Stephanie Bower with Eric, a core member of the L'Arche community in Syracuse, NY.

L'Arche began 36 years ago in the northern French village of Trosly-Breuil, with three men living in community. Jean Vanier was a French Canadian philosopher, the son of a prominent family in Quebec, Canada. Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux were two men who had lived most of their lives in mental institutions.

"I had created inner barriers to protect myself from my fears and vulnerability," Vanier writes in The Heart of L'Arche. "In this beginning of community, the three of us, I began to learn to live from the heart."

L'Arche is French for "the Ark," a safe place to hold people where God's covenant has been manifested. There are now approximately 120 L'Arche communities around the world, including 14 in the U.S. Rooted in the teachings of Jesus, especially the Beatitudes, L'Arche offers family to the outcast and hope to neighborhoods where they live.

Learning to be community, to be family together, is at the heart of L'Arche. Vanier reminds people continually that "society regards people with disabilities as 'misfits,' 'sub-human.' The birth of a child with a handicap is considered a tragedy for a family. But in L'Arche we discover that these people have a great openness of heart and capacity for love; they seem to reveal what is most fundamental in all of us. Living with them in community can be difficult, but it also transforms us and teaches us what really matters in life. We may come to L'Arche to help the weak, but we soon realize that, in fact, it is they who are helping us."

Lifesharing Communities by Linda Strohmier My daughter Maggie, now nearly 30, has lived for the last 11 years in a "family of choice" called the Life Needs Coop, part of a larger community of lifesharing families known as Cadmus Lifesharing Association. Maggie is multiply handicapped -- brain-damaged, with multiple physical handicaps. She is also absolutely at home in this family, where she knows herself to be whole and wholly accepted -- essential, even. Maggie's particular household is the largest in Cadmus. Nick and Andrea Stanton are the heads of the household, which they share with seven to 10 handicapped adults and three to eight "co-workers." The household is constantly shifting in composition and number, depending on who needs a vacation, who needs respite care, how many volunteers from overseas have come to work and live alongside, and even how many of Nick and Andrea's five children or their six grandchildren are staying over for a few days or a few weeks. The house, whose kernel is a two-over-two New England farmhouse with a walk-in fireplace built in 1750, has grown, like the family -- a bit here, some more there -- into a rambling, comfortable home surrounded by flower beds. There are now at least four usable common room spaces and 12 or so bedrooms in the main house, decks and balconies and patios on three sides, plus offices and shops in outbuildings and the barn, which also houses an eight-loom weavery and a pasta-producing operation, the handiwork of their middle son, a professional chef. This lifesharing community is rooted in the Camphill Movement, started by a German pediatrician, Karl Koenig, in Scotland in the late 1930s. Having fled Nazi Germany and its eugenics program, Koenig and a group of coworkers began a household and school to care for "spastic children" near Camp Hill, outside of Glasgow. Camphill has since grown into a worldwide movement of schools for handicapped children and of larger and smaller communities in which handicapped and non-handicapped adults live together. Lifesharing varies the Camphill model by basing itself in individual family units, each an economically viable, independent entity. Life Needs Coop/North Plain Farm is a lifesharing household, now associated with six other lifesharing households in southern Berkshire County, Mass. Each household stands alone, but they collaborate in sharing activities, community meals, work projects, and each member's own specialized skills. They weave with Andrea, bake with Nina, work on recycling with John, frolic in the river behind Rachel's house. Each household is a "family of choice" or "volunteer family" guided by a married couple or individual dedicated to creating and maintaining a healthy extended family life. People with disabilities are included in these extended families as in a natural family. In Cadmus Lifesharing, the motto is: "Everyone is perfect in their essential being, and everyone is handicapped in bringing their essence to expression." In practice, that works out to mean that everyone in a lifesharing house genuinely needs and is interdependent upon everyone else there. Or, as the Cadmus Philosophy statement says, "The Cadmus Lifesharing Association seeks to create a community in which it is no handicap to be handicapped." Maggie knows that, while you might think she lives at Life Needs Coop to be taken care of, instead she is an essential part of the whole functioning family. Yes, she needs help bathing and dressing, and she gets it. On the other hand, one day this spring Andrea called to ask if we could rearrange Maggie's spring vacation time so that she could stay with them for the two weeks they had Amy for respite care. Amy is a more profoundly handicapped young woman -- non-speaking, probably autistic -- with whom Maggie has formed a strong bond of care. She will sit for hours talking with Amy, reading to her -- inhabiting her world and often giving voice to Amy's needs and wants, which she seems to intuit. Andrea called to say that they just didn't think they could manage Amy for those two weeks without Maggie. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. It's also, I think, the essence of "lifesharing." l Linda Strohmier is a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J.

Taking time to be present

A L'Arche assistant of several years (assistants are the people who live in community with the core members, those who are mentally disabled), Stephanie Bower recalls that "one of my earliest lessons in L'Arche was to take time to be present to people. Trying to be efficient in the many tasks that needed to be done, as well as keep core members involved in meaningful activities, I asked a core member of my community, Eric, if he would like to have coffee with me. While I was preparing the coffee, I remembered I was supposed to make a birthday cake. Time was of the essence. I began preparations for the cake. I gave Eric his cup of coffee at the kitchen table near where I was working. By this time another core member had expressed interest in helping cook. I began to involve this person in mixing the batter. Realizing that I had somehow forgotten my promise to Eric, I tried to involve him too. When I asked him if he would like to help, he simply pointed to the coffee, looked me straight in the eye and said very quietly, 'You and I are having coffee together.'

"What I had promised was to share coffee and to be fully present to him, not to do something. I asked his forgiveness. We sat and sipped coffee together for several minutes in silence. In due time the cake got made. In the meantime I had learned an important lesson that has affected all of my relationships since then. I began to listen deeply and with my heart to people I love."

