P. J. Cushing 2003

5.0 Assistants’ Initial Motives and Expectations

1.1 Introduction

“Of course there are many, many reasons to come to L’Arche but I am increasingly convinced that most people come here searching for greater meaning or purpose in their lives. You listen to new assistants and you get the sense that they were not finding that elsewhere – or at least not enough to satisfy them. Sometimes we joke that people come here when they’re tired of shopping.”

(MacMillan 2001)

In this chapter I present my analysis of why people say that they wanted to live and work in L'Arche, and what it meant to them to make that choice. It certainly seems worthwhile to examine these people’s motives for working in L'Arche given that the conditions of the role, at least on the surface, involve an abdication of individual freedom and leisure time greater than most occupations, as well as minimal financial rewards. “We live in an era when all accounts of motives have become subject to doubt … [and] suspicion,” wrote Wuthnow for his research on altruism and compassion (1991:62). Any account can conceal even as it reveals so we are taught that “motives are not always what they seem.” (Ibid:62) Beyond the hardships, however, being a L'Arche assistant is also a meaningful, rewarding and potentially transformative experience and candidates are at least partially aware of this when choosing to work there. Echoing MacMillan’s thoughts above, one new assistant, Kayley said: “I’ve always been searching for something to do that is meaningful, satisfying and helping people. It’s very important for me to help people. To make people feel valued and understood.”

Once people have worked as assistants in L'Arche, they experience and observe in others the growth potential of the role, as I discuss further in chapters 6 and 7. Before that, however, they can only have a partial sense of the lifestyle or the growth it offers. So what did they anticipate beforehand that moved them past their uncertainties? Does their anticipation affect what kind of caring work is possible in that organization? While individual combinations of expectations were varied, common themes included a range of personal interests such as fulfillment, belonging, personal growth and adventure, as well as pragmatic concerns like job skills, learning a language, and income. Most assistants also indicated being motivated by altruistic or socially responsible concerns. These latter concerns can generally be traced to three sources: a history of involvement in volunteer and social service activities, experience with people with intellectual disabilities, or religion. Assistants’ backgrounds affect how they think of their social and moral responsibility as good citizens and this effectively weaves their personal and social interests together.

The analysis for this chapter is primarily based on assistants’ self-narratives from interviews, a pre-arrival questionnaire I ran with twelve new assistants at L'Arche Daybreak, and participant observation in the communities. It has been argued that self-narratives can not establish who someone “really is” or their “true motives” since the narrator can strategically edit and revise the facts in order to produce certain effects, such as an optimal self-representation (Wikan 1995). What interviewees choose to report is also influenced by the interviewer’s questions, hypotheses, and personality (See Chapter 2). These problems notwithstanding, self-narratives are important sources of information because they are stories we tell about who we are and who we want to be (Sartre 1964). As such, quite aside from their value as objective truths, they contain symbols reflecting the narrator’s values, beliefs, and aspirations (J. Bruner 1986:15).

5.1.1 Relevance and Outline

There are three reasons to include an extended discussion of assistants’ motives and expectations of L'Arche in this thesis. First, a person’s reasons for caring for others affect how he or she will care for them (i.e. the quality of care). One researcher of caring and compassion argued that: “The very act of caring may be sabotaged by not having the right motives.” (Wuthnow 1991:63). Other researchers attest to how motives, attitude and commitment all affect the quality of care possible (C. Taylor 1994:183, Phillips and Benner 1994, Steinhoffsmith 1999), and I demonstrated in Chapter 3 the deleterious effect on the quality of caregiving provided when caregivers and professionals are not driven fundamentally by caring motives (Trent 1994, Day 1981, Enns 1999, Hingsburger 2001a).

Second, a motives assessment establishes a baseline understanding of what people wanted to accomplish or to receive by becoming an assistant. Knowing what assistants initially perceived and wanted helps to gauge what effect living at L'Arche eventually has on them[i].

Third, L’Arche requested help to understand why people go there, why they leave and what might help assistants stay longer. My analysis suggests that assistants’ initial hopes and expectations influence their long-term satisfaction with the community and the work. Below, I show that assistants enter hoping to make a difference in the world; something that many envision on a macro scale. In the short-term L’Arche effectively redirects those hopes towards small but important ways to make a difference on a micro level through the daily practice of caregiving.[ii] In the long-run, however, many assistants report a resurgence of their desire to make a difference on a broader scale. When there are no obvious ways to enact that desire within the community (because of the more urgent daily care needs), some assistants become unsettled and dissatisfied.

I begin with long-term assistants’ common beliefs about what makes a good assistant and thus whom they would like to recruit[iii]. I show how aspects of their backgrounds make them open to service-oriented work as well as influence what they consider to be fulfilling activities. Using examples, I illustrate the moral tension regarding living one’s values that drew many people to L'Arche. Finally, I discuss how these people often incorporate personal and altruistic or social service goals in their sense of meaningful fulfillment. Overall, the choice to undertake the role of assistant was connected with fairly ordinary human desires, concerns, projects, and histories.

5.2 Internal L’Arche perspective

5.2.1 Barriers to internal analytical clarity on the issues

It is not uncommon for non-profit organizations to lack the financial resources or skills to perform effective research on questions such as recruiting and staff satisfaction. Here however, there are also L’Arche-specific reasons which have inhibited research and record-keeping. Referring specifically to organizational structure, while all communities are connected through the L’Arche mission and regional and national directors, the communities are still relatively independent in many ways. Recruiting and most staff-related concerns have been handled locally and there has been little sharing of information about the composition of assistant bodies, standard role descriptions, or recruiting criteria and best practices. Co-ordinated efforts have thus been rarely initiated and difficult to execute since most communities are too small to afford a professional researcher.

