The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
23 November 2003
Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact
Sydney welcomes its newest cardinal
Not to be missed
Help for Jenny, Luke
Take heart from teenagers
Caritas stays put
Irishtown revisited
The company they keep
Pregnant pause: Making room for the little person
Editorial: Young hopefuls
Letters: Quiet revolutionary
Conversation: Fr Michael Anghel, parish priest and grandfather of three - Priest
made rite choice
Chance or Hand of God?
Presto, adagio, it’s art Caravaggio
The last retreat
Virtual boost to learning
‘Big kids’ meet ‘littlies’
Teacher, student in De La Salle double history win
Prize for playground plan
Gospel values alive in L’Arche
Gospel values alive in L’Arche
RETREAT Jean Vanier (above), founder of L’Arche, will visit Sydney in April.
By Teresa Pirola
Many people have heard of Canadian Jean Vanier, the founding father of L’Arche and its sister organisation, Faith and Light, international organisations that consist of family-style households and networks that typically offer lifestyle support to people with an intellectual disability.
Perhaps not quite so well known is Australia’s own ‘Jean Vanier’ figure: Eileen Glass, one of the founding mothers of L’Arche in Australia and a driving force in its leadership ever since.
When Eileen first came across a L’Arche community in France in the 1970s she was 20-something, a school teacher and a spiritual searcher.
She was so deeply moved at seeing Gospel values so authentically lived that she spent the next two years as a volunteer in a L’Arche community in Canada.
Says Eileen: “I was being introduced to people who had been ‘shut away’; people with disabilities, coming to us after 20 years of institutionalisation, who had only ever been cared for by people who were either employed or professionally trained.
“They had never lived relationships simply as ‘friend’.”
Providing that place of friendship and respecting the human dignity of each person is what L’Arche is all about.
It is about addressing the second of what Jean Vanier has described as two levels of disability.
There is the obvious physical or mental limitation, but there is also the experience of rejection that accompanies it.
Upon her return to Australia, Eileen had meetings with people who shared a similar vision for Christian community life.
Out of those networks the first L’Arche community, Genesaret, was born at Bungendore, NSW, in 1978.
The network spread, more communities followed, and a related organisation emerged, called Faith and Light.
Today there are L’Arche communities in Sydney, Canberra and Hobart, a community in the process of being established in Brisbane and a project developing in Melbourne.
L’Arche and Faith and Light are jointly celebrating their silver anniversaries next April with a retreat led by Jean Vanier himself.
One of the original members of the L’Arche Genesaret community and still with L’Arche today is Scott Andrea, a founding father in his own right. Scott was just 15 when he first met Jean Vanier and remembers ‘laughing and laughing’ (apparently Jean has a great sense of fun).
Like Eileen, Scott carries in his person the story of L’Arche in Australia, a 25-year tapestry of precious memories: the daily rituals of household chores, work schedules, mealtimes and prayer, the comings and goings of core members and assistants, the outreaches in hospitality, the picnics and retreats and the opportunities to participate at international L’Arche gatherings.
Scott, who is also an accomplished tennis player, was a member of the extraordinarily successful Australian team at the 2003 Special Olympics in Dublin.
He and Eileen will celebrate their 25-year anniversaries with L’Arche with hundreds of other residents, volunteers and supporters at the retreat in April.
It is likely to be the last time Jean Vanier will visit Australia. (He is in his mid-70s and stepping back from the demands of overseas engagements.)
Organisers have reserved 100 places at the retreat for participants in their 20s and 30s in a bid to encourage more young people to discover the genius of this Spiritled movement and its central message: that we should not be scandalised by weakness.
It is in facing weakness that we find our strength, for we find each other, we find community and we find God.
If you know someone whose gifts and ‘calling’ might lie in the direction of L’Arche and Faith and Light, why not pass on this article or direct them to the website: www.larche.org.au
Teresa Pirola co-ordinates The Story Source, a writing/publishing ministry serving Catholic parishes and dioceses.