At the heart of the L'Arche family is the spirit of celebration. Everything gets celebrated in L'Arche -- healing, return from time away, birthdays, anniversaries, sacramental milestones such as baptism and confirmation, achievements as well as failures.

And L'Arche is a community of forgiveness. Members of the community, both core members and assistants, may bring years of loneliness and rejection -- and often even deep anger -- to the common life. Many people who are mentally handicapped feel guilty just for living. This guilt is often expressed in anger. Individuals who are mentally disabled are people who live with an open directness. The hurt and pain they have lived are inevitably expressed, touching the more repressed pain of the assistants.

Core members

Sandrita, a child whose home had been swept away in the 1998 Honduran hurricane, was brought to the L'Arche house, Casa San Jose, in Choluteca. Sandrita, mentally disabled, lived in a loving but poor home, with many siblings and no discipline. Most of the skills she had learned to cope with her earlier life were disruptive to this new community. After a little more than a year in L'Arche, Sandrita is learning how to forgive and be forgiven. She is learning that no matter what, she is welcomed and cherished.

Richard Bower met Santos, another core member of the Choluteca L'Arche community, on a visit during his sabbatical in Central America. Santos, a man of about 30, had been in this community about 13 years. He does not know his parents, nor any of his family. He was abandoned in the streets of Choluteca, autistic and with severe physical defects.

"He was welcomed into the L'Arche family, and over the past 13 years has learned a bit how to speak, and a lot about how to communicate," Richard says. "He walks and he works now with his hands with 80 percent of full capacity. He makes beautiful hammocks in the L'Arche workshop, something he is very proud of. His eyes sparkle with excitement and warmth. He loves to sing and celebrate, and is the leader of most of the celebrations in his small community. He can be demanding and bossy at times, but that is mostly because he has moved from passivity to being empowered in his life."

Ted is a core member of the L'Arche Community in Syracuse, N.Y. He came to L'Arche as a young adult, abandoned as an infant by his family, living in an institution. Ted was unable to speak, hardly able to navigate. He was so troubled, so angry when he came to L'Arche that assistants had to take turns caring for him. There were long weeks when assistants had to change every 15 minutes or so because of the turmoil Ted was experiencing. The community did not think it had the capacity to keep Ted in their midst. But they remembered that there were no outcasts in L'Arche, and Ted remained.

Today, 20 years later, Ted is a lovely, caring, joy-filled member of the L'Arche family. He has come home, and the richness of his gifts, the exuberance and joy he brings to his new family, are signs of what can be true for the whole human family.

Core members are welcomed for life to these communities. Some come from the streets, some from institutions, some from private homes. Assistants come from all parts of the world, bringing a variety of motivations. Intentionally, L'Arche seeks to build community across language, religious and cultural barriers. Some assistants serve for two or three years, some longer, and some with a lifelong commitment. This dynamic of permanent and transient members, and of an international mix, offers both a gift and a challenge.

Signs of healthy communities

From his 36 years in L'Arche, Jean Vanier has reflected on the signs of healthy communities. First, he identifies health in community as the kind of openness to the weak and needy in one's own community that opens our heart to others who are weak and needy. A second sign, says Vanier, is the way a community humbly lives its mission of service to others in gentle mutual ways, not using or manipulating, but empowering them. A third sign is that, as we begin to recognize and value the gifts we find in others, we move beyond our own tight certainties, and become more open to each other and to what is new. A fourth sign is that a community can learn and grow from its errors, moving beyond the need for superiority, open to God's truth from wherever this truth comes. Rooted in the Roman Catholic tradition, L'Arche has grown into a vital ecumenical community, and in places like India has sought to live in faith with people of non-Christian religious traditions.

"Our communities want to witness to the church and to the world that God knows all persons in their deepest being and loves them in their brokenness," Vanier says (The Heart of L'Arche). "L'Arche is not a solution to a social problem, but a sign that love is possible, and that we are not condemned to live in a state of war and conflict where the strong crush the weak. Each person is unique, precious and sacred."

Lita (left) and Melvin (right) are core members of Casa San Jose in Choluteca, Honduras.

Our lives so often (even in the church) are shaped by competition, rivalry, busyness, fear and guilt. We have found in L'Arche not a perfect community, but one which seeks to live the Gospel life of welcome, sharing and simplicity. We have learned new ways to live the unity which is God's dream for all people. We have learned that faithfulness means we learn and are shaped by the weakest members of our community. And we are learning that reconciliation is made possible by communities that have "a simple life-style which gives priority to relationships" (from the Charter of the Communities of L'Arche).

Most of all, we have learned what it means to be a sign and not a solution. Solutions come and go, make sense one day and not another. But living in community is a sign, a light of hope that society can truly be human. Jesus lived his sign in being present with and offering healing to the outcast, the marginalized. L'Arche roots its sign in welcome and respect for the weak and the downtrodden. Jesus did not solve all the spiritual and social problems of his day. Neither does L'Arche. But L'Arche, living the way of Jesus, seeks to give concrete expression to the reality of the reign of God in our world.

We have been drawn to L'Arche because L'Arche communities "want to be in solidarity with the poor of the world, and with all those who take part in the struggle for justice" (Charter of the Communities of L'Arche). L'Arche has renewed our commitment to live in and foster healthy communities, in the church as well as in places where we live.

Stephanie D. Bower is an assistant with the L'Arche Community in Syracuse, N.Y. Earlier this year she served L'Arche in Choluteca, Honduras for three months. Richard A. Bower is the recently retired Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in Syracuse and a member of The Witness' board of directors. He has been appointed by the Presiding Bishop to be the Episcopal Church's link with L'Arche U.S.