Particular L'Arche cultural beliefs as a faith community have also acted as barriers. Their language, and ways of thinking about assistants in the past, have tended towards notions of vocation or calling more than advertising or recruiting. A cultural belief among some assistants was that those who are meant to be assistants will be called there. One’s vocation can be discerned through prayer and practice; for Christians, that means God is calling you to a certain line or place of work. A person can be called to something in order to give and use his gifts, or special talents, but can also be called to a place because God wants that person to receive something of grace: a timely lesson, relationship, or message for example.[iv]

In the past, this cultural belief in vocational call had two significant impacts relevant to L’Arche’s recruiting and research of assistants’ motives. First, the corollary to the belief that the right people will be called to L’Arche is that no recruiting is necessary. This belief might even risk attracting people who would not flourish in or be right for the role. The thoughts of Michel, an older LTA, are representative of this point of view. He shared stories of the sense of grace he discovered in the work and lifestyle of an assistant when he came to L’Arche in his late thirties. Asked how he thought that L’Arche could articulate the kind of rich experience he had to help recruit good assistants, Michel explained in his characteristically quiet, light-hearted manner, his reticence about recruiting:

A vocation must come from inside of you. Then you will be able to sit well with the hard times too. I do not think that we should be out looking for assistants like that—let them come to us when they are ready! (laughs) Ah, but I suppose I am revealing my idealism.

Although Michel’s point about the sustaining power of feeling called to a vocation is important, the issue of assistant shortages remains.[v] The residual effect of the vocational ideal was that for years little formal effort was directed towards understanding the issue of declining numbers of applicants. This is changing now, however, for most assistants. The leadership has recognized that people can not feel called to the vocation of L’Arche assistant if they have not even heard of the organization (MacMillan 2001).

The second salient effect of the spiritual, vocational ideal is how assistants describe their reasons for working there, especially once they are already assistants. I found that when people explained why they went to L'Arche, they typically began emphasizing spiritual reasons or a sense of call as opposed to personal interest factors. Two survey responses provide examples: “To follow God’s path. To live a different lifestyle of simplicity and good morals” and “A calling in the name of my faith. A desire to love and serve in a community for the rejected”[vi] (Lukeman 2001). This is not surprising given that they had by that point experienced the community’s rich spirituality. But with further discussion, most assistants said that the role was very different from what they had originally imagined, which implies that the sense of spiritual calling emerged after, not before, arriving. In addition, as our discussions unfolded, virtually all interviewees indicated that, in fact, many circumstantial and personal interest factors contributed to their initial motivation to work in L’Arche or somewhere similar.

Such biases need to be accounted for in the interpretation of peoples’ responses and narratives. This has been difficult for internal researchers to do given their implication in those same beliefs and positions. In most L'Arche studies, assistants’ answers conflated their reasons for going to L'Arche with the reasons for staying. In addition, the question formats did not provide a way to assess the relative importance of their motives.

Analysis of motives is further complicated by the dual roles of caregiver and community member that are involved. Some assistants focus mainly on just one of these roles in choosing L'Arche. Francois, a former seminarian, had left his role as assistant the year before I interviewed him. He liked his experience overall, but was disappointed that L’Arche was not as spiritually involved or prayerful as he had anticipated. He had been drawn to L’Arche in order to experience living out the gospel values of solidarity and relations with “the poor” but admitted that he had not fully considered the substantial labour of care that this commitment entails. Others, such as students from social work programs, who went to L'Arche for the caregiving aspects, were sometimes surprised by the spirituality and intense interpersonal environment in a faith community. Once people understand L'Arche, their goals often shift to include new possibilities.

5.2.2 Whom L’Arche wants, and whom they get

In this section, I introduce a basic sense of whom the L’Arche LTAs would ideally like to hire as assistants based on their experience with what kind of person does well in the role of caregiver and community member. As noted in Chapter 4, the centrality of valuing diversity in the L’Arche mission makes some LTAs feel awkward placing parameters around whom to hire. In addition, history has shown them that a wide variety of people have become excellent assistants and community members[vii]. The depth of what people live in the daily practice of care seems to be strong enough to incorporate, and temper, many differences. Trevor, a former community leader noted that most LTAs feel that many kinds of people can flourish in L'Arche: “We are learning to trust in the power of the experience itself to have a profound effect on people, and sometimes, to call them to L’Arche for longer.”

Although no criteria for assistants have been formalized across all Canadian communities, I have developed a vernacular description of the common traits they seek. As discussed in Chapter 4, the communities ideally want to find people who can be competent and satisfied in both the roles of caregiver and community member. The first essential requirement is for the candidate to be willing to live in a L’Arche home where they are fully engaged in daily life, caregiving, home maintenance, and developing relations with core members and assistants. Many people who are volunteers, employees, board members and friends of L'Arche develop close relationships there and contribute enormously to the communities without living in one of the homes. Still, most of them would agree that living in the homes is an experience that confers singular insights to those who do. While there has been some internal debate regarding how many years assistants should live in, and many LTAs eventually move into separate quarters,[viii] it continues to be a requirement of new assistants for at least their first few years.

