The family you choose

It was not the most inspiring way to begin the holiday season: rather than use PTO time last week, as planned, to write! cook! clean! be productive! I instead stayed indoors, horizontal, enduring a particularly persistent chest cold. I felt like a 19th century fainting lady, spread listlessly upon the chaise lounge. Except in my case, there was zero chintz and a whole lot of Robitussin.

You know how it is when you are ill: things look bleak. You have far too much time to think, and count up grievances. Another thing about this holiday season is that it is the first I’d really be spending on my own, in DC. And boy did I ruminate on that. There’s a few reasons for it, including that the family member who intended to come and spend Thanksgiving here booked the wrong dates for their flight. D’oh! But more than that, I have had to accept the gradual splintering and drifting of my immediate biological family. It is what it is, and I think, sadly, increasingly common, particularly among my generation.

So I decided to be with L’Arche on Thanksgiving. I figured it would most likely turn out to be a blessing in disguise, as is usually the case with L’Arche, but I still couldn’t help but feel something was wrong because my Thanksgiving would not look like a Norman Rockwell painting.

Here is the thing that maybe is particular to me, and seems silly, but for some reason I have this false belief that holidays must look a certain way: perfect, I guess is the word. I have no idea why, because I have not even had a full-on family Thanksgiving since probably middle school - over 15 years ago. Am I too susceptible to advertising? Too idealistic? Have I watched too many Hallmark Christmas movies (answer: yes, but that’s beside the point). It is an odd thing to wish, because there is no aspect of life - let alone family gatherings - that is perfect. I will chalk it up to idealism, for longing for a time that maybe never even was, and a deeper desire for peace. Nevertheless, I see it is there.

Yesterday, on Thanksgiving, I had enough health back to make a glorious chestnut stuffing and head to 6th Street to join Charles and the rest. Charles is a core member. We drove to join the DC community in Adams Morgan, where about 45 people in the L’Arche community - the L’Arche family, Charles would insist - gathered.

There were the core members, assistants and other staff present. Also the friends of community (like me), and friends and family of the assistants visiting town for the holiday. An engaged couple, two babies, a few moms and dads, many people my own age.

Here is the heart of it: if you are looking for perfection, you will not find it in L’Arche. It is joyfully imperfect. In fact, that is one of the core beliefs celebrated in community: that despite our imperfections, we are loved - by God, by each other, in community.

The imperfection manifests in truly concrete ways: running out of cups and having to drink out of a measuring cup instead. Mismatched, ancient folding chairs dragged from house to house. Ten minutes-plus to shuffle with a walker from the front door to the car and get buckled in. Sometimes inedible food.

But the imperfection becomes a conduit for something greater. There is something about the lived environment, or reality, of L’Arche that enables deep, revealing heart conversations and relationships. It is as if by dropping the veneer of perfection (really, of ego), grace is allowed to break in.

What I have encountered there is a curiosity about the other, a willingness to get to know, see and listen. I always look forward to time around the table at L’Arche, where some of my favorite conversations have occurred. Whether discussing something as simple as animal fun facts (a topic last night) or one’s calling to teach or minister (also a topic last night), there is an ability to go from the light to the deep with grace and love. That goes for both the disabled, and the non-disabled you meet. And I am invited to stop thinking in terms of, “How can I improve on this, make it better, more efficient?” to “How can I spend this time with this group of people, and just be?”

I did not spend the night in any remarkable way. There was eating, and sitting, and catching up on life. I held baby Molly and kept her from sticking her fingers in the floor vents; admired the homemade turkey hats a few people donned; listened to Charles play his harmonica and sing gospel; poured all that leftover chestnut stuffing into a big Ziploc to take home. In other words, it was exactly how Thanksgiving should be, with your family.

At the end of the night, when we piled back into the car, Charles turned around and said, “I love you, Laura. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Bruce, another Arlington core family member sitting beside me, leaned his head on my shoulder and added, “I am so glad you came with us. Thank you for coming.”

These were the words I wanted to hear from my family on this day. I did not hear them from biological family. Instead, I heard them from my L’Arche family. A blessing in disguise, indeed.

