Truth, Grief and Mourning

Friends,

Yesterday the news broke that L’Arche’s founder, Jean Vanier - revered during his time by many, including myself, as a “living saint” - was not quite what he seemed. Specifically, he was guilty, over decades, of covering up and potentially enabling the sexual and spiritual abuse of adult women without disabilities in community by his “spiritual father,” Pere Thomas Phillippe. More importantly, though, Vanier was himself the perpetrator of spiritual, emotional and sexual abuse against at least 6 adult women without disabilities, including several assistants and even one consecrated religious sister. Here is L’Arche USA’s statement on the matter.

To say this news is devastating is an understatement. As I woke and learned the truth - mostly through friends reaching out, followed by reading everything I could online - all I could do is sit back and cry and wonder how it even makes sense. How can one reconcile the genuine reality that what Jean founded - L’Arche, a place of healing, belonging and welcome - could be tied to this darkness? How do we keep one and throw out the other? How could someone who championed the weak and oppressed actually use his position of power to prey on the weak? What, then, even is real within L’Arche?

I thought Catholic News Agency Editor in Chief JD FLynn - whose son is named for Vanier, and who has adopted two children with disability - did a great job of stating something at the heart of this:

“I think part of the reason we look to holy people is b/c they seem like confirmation that the proposition of the Gospel is possible. When we discover their hidden wicked deeds, we wonder if we can be set free of our own wickedness. Holiness is possible in Christ. But hard.”

Indeed, if there is something wicked at the heart of L’Arche, which I thought was through and through full of light, how is there any hope for me to live up to the promise of the Gospel, and of what God calls me to be and do? Who, after all of this, can I - or any of us - trust?

Tomorrow night a few of us are getting together to discuss, process and understand how to move forward. I am aching for that time, to be with what has become my family.

Ultimately Vanier’s words - his writing, the philosophy, the spirituality - were very much a part of what drew me into 'L’Arche. But I realize they have not been the things that have kept me there. What has kept me there have been the relationships, especially with core members - with Laurie and Charles and Bruce and all the assistants who have welcomed me like family. It has been the acceptance, and the finding of a place where I and my gifts are recognized and needed. But ultimately where it matters more to be, rather than to do. None of that changes, with this news.

What questions are you asking?

The other night I was having dinner at Highland House, one of the L’Arche homes in Arlington. At the end of dinner, someone typically comes up with a question for everyone to answer, accompanied by each person’s prayer requests.

For some reason we were having trouble coming up with a question when Brooke leaned back in the candlelight (lights are turned out for prayer time at Highland House) and smiled. “Ah,” she said. “I’ve got a good one. What questions have you had lately?”

I loved this. I love questions in general (and find a way to incorporate question-asking into pretty much any talk or workshop I hold*) as a means of getting to know self and others, but have never thought to ask someone else purely: what are you wondering about?

Answers around the table varied: Why is the grass green? This one made me catch my breath: how can I live a simple and mystic life? And: how do you love someone you disagree with?

So I have been thinking about that these past few days, and will take this forward with me, to check in now and again and wonder, what questions do I have right now?

Here is what I have had the past couple days:

• Are you compromising your own faith when you affirm what others believe?

• What do virtue and habit have to do with each other if virtue is unearned and comes from God?

• Do people with disabilities live outside of time the way God does? (obviously, not in a physical sense - but in their own way of viewing and interacting with the temporal world)

• What role does government have in building community?

So anyway, those are a few.

*If the practice of question-asking sounds interesting, register for my March 7 workshop, Know Thyself: A Workshop for Growing in Self-Awareness! Prayer, writing and naming one’s values will be discussed and practiced; one needs to learn how to ask good, self-searching questions to do any of these three things, and certainly to know oneself. Shazam, people!

Who are our leaders?

I was part of a conversation recently about William F. Buckley, Jr., and his history-making role as the father of the American political conservative movement. It was posed that there would be no Cato, no Heritage, nor any of the other think tanks or political magazines were it not for this man, who was able to bring all the different types of conservatism - and there are differing types - together, using his characteristic diplomacy, humor and genuine idealism.

A character like that does not exist for the right or left right now. The only two I think come close are (were?) Barack Obama for democrats and President Trump for Republicans. We know, though, that both are incredibly divisive characters, so whether they can claim a status as a “uniter” is debatable.

It led me to a different thought, though. Why do we default to the President as the beacon of national unity? Has American society always held its political leaders - particularly in the office of the President - as its default leaders, in that sense? I genuinely do not know. What does it say about our values that we nearly deify presidents, electing them to do much more than just uphold the Constitution, and is it a departure from the Founders’ intent? Will we ever return to a time when writers and philosophers are the great unifiers?

In any case, I think America would do well to hold all elected officials with higher levels of skepticism. I am reminded of the fact that when John Adams left office, after losing the presidency to Thomas Jefferson, he simply left by carriage early in the morning before Jefferson’s inauguration. Basically, he left the White House in the 1801 version of an Uber Pool. This is unthinkable now for many practical reasons, but also because the Presidency is its own form of celebrity. Look no further than all those that run for president, knowing they have no chance of election, but with the guarantee of a book deal at the end.

The larger question, though, is who instead should we turn to, if not the president, for unifying leadership? I have one idea, that is rather timeless and not of my own making: the saints. But I suppose forgetting the saints, and deifying politicians, is what happens when, as a whole, society moves away from considering God at all.

I do not believe that presidents are wholly without merit, by any means, but there is a reason why American do not believe in God-ordained kings. Presidents - all politicians - are just men and women, after all.

There was another element to the whole conversation, which is that, if Buckley were so passionate about ideas, and transmitting them as a key part of growing his movement, how does the movement - any movement - grow now in an age where people are not particularly interested in ideas?

I don’t buy into this entirely. I think it’s a little pessimistic about human nature. While, yes, the world seems mostly interested in headlines and Twitter takes, I think we sell ourselves short to say humans are simply no longer interested in ideas. I suppose the question is how best to transmit them. There is more competition now for our attention than ever before. Maybe that is the better question: how do keep the desire for ideas alive in the digital age.

I wonder what John Adams would have said.