The other basic criteria for being an assistant include: being legally bondable, possessing a work visa, physical capability of transferring people as needed, competence in the local language, good mental health, and the maturity and capacity to learn to handle medications, hygiene routines and basic health care decisions for the people with disabilities with whom they will live. Other traits that are considered desirable are having a driver’s license and the energy to handle long days and a full, diverse, often unpredictable schedule. Particular attention is also now being paid to people’s past leadership experience and potential to develop as leaders.

There are several other less tangible traits that the LTAs are looking for in assistants, some of which are difficult to assess without actually seeing people in the role. To be clear, these profiles are products of my research and are not official L’Arche policy. The characteristic I heard most often when I asked people to describe what makes a good assistant was a general openness to difference. Among the different sorts of openness that assistants stipulated, by far the most important was for candidates to be open to people with intellectual disabilities and to mutual relationships with them. Secondly, they suggested that new assistants need to be open to the L’Arche model of caregiving as a mutual and relational practice. Finally, assistants are ideally open to, and supportive of, the spiritual lives of others in the community even though they are free to exercise their own personal beliefs. Assistants should also be compassionate and prepared to make a strong commitment of time and energy to the community, including the accommodation of others’ needs and beliefs (Vanier 1989:73).

As an assistant and participant observer, I have developed one final theory about what helps an assistant to do well in L'Arche. Those who thrive seem to manifest a healthy, sustainable balance between being centred and striving, or being and becoming. They want to explore, grow, and try new things and this helps them adapt to the radical approach to difference, disability and caregiving that L’Arche requires of them. That is often the easy part for the idealistic young people who are the majority of new assistants. But there are also many times when not much changes and, on the surface, the house routine can start to feel repetitive or even boring. At this point assistants need the capacity to be grounded in the present and content with what is given. An assistant needs to be able to find the beauty in “the little things,” as they say in L'Arche, such as a spontaneous smile or a small initiative by a core member, or simply time spent together.

This capacity to be centred, or “just be,” is less common among young people and yet it is essential to their ability to stay motivated as an assistant. In Chapter 7 I elaborate on how L'Arche intentionally cultivates this in assistants as part of the process of nurturing relationships across difference and disability. Sam, who was 27 and had been in L’Arche almost three years at the time of our interview, is one example of this process. He explained that he naturally revelled in both the highs and lows, or intense predicaments of life as an assistant, but that he found the in-between times more difficult to appreciate: “It has taken time and experience … and prayer too, for me to learn to understand the gifts that the quiet, routine times in L'Arche offer – and to be thankful for them too. I have tried to watch and listen to LTAs whom I respect, and that’s helped me to learn how important it is to use those simple times to really centre myself … and I try to be very present, very open to whatever comes up.”

I asked several interviewees whether they thought there were bad reasons for coming to L’Arche, or reasons that they were cautious of. As noted, assistants are reluctant to rule anyone out in general terms, given what they believe about diversity and the power of the experience to redirect people. Angie, an insightful, seasoned LTA who has served both in the homes and in various leadership positions, adds that even those people who come with little understanding of what L’Arche is, or who just wanted to travel, can contribute much to the community: “Things can get a little tired with the same old group, so people who just come for a short while bring a vital fresh energy to the community; they shake things up and keep us real. It can be very good for everyone, including the core members, provided their departure is handled well.”

Only one motive was cited as sometimes undesirable. Some LTAs cautiously allowed that when people come primarily because they feel lonely, their great need to be loved tends to demand significant energy from the other members of the house. As Catherine, an LTA put it, “When their needs are greater than what they are able to give to the house, then that makes things hard. It is like they are looking for a place to be cared for, rather than to give care.” Beyond the practical burden this can create, there are moral conflicts as well. Although our society accepts that acts of kindness often end up conferring benefit on the giver[ix], we disapprove morally when someone’s main goal seems to be the benefit, rather than the service (Wuthnow 1991:55, 96-7).

Vanier writes that when giving comes from a place of poverty, not from love, it is psychologically and emotionally demanding of others (1989:67). As discussed in Chapter Four, however, Vanier also acknowledges the universal experience of loneliness, and urges people to be honest about it. While this seems like a paradox, it is more a question of degree. Karina, another LTA explains: “While living with a very needy assistant can be overwhelming, I do question the honesty of assistants who claim that loneliness is not at least somewhere at the root of compelling us towards community and relationships.”

Whom L'Arche gets

While there are only minimal records of the composition of the assistant body in L’Arche, the leadership is beginning to address this paucity as they move towards national co-ordination of certain policies. In 2001 L’Arche Canada conducted a lengthy survey, the primary aims of which were to assess and compare the various financial and benefit arrangements across the country (zone) and to ask LTAs about their concerns for the future (Lukeman 2001)[x]. Certain demographic data were also gathered and I will outline those aspects relevant to the discussion of motives and recruiting. The survey included information on the 327 assistants living in the 20 communities which responded to the survey (out of 25 in Canada).

The average age of new assistants when they start is 21 and the main age range is from 18-35, although a small number of older people also join the communities. Excluding summer interns, fully half of the assistants in Canada are under 30 years of age, 33% are 30-50 years old, and 17% of assistants are over the age of 50. The average length of time that assistants work in a community is 1.5 years (again, excluding interns) but this figure does not tell the whole story. While about half of assistants stay less than two years, the other half make much longer commitments: they are split equally between those with 3-9 years of service and those who have worked there for over 10 years.