That planned Thanksgiving that I had in my head did not happen. The silly decorative turkey I bought that sits on my table (still cute, for what it’s worth, and he’ll be back out in a place of honor next year); two antique serving trays I bought in September and wanted to use; busting out the new rolling pin and making a pecan pie (haven’t done that in years, and how nice it would have been); the checkered orange and yellow buffalo plaid tablecloth - really, they do not matter. I am able to let those things go. Everything passes, anyway. This is the time and the place in which God has put me, and those in my family - both the biological and the chosen family.

There was a moment toward the end of the night when I looked around the room and thought, how fortunate I am! How unbelievably fortunate I am to have a L’Arche Thanksgiving. And a L’Arche family. There is nowhere I would rather be.

If you are here on Giving Tuesday and feel called to support the mission of L’Arche Greater Washington, I welcome you to learn more and visit the donation link here: https://larche-gwdc.org/donate/giving-tuesday/

A recent outing to a Georgetown basketball game with Fr. Tom, Sarah, and core family members Bruce, Charles and Laurie. Proving that people with disabilities do not belong on the sidelines - unless it’s literally at a basketball game.

New radio time - Monday at 7:15 am (tomorrow)

Folks, my Friday time slot on Morning Air got rescheduled to tomorrow morning, Monday, October 28 at 7:15 am. You can still listen live in the app, on your radio, or via live streaming in the player located here. We’ll be talking about my recent article on loss.

This morning was the White Mass at the Cathedral. This is celebrated every year in honor of those with disabilities, in recognition of the same divine calling we all have in Christ. White is to “symbolize the dignity shared by all who have been baptized into Christ’s body.”

I sat with the L’Arche community over by the choir and the big, grand organ. During the consecration Charles reached out from his pew and held my hand. Andrew decided to sit next to me, asked me and Meredith to shake hands, and then held my own for some time. I saw Johnny give freely to the collection, and a few core family members gently received communion on the tongue when Fr. John came to them in their pew. At the end, Francine hopped up to dance beside the choir as they sang.

The really big thing that L’Arche and my time with the intellectually disabled has taught me, so far, is how simple relationships are. And of course, how much we all desire relationship. Neither Charles nor Andrew had any question in their heart about being with me; they just reached out. The exchange of love from a disabled person doesn’t come with strings or premeditation. And it’s often a really big love - big hugs, big exclamations of joy. I am not saying every relationship in our lives needs to be this way, but that I think I learn something from the unpremeditated, trustful gift of self I have witnessed in L’Arche.

Something else coming up this week: All Saints Day; All Souls Day. Two things to mention: the thing about All Saints that always gets me is that it’s celebrated in honor of all saints, known and unknown. I am sure I have written about this somewhere (I cannot currently locate), but the idea of unknown saints is fascinating to me. Think of all the martyrs the world is oblivious to, or the devout widows who died alone in poverty, or the saintly man who never left his village and is therefore unknown to the world. And they’re with God, and they’re praying for us!

For All Souls, because I have been thinking about purgatory a lot (and how the souls there can apparently only pray for other people and not themselves), I am particularly interested in the tradition of visiting graves on All Souls and praying for the dead. Distinctly Catholic, eh? There’s an indulgence associated with that. I read somewhere that the practice of visiting cemeteries and praying for the dead (especially holy souls in purgatory) should be taught to children because, well, one day we may need those children’s’ prayers when we are passed on.

All the holy souls in purgatory, pray for us.

See you tomorrow on the radio.

Saturday thoughts

Two things to mention this Saturday morning: one is that the novena to St. Jude starts today, per Pray More Novenas. St. Jude, as you probably know, is the patron saint of lost causes. I can think of a few of those. Please pray for me, and I will pray for you.

The other thing is, there is wonderful hubbub around the canonization of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, which occurred a week ago, which means I am learning much about him. The more I learn about this man, the more I love him, and his very ordinary, but brilliant spirituality. It has been noted that he was not a mystic, a stigmatist, or anything like that that would mark him as somehow different. In fact, he was very much the proponent of holiness achieved through commitment to doing the ordinary extraordinarily well.

From Fr. Matt Fish, Cardinal Newman wrote: “Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time; and you are already perfect.”

This also leads me to the thinking I have been doing about how lay people can (and must) have an order to life, just as those in religious life do. I am reading St. Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life and think Newman would agree with him on many points.

Bishop Barron has featured Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman in his “Pivotal Players” series and between now and October 31, you can catch the full one-hour episode for free here. It is simple and impactful in that Bishop Barron way - definitely recommend.

Have a very glorious weekend.