L’Arche as a model

Henri Nouwen the guru in his book The Road to Daybreak: a Spiritual Journey introduced his readers to L’Arche, which redefined our classic understanding of ministries and charities. While the wider society can’t be more precise about a person’s intellectual faculty, L’Arche draws no lines. Everyone in the house lives, works, plays and prayers as peers. The clientele is not treated as the others.

Tested and proven, L’Arche already had her diamond jubilee. The concept remains a lonely signature of L’Arche, alone. Except isolated pockets of people living out fully integrated communities, most ministries and charities remain highly polarized and deeply hierarchical, featuring sharp minister-clientele contrast and staunch identification between who’s serving and who’s being served. With the best intentions, regarding the people we serve whether as subjects or objects is reducing. It reduces the people we serve. That reduces ourselves as well.

Did we take a pause to ask: who do we think we are and who do we think the people we serve are?

L’Arche does not keep any Lazarus under the table. There is no boss. The story of Lazarus and the rich man is about contrast, begging us to close the gap. We invest all out and place all bets in widening the very same gap instead.

Benefactors, sponsors, donors and ministers find themselves exclusive. Medical staff feel supreme over the sick. “Make no mistake: I am not one among them.” Volunteers get upset and defensive when mistaken as a patient, a refugee or an inmate.

Even the academia follows the same contrast-based template: students and post-doctoral researchers are assigned work supervisors need to get done but do not want to do, not work of the best learning value. Throughout my career I’ve been asked would I like to have research students working on projects. My answer is always the same, “Students who are keen to learn are more than welcome. But no, I don’t need any slave. I finish before they start.”