Of note, men are well-represented in L’Arche in comparison with mainstream direct caregiving organizations (Braddock et al 1992), constituting almost a third of total assistants (31%). Among assistants with less than two years of service, roughly one quarter are men (26%). This is partially due to the communities’ desire to provide same-sex care for personal hygiene routines as much as possible. No data has been collected on ethnicity, faith or social class.

5.2.3 L’Arche research on why people want to live and work there

In Canada, L’Arche does not have substantial national research findings on recruiting and retaining staff[xi]. A few questionnaires were done but limited to one community or region. Although L'Arche conducted two national surveys containing salient recruiting questions, the data was only partially analyzed due to their time and resource constraints. Still, it is useful to review this work.

The 2001 survey noted above also had an open-ended question asking LTAs: “What brought you to L’Arche?” This is the most recent internal research on this question (Lukeman 2001). People mentioned a number of topics in their answers ranging from how they heard about L’Arche (book, radio, friend) to their practical expectations and philosophical hopes; responses averaged three to four motives each. This is consistent with other research on compassion which found that people usually give many reasons for why they volunteer or do good for others (Wuthnow 1991:59-62). Wuthnow also found that most respondents were conscious of how critically we evaluate such accounts in our society for an “agenda” or self-interest and thus carefully considered the types and order of reasons they gave (Wuthnow 1991:59-62).

The LTAs who analysed the anonymous survey data grouped the many assorted expressions of motives into ten themes. The comments which they classed as “community life” were by far the most popular, capturing almost half of respondents. Other categories that they created which were mentioned by more than 20% of respondents include “spiritual journey”, “people with disability”, and “Jean Vanier books” (see appendix 5.1 for key findings).

I have no quarrel with those findings nor with findings in the other surveys that I review below, aside from my earlier cautions on how they are interpreted. There are problems with these internal studies, however. They do not provide the leadership with a clear sense of how these factors operate in people’s lives or how they are inter-connected and prioritized for them. Nor do these surveys really add to the leadership’s existing, intuitive understanding of the situation and how to improve it. I will attempt to do that with the ethnographic research below, where I also incorporate some of the raw data from this survey.

I reviewed two other L’Arche survey reports done in Canada since 1992 (but not their raw data). The analysts of the 1992 national study indicated their concern for community life, given that half of STAs did not designate “the L’Arche emphasis on community” as a motive for working in L’Arche (Davis 1995). A sense of calling or vocation was reported as a “major factor” for assistants, as were the spirituality and philosophy of L’Arche.

An Ontario questionnaire for STAs was administered, asking what was interesting about L'Arche, how they heard about it, and what helped people to come (Zinyk and Egan 2000). Again, many assistants pointed to multiple reasons with the top four reasons each garnering 20% support: to get experience with people with disabilities, curiosity about the lifestyle, spirituality, and philosophy. Roughly 10% found community, self-knowledge/renewal, or life change important. Nevertheless, with no ranking of factors and broad, polysemous categories like “spirituality,” it is difficult from this report to generate a better sense of what it means for people to work in L'Arche (See appendix 5.1).

In section 5.2 I have presented what traits and skills the L’Arche leadership believe commonly make for good assistants, as well as their latitude in welcoming people with diverse intentions. The demographic profiles of the assistant body as a whole provide an initial outline of the group which I build on with more detailed individual profiles of various assistants in the following sections. My analysis of the LTAs’ interpretive challenges with research on motives alerted me to these same ambiguities and contradictions in my own data. Below, I use my primary research to enhance the present understanding of motives and how people came to have them. In order to do this I expand on how those known factors are connected and prioritized in individual lives. I also situate those motives in other research.

5.3 Background and circumstance

In addition to analyzing assistants’ narratives for common themes about why they want to work in L'Arche, it is important to examine how those dimensions work together. In this section I outline the most common motivations that people discussed, related to their backgrounds and their circumstances at the time they chose to go to L'Arche. While simple circumstance may seem trivial, it often provided an important impetus for people to change the direction of their lives or a short-term opportunity to do something they perceived as unusual, such as L'Arche. Shared elements of their backgrounds are important determinants of what types of activities and work that they consider to be fulfilling.

A broader framework is provided in Wuthnow’s research on the language Americans use to describe their motives for being compassionate and caring (1991). He discovered four primary traditions were used: biblical, utilitarian, therapeutic, and fulfillment (Ibid:58). I found significant commonality between my and Wuthnow’s findings around motives among L'Arche assistants in Canada, as I outline throughout this chapter; however, I also want to highlight three distinctions in my ethnography. I attend more closely to how personal history, and practical needs factor into assistants’ motives to serve and to work in L'Arche.

Second, I found that, even though assistants to some extent employed all of the reasons Wuthnow identified, two of the categories dominated. Not surprisingly, biblical or religious reasons were common, although, as with many of Wuthnow’s interviewees, most of these assistants avoided traditional Christian charitable language of sacrifice (1991:105). Assistants felt that it was an anachronistic and unhealthy way to view altruistic work that was, in fact, often quite rewarding and growthful for the giver. The other common narrative theme for assistants was a sub-theme of what Wuthnow called the fulfillment genre. It consisted of people who were not shy to admit that service, volunteering, or social justice work involves sacrifice and hardship, and that it could also be very fulfilling for them (Ibid:106). But the personal fulfillment and growth benefits were inseparable from the fact that assistants (and Wuthnow’s interviewees) sought them at least partly in order to support, or further, their service goals. This dual commitment provides clues to those aspects of morality and fulfillment that I discuss in sections 5.4 and 5.5 which follow.

