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.

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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.