December 2008 The Road to Daybreak A Spiritual Journey by Henri J M Nouwen

Continue from ...... Gregory's Story Today I visited the two L'Arche houses in the city, the house on Wolverleigh Boulevard and the house on Avoca Avenue. At the Wolverleigh house, Gregory, one of the handicapped men in the house, gave a slide show about his own life. It was a very moving experience to hear a thirty-year-old man speak about the difference between his life in an institution and his life in a community. For Gregory, it was the difference between darkness and light, hell and heaven, self-destructive thoughts and a desire to live, between the "dumps" and a home. When he was four years old, Gregory was taken to a mental institution in Orillia. "I had a stroke that paralyzed my right arm, and my parents brought me to Orillia. They came to see me every three weeks, but I was always sad because I didn't know why they put me there." Gregory showed slides of the dormitory, the dining hall, and the clothes room of the place were he had lived for twenty years, together with hundreds of other mentally handicapped people. He said, "We didn't have any privacy. We didn't even have our own clothes. We always wore clothes that had been worn before by other inmates. It was so lonely, so sad, I often thought of killing myself."

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2008. All rights reserved.