is he who has chosen us and called us together in a covenant of love and mutual caring.
23
They start lifting their masks and barriers to become vulnerable.
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