The third distinct theme that should be evident in the cases that follow is that in L'Arche, there is a difference between assistants’ official and unofficial ways of talking about sacrifice, fulfillment, and their own contribution to L'Arche. The official discourse, or what Arbuckle calls the public myth about sacrifice at L'Arche, is best reflected in a phrase that is used regularly there[xii]: People come here to give, but in the end, they receive more than they give. The intention of this official maxim, derived from Vanier’s emphasis on the gifts of the poor, is to name and enhance assistants’ appreciation of core members’ gifts. It is also intended to downplay the assistants’ sacrifice by playing up the reciprocity in giving, or the utilitarian benefits. While the public myth is not untrue, it is not the whole story.

The unofficial discourse of daily life in the homes, however, reveals another version of reality. Informal sharing of stories acts as an outlet for some of the stress of this lifestyle. In this discourse, a more common refrain is to describe the work as hard but good; something assistants use seriously but also often utter jokingly, tongue in cheek. Among themselves, assistants regularly discuss the strains, conflicts, time and human resource shortages, lack of sleep, and other difficulties of their vocation, eliciting empathy and needed support from each other. In public however, there is a clear reluctance to concede that sometimes, some parts are simply tough, not growthful.

Is it wrong to talk about the sacrifice or hardships involved in such work? Prominent researchers firmly state that some use of the language of sacrifice is vital because it reminds us that the giver must indeed make real sacrifices if the help is to be more than token[xiii] (Wuthnow 1991:103-5; Bellah 1985:33, 48, 285). Although assistants acknowledge some degree of hardship and sacrifice in this work, the L'Arche ideology encourages them to transform their perspective: rather than maintaining a negative outlook, hardship can be seen as meaningful by pointing to the lessons that can emerge from it.

5.3.1 Circumstance: opportunity and impetus

Assistants’ stories often contain references to a range of ordinary circumstances in their lives just prior to deciding to work in L'Arche. It seems that sometimes even a small change in those circumstances can create an opportunity for them to change directions or take stock of their options. Sometimes the change in circumstances provided the necessary impetus or catalyst for them to act on a long-held desire. Initially, I overlooked the significance of these ordinary circumstances since the interviewees often presented them casually as part of the landscape, and thus did not spend much time discussing them. Later while reading the transcripts, however, it became clear to me the essential role that these ordinary circumstances, such as losing a job or meeting a former assistant, played in the creation of the space for change.

Deon, for example, was a university student interested in social justice issues, and in search of a summer job, but not sure what he was going to do. One night he was having dinner at a friend’s home, and her mother was trying to convince her to go to L'Arche: “She never did go, but I got convinced [to go] instead!”

Wikan insists that chance events are as important in defining who a person is as those events that one plans. She argues that we all live in “a world of urgency and necessity,” responding to things that are outside of our control, more so than a world of intention and order (1995:266). Below, I outline various examples of elements of chance or circumstance which create situations of “urgency and necessity” for people, providing them either with the impetus or opportunity to choose to work in L'Arche.

Before going to L'Arche, Vicky recalls that she was working happily as a professional in applied science, doing well and moving up the corporate ladder. She was involved with her church and happened to get a last-minute spot on a spiritual retreat that Jean Vanier was leading. What she heard there planted a seed in her heart that eventually grew into a desire to work in L'Arche: “It was a pivotal moment for me because Vanier’s retreat was about fruitfulness and [doing] work that was life-giving. Basically his message was saying [that what was of value was] the opposite of productivity and in the mid-80’s productivity was the culture in my profession, so it really hit me as unusual.” Nevertheless, working in L'Arche can be a big decision for anyone and leaving your job to do it is an even bigger decision. Although she was intrigued to learn more, it took more than one catalyst to move Vicky to act. She only chose to go to L'Arche when other changes at work and needing new living arrangements opened up a space where she felt that the time was right for her.

Changes in circumstances work in conjunction with other factors, such as moral, spiritual or interpersonal projects and desires, to become a motivation for changing one’s direction, job, or lifestyle. In most of the self-narratives that I heard, each individual’s decision was the product of complex, interwoven desires and circumstances. Kayley’s story is particularly layered but not unlike many other assistants who come to L'Arche in their early twenties when they are experiencing many changes in perspective and responsibility. Kayley, who had only been at L'Arche two months when I met her, was a soft-spoken, gentle young woman. She had finished university approximately two years earlier. I found her incisive and reflexive but her principle self-description was as a good listener: “I like to make people feel really heard. I didn’t feel too listened to at home, so I guess I know how much people need that, and like it.” She explained her decision to work in L'Arche as the unlikely result of a confluence of a number of simultaneous changes in circumstance, personal developments and desires.

She was dissatisfied with her full-time job in a Christian camp and then was temporarily laid off from it during the down-season. While considering what to do while temporarily laid-off, Kayley had an unfamiliar “restless feeling” and desire to try something “unusual and different.” “But,” she said, “I’m not the type of person to move away, or do anything too strange - it’s just not me.” She knew of L'Arche because the camp had hosted a group of people with intellectual disabilities for a week and among them were people from L'Arche. She enjoyed working with them and felt drawn to do something more with people with intellectual disabilities. The spiritual dimension of L'Arche was also appealing to her. Her friends and family, however, were sceptical of it and strongly discouraged her.

