Catch Up

Well...

I guess it's been a long long time since I've done a personal post. So, I'd like to do that now, instead of just my abstract, philosophical ones.

It's winter here in Paraparaumu again and, tonight, I lit the fireplace for the first time this season. As I type this, there is a detectable difference in temperature between our kitchen and our lounge as one walks from one room to the other. I arrived here in the dead of winter, in a rainstorm. Today, there was another such storm and, seeing it, I was given pause to reflect on my first year at L'Arche Kapiti.

I've worked and lived here under two different house leaders and I've come to know nine core members, as well as over a dozen fellow assistants. I've seen the passing of a torch from one community leader to another and I've also watched as we gained four new community council members. In my year here so far, we lost a house, we kept our Community Participation Service, we bid farewell to one core member, and welcomed another one. I've gained few new friends and said goodbye to a good number as well.

The most pressing question at this point would seem to be, "How am I doing?" ... I'm doing okay. I've learned alot about myself in this year and a great deal about God. L'Arche definitely isn't what I thought it would be. I figured, when I began here, that I'd put in my time, get an experience, and then continue on the road of my career, one step closer to developing my "theology of vulnerability." I still might do that, but I could have figured then that the experience of being as vulnerable as possible might lead me to change some things. Of course, it did.

While I may have graduated from Hastings with a perfect GPA and a little gold honor stamped on to my BA, I knew that none of that would matter here. I was right, but the feeling of knowing that definitely hurts more than I expected. My primary discovery this year was, of course, my sense of disability. During this year, I have experienced times when my motivation has been robbed from me. A sort of depressive state where my lists of things to do will pile up and continue piling up. I know what I ought to do, but cannot find the motivation to do so. These are times I have experienced before being in L'Arche. This feeling is recurrent. The difference this time around is that I have come to understand it. I know it and can live with it. I can safely depend on other people to help me. I do not have to pretend that these times of depression, confusion, indecision, or hopelessness do not occur. They do. By living as I am within this community, I now understand that I cannot run or hide from my weaknesses. I can, however, welcome them. I can also be welcomed with them, into the Body of Christ.

Around Easter this year, we had our annual community foot-washing ceremony. Leighanne was the one who was responsible for washing my feet. It was strange to me. Intellectually, I understood the process of course. I knew all the symbolism of what was taking place and it fit very comfortably within my worldview. Practically, however, I still carried alot of tension in that moment. Being cared for by a core member is the exact opposite of what my body is used to practicing. That was a powerful and provocative moment for me.

This process of discovery has taken longer than usual for an assistant in L'Arche. Based on my own observations and those that I have collected from others, I'd venture a guess that the usual time of traction for a new assistant from the time that they arrive to the time when they understand and can "live community" is about two to three months. For me, I was 7 months into this thing before I even started to get it. There was even a time that I was actually put on a kind of assistant's probation. My inability to live community threw into question whether or not I would be welcomed back for a second year, even though I have wished to do so for a while now. I have never failed so much at any other endeavor in my entire life.

Once I knew that my disability was somehow damaging the community, however, it didn't take long for me to muster a response. I was deeply provoked, just as I knew that, somehow, I would be. Things are better now, but I've got a longer road ahead. I have been welcomed back for another year at L'Arche Kapiti. It's ironic that we would often think first, of the long road that our core member have, dealing with their disabilities, yet we'd seldom look at our own. This realization also sheds light on another that I've gained: It's never the folks with intellectual disabilities that you can't live with. For them, we make it work; we find a way. More typical people, by contrast, we'll always have conflict with. It's my fellow assistants who are, consistently, the most difficult people in my life. I've always appreciated razor-sharp irony and, here, I chuckle and stand agape at its bleeding edge.

After studying Religion and Ethics; the Transcendent and the Other, I came here to put myself within closer proximity to both. In realizing my difficulties with "normal" people, I have also come to understand that "Other" isn't reserved to a particular class of people. We find Others, strangers, enemies (ghosts) everywhere we go. Your Others are your co-workers, your family members, your friends, your neighbors.

