After dedicating my 38 year career to advocating for people with disabilities, I thought I had seen it all. Then I found L’Arche. Being a member of the L’Arche Chicago Board has opened my eyes to refreshingly new model for providing services to adults with intellectual disabilities. Not that L’Arche is new. It has been around since the mid-60s, growing and evolving throughout the world.

I first became aware of L’Arche in graduate school in the 1970s when I was assigned to read Jean Vanier’s Eruption to Hope (1971). I underlined the following passage, “So-called “normal” men often hide their real selves behind a wall of timidity, hardness, and a certain hypocrisy and quest for social esteem. They are almost afraid to show themselves as they are. The mentally handicapped are not like this. Those fortunate enough to know them when they live in a happy atmosphere where they can develop to their full potential, have experienced the gentleness and confidence expressed by their outstretched hands. The defective has nothing to lose. He can show himself as he is, providing of course that no attempt is made to make him live another life than his won.”

My personal note in the page margin read “It’s ok to be mentally retarded. They have a purity I do not.” Aside from the nomenclature which has changed from the 70s ( the “mentally handicapped,” “mentally retarded” and “defective” are now referred to as “people with intellectual disabilities”) Vanier’s statement and my reflection still hold true. My involvement with L’Arche has guided me to strive to live a more meaningful life, by learning from people with disabilities who have a purity I can only hope to attain in my own life. That is from the heart.

Intellectually I am also attracted to L’Arche. The movement is world-wide with more than 150 communities in 54 countries. This provides the opportunity to learn how people of other nationalities and cultures, with different social mores, governments, religions and economies can unite under a common sense of values and principles based on the tenets of L’Arche. Does L’Arche have the power to affect world peace, to eradicate hunger and poverty, to make people more respectful of one another? It does, by changing the life of one person at a time, just as it has changed mine.

It is my joy to be associated with L’Arche, to help it grow spiritually and physically. I only hope that I can be of as much benefit to the individuals with and without disabilities who are the essence of L’Arche Chicago as they are to me.
.....................................................................................................................................................~Tim Andriano
The language used in the quotes above was commonly accepted at the time of publication.