In the end, in spite of their protests, she decided to do a short internship at L'Arche. In addition to the aforementioned reasons, she said, “I figured it was a chance to travel and get rid of my restlessness.” She assured others that she would find “a good job” in a few months. At the time of our interview she said she continued to be uncertain about whether she had done the right thing. This is hardly surprising given the sheer number of issues she was trying to sort through.

At other times, people noted circumstances that were more singular; for example, those people who were finished university or high school and wanted a chance to travel, learn English or French, or learn about another culture before pursuing a career.

My pre-arrival survey of summer interns also revealed a variety of practical needs. Mia, a psychology major, wrote, “This gives me practical experience in the area I want to specialize in, which is very hard to get into.” Sareena, an undergraduate, indicated, “I needed a summer job and I wanted to do something where I was useful and helping.” Leore included a practical, personal benefit as well as a help-oriented one: “I want counselling experience related to my degree, and to help improve the quality of life for people with special needs.” Several people, such as Noel, came to L'Arche for an experience of a less structured faith community life in order to help them figure out if they were well-suited to a seminary or a more formal religious order.

Matthew’s narrative combines several of these themes. He had worked for several years in a field that he loved but a growing feeling of fatigue led him to consider taking a year off to work on a farming property, something he had always wanted to do. A rugby injury set-back the plan and then “out of the blue,” a friend suggested that they travel to L'Arche in Canada, which also had a farm. He had never heard of L'Arche, and had no experience with people with intellectual disabilities. He quickly shifted, however, to feeling that L'Arche could fit with his other desires, such as working outdoors, and exploring the possibility of a vocation in the priesthood. There were other important factors in his decision too, as I discuss below.

5.3.2 Personal history and predispositions

The assistants came from a variety of backgrounds but they shared some formative experiences that contributed to their choice to work in L'Arche. From their self-narratives, I ascertained three common themes related to their backgrounds: religious family upbringing or a developing spirituality, a helping orientation developed in family or school, and experience with, or interest in, people with intellectual disabilities through jobs, school, or their extended families. Many assistants spoke of all three elements being present in their lives, although others shared just one or two. In addition, the degree of importance of the elements varied for each person. These background factors contributed to their pre-disposed choice of an experience such as L’Arche.

Humanitarian, helping orientation

Most assistants included some form of humanitarian or helping ideals as part of their reasons for working in L'Arche; for several people it was the only one of the three aforementioned themes that they brought up. This motive needs to be highlighted and elaborated on because it was culturally underplayed in L'Arche where there is an aim to create a greater recognition of the balance and reciprocal benefits in the caregiving, or helping, relationship.

Roughly half of the assistants discuss, in their self-narratives, having been involved in service or helping activities as a given; it is “just what I do,” they say, because it seems right. Several assistants explained in interviews that their choice of livelihood was between a set of possibilities which all fell within a social responsibility or helping framework. When I asked Sam, a three-year assistant with a university physics degree why he was an assistant instead of working in a lab, he explained, “I guess this is just what I do. I like to be part of things that are good for people. When I think about my choices … sure, some of those jobs are attractive too, but I have this desire to be accountable to myself which means I don’t feel as good when my life is just for me somehow.”

This theme of social responsibility was a natural, or intrinsic, part of who they were, and was also present with most board members and administrative staff whom I interviewed as well. Camilla, for example, vividly recalls her father’s generosity when they grew up. He would give away the family clothes to poor neighbours and regularly overlook the overdue accounts of local people with his store when he knew they were broke. When asked to articulate why she has been involved in so many volunteer roles (including being on the L’Arche board for years) in addition to her career as a professor, she seemed uncomfortable with thinking about it in terms of reasons or motives: “I guess it just rubbed off on me somehow.” When I asked her to comment on why her siblings did not have the same interest or track record of giving their time, she simply ascribed that to personality differences: “That’s just how I am!” Sara, who initially lived as an assistant and now works in one community’s office as an administrative employee, told me, “I have one purpose in my life and that is to make a difference in the world.” During our interview, she explained that she accepted the lower salary and fewer formal training opportunities at L'Arche because she felt good about the meaning and purpose of her work there. Most board members whom I interviewed also seemed deeply committed to social responsibility and service. Most of them are professionals in fields that have little to do with disability or even social service. Despite this, their narratives are full of other types of volunteering or social justice activities that are described as part of their normal flow of life and civic responsibility.

Wuthnow suggested a theory regarding explanations like those offered by Sam, Kayley, Camilla, and Sara which suggest that doing good is “just who I am” or something that “I just believe is good to do.” Wuthnow argues that these are narrative techniques which people employ in order to “naturalize” or “subjectivize” their motives (1991:76, 70-2). Naturalizing is a technique used to downplay one’s free will and thus avoid the stigma of appearing to be seeking credit for being altruistic (Ibid:76). Subjectivizing is another strategy through which people try to avoid judgement or suspicion for their good acts by constructing their motives as simply personal taste, and thus beyond criticism (Ibid:70-6). In order to explain why people would want to deflect attention from any altruistic involvement, Wuthnow returns to his assertion that because “caring is in some ways deviant” it “makes us feel compelled to give an account of ourselves.” (1991:72). In addition, he suggests, “The issue arises, I suspect, because we want to take some credit for our actions, but there is also a stigma against taking too much credit for them.” (Ibid:76). It is of course also possible, that people simply find it hard to put words around their complex motives and so to say “it is who I am” is just plain easier.

