From Father Rod:
Here are some thoughts from Becoming Human from chapter 1, "Lonliness." The section is headed, "Order and Disorder." I chose this piece to shar because it hits at the level of change and emergence from the heart places, the place of our own insecurity and brokenness.
"In human beings there is a constant tension between order and disorder, connectedness and loneliness, evolution and revolution, security and insecurity. Our universe is constantly evolving: the old order gives way to a new order and this in its turn crumbles when the next order appears. It is no different in our lives in the movement from birth to death.
"Change of one sort or another is the essence of life...when we try to prevent the forward movement of life, we may succeed for a while...but inevitably there is an explosion.
"And so empires of ideas, as well as empires of wealth and power, come and go. To live well is to observe in today's apparent order the tiny anomalies that are the seeds of change, the harbingers of the order of tomorrow. This means living in a stat of a certain insecurity, in anguish and loneliness, which, at its best, can push us towards the new. Too much security and the refusal to evolve, to embrace change, leads to a kind of death. Too much insecurity, however, can also mean death. To be human is to create sufficient order so that we can move into insecurity and seeming disorder. In this way we discover the new." (p. 13-15)
"As humans we crave belonging, we need the connectedness to others that brings security, but this connectedness can prevent the natural movement and evolution that we need in our lives. It can also get in the way of creativity and stifle the natural loneliness that pushes us to discover something new, that pushes us closer to God. This loneliness is the loneliness of the individual who steps out from the group, who takes a chance on what can be discovered and done outside of the norm.
"So here is the paradox: as humans we are caught between competing drives, the drive to belong, to fit in and be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and the drive to let our deepest selves rise up, to walk alone, to refuse the accepted and the comfortable, and this can mean, at least for a time, the acceptance of anguish. It is in the group that we discover what we have in common. It is as individuals that we discover a personal relationship with God. We must find a way to balance our two opposing impulses." (p.18-19)
"When Jean Vanier talks about that place [of safety and intimacy] he often stretches out his arm and cups his hand as if it holds a small, wounded bird, He asks: 'What will happen if I open my hand fully?' We say: 'The bird will try to flutter it's wings, and it will fall and die.' Then he asks again: 'But what will happen if I close my hand?' We say: 'The bird will be crushed and die.' Then he smiles and says, 'An intimate place is like my cupped hand, neither totally open nor totally closed. It is the space where growth can take place." -Henri Nouwen in Lifesigns
"Community is a place of conflict... [One] source of conflict is between being open and being closed. [Too often] the extended family is closed...people may sacrifice their personal growth, freedom and becoming to the god of belonging...a death to personal growth. A community which is called to keep people open is a vulnerable community that takes risks. It does not hand on to its own security and power, obliging people to stay.
There is a myth about community, just as there is a myth about marriage. The reality of marriage is that it is a place where a man and a woman are called to sacrifice their own egos on the altar in order to create one body..." -Jean Vanier in From Brokenness to Community
Now, I'd like to start my reflections by saying that I seldom agree wholeheartedly with Jean Vanier. Marriage, for instance, isn't always between a "man and a woman." And I find it very difficult to imagine myself has having "opposing impulses," one half of which are headed toward any objective other than God. On that same token, however, I have to admit that I find his words to be generally very inspiring and that I really can't help but be influenced by them.
Vanier talks about being human as being in a constant tension and I couldn't agree more. Somewhere, I think I must have said as much in my own writing. The basic idea here that I'm infatuated with is this tension between order and chaos. The only kinds of Gifts worth wanting are the ones that come out of the unknown and the unexpected and that's because such Gifts have the power to change everything; to mutate the known universe, so to speak.
I also love that Vanier talks about community as a place of conflict. Conflict is not only common, but also quite necessary. For many of us, conflict is the only way we understand boundaries and limitations. During our Desert Day, Father Rod went on to talk about the ways in which we touch each other's vulnerabilities, reaching out to feel the wound of another in the same way that Thomas wishes to touch the holes in Jesus's hands and side. We provoke one another; we find each other by finding the weak spots. And, therefore, the whole phenomenon of community is made from these weaknesses; these sensitivities; these vulnerabilities.
Tonight, after dinner, we were getting ready to do the dishes when one of my own vulernabilities was prodded by a core member of ours. She wanted to help with the dishes so much that she actually refused to let assistants anywhere near the basin, perhaps afraid that we would rob her of her power by checking the cleanliness of her work. Although the confrontation did not get physical, I did attempt to force her away from her position, so that I could wash the dishes myself. Upon reflection, I realize that I have a great fear of not being wanted. I need to be needed. When this core member asserted her own independence by refusing to be helped, it touched a wound inside of me. I reacted to protect myself; to preserve my need to belong; to be needed somehow.
Of course, if we are to have clean dishes, then our core members will require some help. Where then is the balance? As assistants, we often speak of the blurry line between our work and our lives in community. Tonight offered me some clarity in that line. It is Julie's job to do the dishes. As a matter of fact, it's the job of all our core members and they all know it. It is my job (strictly speaking) to make sure that the dishes are clean. I realize now that the obstinate core member in this story was merely trying to preserve her place, the same as me. She obviously felt insecure; that I might try to take it from her. Being a royal idiot myself, I did exactly that. In the end, a refusal to share the task led us both to complete dissatisfaction. Yet the clash was necessary. Because, in the end, we both gained the same insight. It was only through the conflict that we learned to be with one another.
I told her (once we had both apologized and agreed to re-do all the dishes, sharing the job from the beginning to the end) that I think it's important to share what we have, even though we have different roles. It's the "being together" that makes us a L'Arche community, I said. She asked me, "Why?" And I couldn't really find the words, but this sentence came out of my mouth: "Because, otherwise, we're just a bunch of people."
Now this was a strange thought for me. I had always been brought up to believe in the individual person and individual rights. But here I was, using the word "people" as a diminutive. Why do we have relationships anyway? Isn't simply being a "person" the very pinnacle of evolutionary history? Why do we feel so compelled to be wounded and to touch the wounds of others? I think it's because of what Vanier says about that tension between connectedness and individuality: We don't want to be "just people." We want to create something larger; to sacrifice our egos on some altar in order to make one body.
The evolution keeps going. Contrary to some of the thoughts of Jacques Derrida, deconstruction does not spiral downward into death, it spirals up into life. That is to say, the gaps in our Being do not open so that we are torn apart. Rather, these gaps open to reveal new Gifts to us, to change us. In doing so, they do not pull an organism apart, but instead, cause it to merge with the Other that provokes it. In this merger, this union, the organism no longer exists only for itself, but rather the symbiotic whole. I think of those 3 (or so) trillion carbon-based robots that, when stacked together, make up your brain. What a miserable existence; toiling to fire electrical pulses all the time in endless cycles. What rights does a brain cell have? And yet it quickly becomes clear that the cell does not live for itself.
Community can teach us such lessons, yes. Even more importantly, however, community can give us the actual connections needed to form that next layer of Being that we crave so much. In a community, you know exactly how small you are. We're up to almost 7 billion now and that, my friends, is alot of vulnerability.
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