Saturday, October 15, 2011

L'Arche marks ten years in Belfast

The l’Arche community in Belfast last weekend celebrated ten years of history in Belfast. 

At the anniversary celebrations, two hundred people came together representing people of all churches, faith communities, movements and statutory bodies.  

It was a moving sight for Maria Garvey, one of the founder members of the Belfast 
community, who has lead l’Arche Belfast for ten years.

“I thought, my life has made a difference,” she told ciNews.  “That is the biggest thing that people can know, that their lives make a difference.  Not a single life is a mistake.”

The l’Arche community house in Belfast is on the Ormeau Road.  The original community comprised five adults from Ireland, Belgium, the US and South Africa, and four ‘core members’ (the name l’Arche uses for people with disabilities). 

They named it The Ember from a dream Maria had years before.  In it she lit a huge fire in a house. Her mother took an ember from that fire and lit a second fire, telling her, “The only source of an enduring fire is when the hidden ember of yesterday’s ashes is ignited by a breath of the unknown.”

They understood that they would not be a fire in Belfast, but the source of new fires.  

In Northern Ireland there were the ashes of the troubles. 

“We had to find a source of light in the fire that had burnt out, and let it come alive again.  Our mission was and is to be embers, signs of a new fire, a new spirit,” said Maria who is now the new Coordinator of L’Arche Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Today l’Arche in Belfast has its community house (with five core members, five support workers and another six volunteers who “come and go.” It also runs a catering service, called Root Soup as well as a garden project. 

Root Soup works out of a temporary accommodation hostel, and involves young unemployed men working together with people with disabilities. Root Soup did the catering for the celebration last Saturday, which took place in St John’s Presbyterian Church in Newtownbreda, Belfast. 

Scott Shively, who takes over as new community leader in Belfast says l’Arche Belfast has a real gift for welcoming people.  His hope for the future is that the centre might remain a place open to everyone.  

“At the end of my time if I can say that that is still true, no matter how big or small we are, I will be happy,” he told ciNews.

He is hoping that the Root Soup project and the Garden project will also grow in the coming years.

L’Arche was founded in 1964 by Jean Vanier, who is now aged 83. A former officer in the Royal Navy, he studied philosophy and theology in his twenties in Paris.  His mentor priest was chaplain to a small institution for men with mental disabilities in Trosly-Breuil, north of Paris.  

In his thirties, shortly after taking up a lecturing role at a Canadian university, Jean went to visit his friend and decided to stay. In 1964 he invited two of the men from the institution to live with him.  He named his house, “L’Arche,” the French word for Noah’s Ark.

“When you start living with people with disabilities, you begin to discover a whole lot of things about yourself,” wrote Vanier.  

He learned that, “to be human is to be bonded together, each with our own weaknesses and strengths, because we need each other.”

Spurred on by the example of this humble and inspiring man, other communities were born all over the world in the seventies.  

Today, there are 139.  

Jean Vanier was invited to speak everywhere. His words and being radiated a gentle holiness. His message that everyone is of unique and sacred value, resonated. His practical witness of communities of people with and without intellectual disabilities living together in love was convincing.  

Ireland’s first l’Arche centre opened in 1978.  

Today it has communities in Belfast, Dublin, Cork and Kilkenny and Sligo.