Among newer assistants, there are many who are motivated almost exclusively by the helping or social justice theme. As an example, a number of young Germans come to work at L'Arche in Canada each year with an official program for conscientious resistors, in lieu of Germany’s compulsory military duty. They tend to have strong social justice values and experience with voluntarism but often have neither experience with people with intellectual disabilities nor a prominent theme of faith in their self-narratives. L'Arche also welcomes a number of summer students and university co-op students for four month placements. Many of these students are broadly interested in social inequality and injustice and health issues. They are thus enrolled in social work, special education or other therapeutic programmes but have no prior experience with people with intellectual disabilities.

Religion

Religion, in some form, was a part of most assistants’ formative years, although the degree of involvement with their faith varied both in their families and as they began to make their own choices about religion. For many, their experiences with religion were formative in predisposing them to the possible value of life in a spiritual community. One survey respondent explained how her desire to serve in L'Arche was connected with her faith: “My desire was to live community with the poor; those people who do not have a voice in our society. The simplicity and spirit of the Beatitudes attracted me. I also wanted to discover the gifts of the core members.” (Lukeman 2001). In many cases however, it was a struggle with religion, or aspects of it, which led people to L'Arche in order to explore its alternative version of faith.

Theo was raised in “a very Catholic family” with several relatives living as religious people.[xiv] Nevertheless, he remembered himself in his teens in school as rebellious on all counts, including how he related to religion. Below, I have selected parts from a much longer segment of our interview to give a flavour of his experience with religion. Although he struggled with Christianity and experimented with different faiths, he remained drawn to faith in some form.

Theo: “I was taking all kinds of different courses at university but I became very disillusioned with it…. I felt like it should have been more intense. Eventually I took religious studies, philosophy, sociology and stuff and really liked them…. I became vegetarian and very philosophical - actually I was probably a pain in the ass – I was quite argumentative. I upset my mom all the time, and I was very idealistic. My uncle was a Jesuit… we talked a lot about my questions, and he encouraged me to look around if I wasn’t happy with Catholicism…. It wasn’t that I had a problem with religion per se; I just didn’t see how it could be fair to say that being Catholic was any more ‘right’ than any other choice. So I was looking for the commonality in many faith traditions to see what I could hold onto and believe in.”

Pamela: Why do you think the question of faith and beliefs was so important for you to sort out?

Theo: “I don’t know…. I thought about things a lot. Well, I had some close friends who didn’t have any faith, but I could see that they were plainly good people and that challenged me. How could I think there was something wrong with them?”

Adrienne’s self-narrative was also replete with struggles with Catholicism but for different reasons, and she worked them out in a different way. For her, it was a part of her identity and, as such, she felt drawn to it and comfortable with it; yet there were aspects of religion that continually frustrated her. As she explained though, religion clearly shaped her views on social responsibility and the kind of vocation to which she felt called. Although she was raised as a Catholic, it was “mainly a Sundays thing,” until her high school Religious Studies teacher presented the class with a radically different perspective on religion. He was “anti-establishment and unconventional but still very passionate about Christianity” and taught them about issues the church was facing in Central America, with missionaries, with native people, and women.

“It was a very social justice perspective. He talked to us a lot about living with integrity- linking our beliefs and lifestyle – like, how I live affects people around me. And I started feeling like I wanted to choose a life that is somehow in harmony with other people in the world. This all got me involved in lots of activism stuff,” and it gave me “purpose and meaning. But it was also … it was rebellious, it fit in I guess with where I was at developmentally as an adolescent to be against things.”

Adrienne continued with these interests at university, pursuing philosophy, peace and religious studies and becoming an activist. She struggled with finding a place in the Catholic church as a woman, however, and eventually gave it up altogether for a period. Subsequently, she decided to try again; living in L'Arche was part of that effort to find her way spiritually. When I asked Adrienne why she kept returning to the church, considering her concerns with it, she explained:

“I guess I still wanted a place to belong, to be connected with, and for me that had been the church so I guess I just didn’t want to drop it…. I felt that I couldn’t run away from being Catholic; for me, being Catholic was like being Italian. Like it was part of my identity, part of what formed me. It’s familiar to me, it’s a culture, its’ a story. I think I was drawn to the familiarity and frustrated by it at the same time. But that’s the same as being Italian for me – but you can’t shake it- it’s part of who I am. So I thought I’d choose to work within it. I thought about changing churches but others have their issues and inconsistencies too.”

Struggles with faith were, however, not ubiquitous among assistants. Seth’s family, for example, were strong Catholics and he was “plunged into a sense of the value of a life of Christian service… [and the] values of sharing, and respecting others.” In his youth, along with many of his friends, he was involved in a myriad of community service-oriented activities either through the Boy Scouts, his church or school. He explained that he never felt a need to question his faith, that it was connected with many positive experiences and friendships for him. He had even considered being involved in some sort of vocation directly related to the church.

Maria is a friendly, straightforward woman in her late twenties. She was raised in a small, Canadian coastal village with her parents, both teachers, and a vibrant extended family. Of religion she explained casually that Catholicism was “never something very deliberate for me, it was just sort of there…. I didn’t really question it much. We had a simple faith.” She participated in various clubs and volunteer activities that were faith-oriented.

