September 2007 The Road to Daybreak A Spiritual Journey by Henri J M Nouwen

. Continue from ...... Danny's Prayer Tonight I spent a wonderful evening with the L'Arche group from Cork, Ireland, who are spending the month of August in Trosly. It is obviously easier for me to be among the Irish than among the French. The language helps, but also the easy camaraderie. During the evening prayer we sang simple songs, we listened to Danny, one of the handicapped men from Cork, who with great difficulty read from Jean Vanier's book I Meet Jesus, and we prayed. Danny said, "I love you, Jesus. I do not reject you even when I get nervous once in a while ... even when I get confused. I love you with my arms, my legs, my head, my heart; I love you and I do not reject you, Jesus. I know that you love me, that you love me so much. I love you too, Jesus." As he prayed I looked at his beautiful, gentle face and saw without any veil or cover his agony as well as his love. Who would not respond to a prayer like that? I suddenly felt a deep desire to invite all my students from Harvard to sit with me there in that circle. I felt a deep love for all those men and women I had tried to speak to about Jesus and had often failed to touch. I wanted so much for all of them to sit and let Danny tell them about Jesus. I knew they would undersand what I had not been able to explain. As I walked home after having kissed everyone good-night, I felt a strange warm pain that had something to do wiht the many worlds I was trying to keep together. L'Arche: A Little Bit of History Less than a minute's walk from the house where I live is the house where it all started. Above the door hangs a small wooden sign with the word "L'Arche." In that house Jean Vanier went to live twenty years ago with two handicapped men, Raphael and Philippe. Every time I pass that small, unspectacular little house and see the wooden sign above the door, I am moved by the mystery of small acts of faith. When Jean decided to take two handicapped men out of a large institution and bring them into his "ark," he knew he was doing something irreversible. He knew that from that moment of his life would be intimately connected with the lives of these two men. They had no family to which he could send them, nor could he ever return them to the institution from which they came. This was the form of poverty Jean had chosen after much prayer and a long search for a vocation. When Jean made this decision he was still a professor of philosophy at St Michael's College in Toronto. He had come to Trosly to visit his spiritual director, Pere Thomas Philippe, who had been his guide and friend since the days of his studies at the Institut Catholique in Paris. Under the guidance and inspiration of Pere Thomas, Jean was able to leave his successful academic career and embark on a spiritual journey, the end of which was completely invisible. As far as Jean was concerned, living with Raphael and Philippe was to be his vocation. He had no plans to start a large movement, nor was he thinking about an international network of homes for the handicapped. His new life began in this small French village with a humble house and two handicapped men, and with his good friend Pere Thomse nearby. Today, L'Arche is a word that inspires thousands of people all over the world: in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Haiti, Honduras, the Ivory Coast, India, and many other countries. Its vision is a source of hope; its work draws praise from popes, bishops, kings, queens, and presidents. But Jean didn't anticipate any of that when he put the L'Arche sign above the door of his first foyer. He just wanted to be poor with the poor. It sounds very much like stories I have heard before - of Benedict and Scholastica, Francis and Claire, Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, Catherine de Huyck Doherty and Frere Roger of Taize. "Set your heart on God's kingdom ... these other things will be given you as well" (Luke 12:31)

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2007. All rights reserved.