In that, I have also realized Gift. As I've stated in other posts, it's never people's ability levels that matter, only their gifts. And, just as you can find Others close-at-hand, you can also find gifts. Gift is everywhere. It's been written that "faith is the conviction of things not yet seen." I've come to realized that even the faith to look for Gift is, itself, a gift. How do we know that looking for another's gifts will be a genuinely good exercise? You take that process of searching on faith, then your faith itself becomes a gift, right? Well, it would seem that way to me.

Assuming that everything goes smoothly with my visa acquisition, I've got another year ahead now and I'm looking forward to it and all of the challenges that it will bring me. In one month's time, I'll be heading back to the US for a visit while I take a month's leave. I plan on using this time to collect myself further and prepare for the future that lies ahead. There are pieces of me all along this journey. I leave a little something at each place and with each person. Accordingly, I take something from each person and each stage. I love all of you.

Photo Jam 5

I am LONG overdue for a post of some pictures. Also, I have a back-log of pictures that I've been meaning to put up. So... another photo jam post!

For New Years Eve, I went to Sydney, Australia and camped out all day in front of the Opera House to get a good spot for the fireworks. It was great. Umbrella? Check. Picnic blanket? Check. And, to top it all off, an extremely smart friend of mine remembered to freeze some grapes to help us stave off the hot (summer, in the southern hemisphere) sun.

Sydney's Taronga zoo was really sweet. They've got Platypi, Koalas, Giraffes, and this Komodo Dragon. (Which was about 6-feet long!)

More from the zoo. This time a bit more traditionally "outback." This is a Wallaby (perhaps it's name is "Rocko"). It's cute. I've heard it said that everything in Australia either hops or is deadly poisonous. This would be the former.

Creative picnic food idea: Put Nutella on your pikelets. (For the uninitiated, pikelets are miniature, sweetened versions of pancakes. They is good.)

While at the Opera House, we saw what was, apparently, Colonel Sanders having a stroll on the balcony. I'd like to think that he was invited to the New Years gala, but then couldn't help himself and walked out to survey the Sydney skyline and fantasize about where all his new KFCs were going to go. "I'll put one there...and there..."

The famous Harbor Bridge. The New Years Eve fireworks were launched from it. Spectacular. According to news reports the next day, it was the largest NYE celebration on earth, attracting 1.5 Million people. :)

The is the shoreline of Kaikoura, a famous fishing community in New Zealand's South Island. Gorgeous. Also, I've heard that the crayfish here is excellent.

A while back, I traveled the upper portion of the South Island by getting a really sweet deal on a camper van from a company here called "Spaceships." This was the vessel of travel they offered: "Cassiopeia." View it in all it's bright-orange, mommy-mobile majesty!

Somewhere in Hamilton, New Zealand, at this ordinary-seeming mall, a young Nebraskan man is making his first ever balloon animal: a blue puppy dog. Yeah, I'm very proud of myself. I had very good instruction, however, so I shouldn't be surprised. After this photo was shot, we started offering our "balloon creations" free to the general public. Parents were leery, but children were happy.

Okay, so this one is from WAY back in late August, but I just had to show you all the gigantic replica carrot, put up in beautiful Ohakune (near Mt. Ruapehu), which is basically just a ski village, so the carrot does tend to stand out. Take that, Carhenge!

Ability and Gift (As Paradigms)

Initially, I thought that this post would have to be longer, but really, I only have one serious point to make. It won't be long or complicated, since I've discovered that the topic I really want to get at is God and vulnerability. This discussion of Ability and Gift is really just a major stepping-stone in that direction.

Here at L'Arche, we read alot of Jean Vanier and his descriptions of the "spirituality of L'Arche."

The problem with digesting this material is two-fold: (A) Jean Vanier speaks to a very specfic, often Roman Catholic audience and there aren't that many assistants here who are themselves Roman Catholic, and (B) Vanier isn't a typical "philosopher" type, so those points that he does make about spirituality come in various writings and collections of thoughts. The arrive only piecemeal in the minds of assistants. For us at L'Arche Kapiti, a few are from the book Community and Growth, but for the most part, we draw on a lecture that Vanier gave in 1991 called "The Poor at the Heart of L'Arche."

I'd say I'm unique here in that the majority of the assistants who currently work under L'Arche Kapiti would tend to self-identify as Secular Humanist, Atheist, Agnostic, or Non-Religious. While these folks are definitely committed to L'Arche just as much as any "religious" person would be, there tends to be a disconnect between the spiritual language used by Jean Vanier and our own experiences as assistants on the ground floor of the organization. Primarily, the problem lies in all this language of "poverty."

L'Arche is living in family with people who have been rejected, regarded as foolish, looked down upon, put away by society.

-"The Poor at the Heart of L'Arche" p.2

The relationship with people who are broken and in anguish reveals to us our own brokenness, our own darkness and our own poverty.

-"The Poor at the Heart of L'Arche" p.18

While I don't think that any L'Arche assistant would disagree with these statements directly, we do tend to question the supposed "poverty" of our core members. I have heard my fellow assistants say, time and again, "These people are not poor, they are very capable in many ways." And I, for one, completely agree.

But I can't deny that Vanier has a very good point. The reason we're here, after all, is to be a kind of alternative vision to what the rest of our society tends to do, which is disregard the humanity of those who have disabilities. We do (and need to) acknowledge this sense of "disability" in order to have a L'Arche in the first place. Once inside, however, the lines of disability get very blurry. Are disabled people disabled or not? Are their assistants disabled or not? The answer to both, on a day-to-day basis seems to be both "yes" and "no." We ad-hoc it to make the community go when we need it to go, but we lack a real sense of clarity with regard to our language around ability and disability. What I'd like to do here is to take those questions and find a "hidden, third way." To reframe them in light of my philosophical influences to shed more light on what, exactly, I think I'm doing here.

The problem with the above questions is precisely that that they revolve around a language of the status quo: the language of Ability. The very paradigm that L'Arche wants to overturn is that of categorizing people based on who is more able than whom. If that's the case, then we have to put on some new spectacles. We can't answer questions about "ability" if that's the very thing we want to disregard.

So, instead, let's take a cue from Jean Luc Marion and put in some language of (you guessed it if you've read the title) Gift. In a social, spiritual, and (for me) religious sense, the economy of Ability is rendered completely irrelevant when we start to look at phenomenon in terms of Gift.

For starters, let me just say that there really are differences in ability from person to person. Moreover, the practice of Ethics requires that we acknowledge them. I love my housemate, Julie. The reality is that Julie simply cannot do mathematics. Her brain doesn't work that way and, yes, her overall abilities will probably always be less than those of her assistants. We wouldn’t want to trivialize disability by saying that “we’re all disabled.” That’s an easy road and is also an injustice because it denies the reality of people’s lives and the frustrations that they face. We all face frustrations with ourselves, of course, knowing our limitations. We need to acknowledge these, to accept them, in order to truly live. To tie this in with my last post, it's important to acknowledge that no matter how much I want to be "free" of my being, I never will be. I am not truly free. And, for the record, no, I don't need to be free. Without such limitations, personhood just isn't personhood.

The burden of proof for L'Arche as an alternative community (a branch of the Body of Christ, a piece of the Kingdom of God), however, doesn't rest on the back of Ability. It rests on Gift. And that's because Ability is a shifting sand. If people don't "measure up," then they have to be cast aside, unable to contribute to the whole of society. This, I think, is the brokenness which Vanier describes. Gift, by contrast, is a firm foundation because it acknowledges uniqueness by disregarding the measuring stick. You don't have to "measure up" to have gifts, you just have to be the provocative Self that you already are. Every accepted gift changes the very way in which we do the measuring, making the measuring a far less-important gesture.

I've mentioned the size-scale of Being before, using a language that describes differing "levels of Being." I'd like to use that again as a metaphorical aid here, so I'll be talking about "cells" (individuals, components) and "bodies" (wholes, collectives).

For cells, Ability is important because it determines their survival in a given environment. Without necessary Ability, cells die. I say that Gift is always more important than Ability, but that is only for bodies; the whole; the collective cells; the aggregate. For the individual; the component; Ability is, naturally, the greatest qualifier for happiness and well-being. Yet, it is not Ability that makes a body. Rather, it is Gift that, as Paul so put it, creates specialization (the "many parts" bit). A blood cell looks at a brain cell and figures that it must be really poor because it's so bad at absorbing Oxygen. The brain cell thinks likewise about the blood cell's lack of ion channels. The Amoeba looks at them both and figures they'll make an easy meal, if not for that pesky immune system, but the Amoeba can't help them all to make a whole body and, therefore, misses the point of this fictional conversation.

These differences in Gift from one cell to the next that create specialization also create a need for relationships, since-rather than surviving on their own, the components discover a need to survive together. The discovery of weakness is a goad which prompts a larger level of Being to com into its existence. And here's where Gift can become apparent. Any difference between two components can only be perceived by one as a lack of Ability in the other. A collective body, however (looking back down the chain) can understand how the uniqueness of each contributes to all. L'Arche doesn't need Julie to do math. Julie doesn't need me to teach her. But what L'Arche needs; what the Body of Christ (the Kingdom of God, the Just Society, the Good Neighborhood) needs, is for us to know one another; to be in relationship. We find the gaps, we provoke one another, we contribute to the larger Being.

So, I say: Let's knock off all this talk about differences in ability. Yes, it's good to understand what we're good at, just as it's good to understand what our limits (read: disabilities) are. That's a normal process. But it's not what we came to the party for. If it were, then we'd spend the whole of our existence just replicating, fighting back everyone who seems to hold a different level of ability than ourselves. In other words: we'd all be fundamentalists, just wearing differently-colored tee shirts. I don't intend to simply swap one form of Empire for another. I feel that the overall intention of God is to overturn Empire itself and make all things new. (And, yes, I acknowledge that that is my particular, very subjective world-view. I'm just being honest about what that world-view is.)

Having traded "teams" a number of times in all manner of conversations, political, social, cultural, and religious, I don't particularly care about the labels anymore. Every form of Empire is as bad as the next. The real answers are too sticky, complicated, and interwoven to encapsulate in any one ideology or collection of thought. Christians: Yes, secular people look strange to you. No, their existence will not benefit you. Non-religious folks: Yes, religious people look strange to you. No, their existence will not benefit you. The same thing goes for both the disabled and the enhanced. The same thing goes for those of different nationalities, races, sexes, genders, sexual orientations, and so on.

But NO, no one has the right to erect an empire over anyone else because, if you came to this party, then it's the party itself that happens, not you. At the same time, being ourselves, we really can't help but replicate. We're all imperial in some capacity. We're all different. We're all limited. Most important for the life of the party (the body, the society): We're all gifted.

_________________________________

Before I close this post, I'd like to clarify my thoughts on freedom from the last one. I've said that people don't need to be free in order to be good. That, at some essential level, we're all basically caged anyway. But what I ought to write down is that just because free wills don't exist, that doesn't mean that Freedom itself doesn't exist. It does and it is important.

I think that the phenomenon of Freedom, the desire for us to be "free," comes into play when we are not allowed to respond (not allowed to have responsibility) by circumstances that we also can change. For instance, a man with a large family goes to prison. Within the barred walls, he makes little to nothing for his dependents. He feels trapped because, despite the fact that a great many vulnerabilities occur to him, he cannot respond to them. Robbed of his responsibilities, he feels worthless. He wishes only to be "free" again and, when released, feels a wave of freedom settle into his sense of self.

The thing that I did not intend with my earlier writing was to whitewash and baptize the actions of every charismatic cultist and nationalist despot, simply because they all create collectives from groups of people. I merely intend to highlight some of the deeper existential boundaries of being human.

Up next in this "deeper" series of posts, I'll get into a sketch of God as, not the ultimate cosmic Power, but rather, the ultimate cosmic Responsibility.