Kayley was not raised in a formal religious tradition but developed an interest in it through friends during high school. One reason she was interested in L'Arche, as noted above, was its particular spirituality, a contrast to her denomination: “I picked up on something in the L’Arche message that sounded interesting. The whole idea of suffering in Christianity had been bugging me: Why do I have this crummy job, God? Why did you [God] put me here?” L'Arche, she said, seemed to offer some helpful explanation for the meaning or role of suffering.

Desire to work with people with intellectual disabilities

Given the nature of the actual labour of caregiving required of an assistant, it is not surprising that many people who went there had either experience or a desire to work and live with people with intellectual disabilities. A small number of assistants had someone disabled in their immediate or extended family. More often, however, their exposure, if any, had been in other circumstances. Seth, for example, first became interested when he was asked to welcome and assist a disabled boy who joined his Scouts troop. Seth found it fun and rewarding to support the boy and get to know him and was struck by how different the boy’s opportunities were from his peers’. This experience eventually led Seth to a degree in psychology and special education; he eventually became a professor in the field. In his L'Arche community, Seth is a dynamic, sociable figure and clearly delights in his joking, good-humoured relationships with core members.

Maria’s enduring interest from high school onwards was directed toward people with learning and intellectual disabilities. Although she had a disabled cousin, she says that her interest developed by chance after she had read a novel about a disabled person. She had read much more on the subject through her teen years, hoping to work in special education: “I was struck by that idea of being able to…just in very, very simple ways, to help let what [good] was inside of a person come out.” In high school, she worked during the summers as a daily accompanier with an autistic boy and his family. She was intrigued about what made him happy or scared and she enjoyed growing comfortable with him, and having fun. Maria discovered that she had something good to give and connected with his parents, who appreciated her energy and ease with their son. She worked in other mainstream agencies later, but felt uncomfortable with the social distance they prescribed between client and staff. Maria explained that L'Arche was attractive because its philosophy resonated with her own emerging sense of how to relate to people with intellectual disabilities.

Several survey respondents also noted an interest in people with intellectual disabilities, in assisting them, and getting to know them. Two examples are insightful: “I worked in an institution and did not agree with some ways people were treated. Drawn to people with intellectual disabilities. Vanier’s words resonated with something inside me,” and “Desiring a better life for people in institutions; enjoyment and delight in people with intellectual disabilities; desire for community; personal spiritual journey; reading Vanier book” (Lukeman 2001).

Benjamin worked from age 15 to 18 as a counsellor and director in a summer camp. Each year for a week or two, the camp would host several children with intellectual disabilities and integrate them into the activities of the other children. He recalls feeling very comfortable with them, unlike several of the other counsellors. He enjoyed their spontaneity and joy and was moved by how much they seemed to appreciate the opportunity to be supported in outdoor activities. Benjamin had a deep sense of well-being and enjoyment when working with people with disabilities. This contrasted with his later work throughout university with juvenile delinquents which did not leave him energized or motivated.

In section 5.3, I have shown how particular aspects of assistant’s backgrounds commonly played a formative role in choosing to work in L'Arche. Background is only part of the answer, however, and in the following section I discuss the question of authenticity as a motive for working in L'Arche.

5.4 Authenticity and resolving moral tension

“All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”

(James Russell Lowell)

The theme of authenticity emerged regularly in assistants’ stories about why they went to L'Arche. Although they had some difficulty in articulating it, what came through was that at a certain point they experienced a sense of moral tension over what they were living; they wanted to resolve this tension by undertaking some kind of significant action. The degree of tension ranged from a creeping but quiet realization, to a rapid, heightened feeling of inauthenticity. Various assistants described an unsettled feeling that arose after reflecting on what they wanted from life and finding that the answers did not align with what they were actually doing. That feeling of moral misalignment sometimes continued for years before it was strong enough to push the person to make actual changes. While modernism now privileges moral subjectivism and relativism (C. Taylor 1989:16), authenticity and morality were originally connected with reason, which allowed them to be compared and evaluated (Ibid:19).

In what novelist T.S. Eliot (1950) referred to as “the endless struggle to think well of ourselves,” and to have others affirm us in that effort, we can employ discursive strategies but sometimes actions are necessary to convincingly achieve the desired effect (Wikan 1995:266). As novelist Timothy Findley put it in the context of soldiers’ ethics in The Wars (1977): “We are known only in what we do.” If one’s identity includes being a caring person but one’s life does not include much actual caring, this eventually creates a drive to correct that paucity through action. Theo’s story is representative of this moral dilemma or crossroads. After three years of studying philosophy at university, Theo reached a point where “just talking” about issues of justice, right livelihood,livell and spirituality was not enough. “[I wanted] to live something real. To do it and not just read or talk about it,” he said. Survey respondents expressed similar feelings: “I was at a place in my life that I wanted the gospel to be lived out, as opposed to talked about, in my life.” “L'Arche was a place to live what I believed” (Lukeman 2001).

It appeared to me that, in choosing to become part of the work that they had been merely talking about, they were also acting to maintain the integrity of their self-image. The action was and is an essential embodiment of their values. Their actions helped to craft and construct the parameters of who they are (to themselves) and also who they can claim to be (to others).

Michel, now in his late forties, described coming to a point of tension connected to religion. He was a civil servant before becoming an assistant at L’Arche. He grew up in the country, loved being outdoors and physical work but he eventually pursued a practical finance career in the city. Michel worked well for years, but felt increasingly discontent: “I was stagnating at work and didn’t feel fulfilled; papers and more papers don’t make you happy.” He tried many ways to alleviate the discontent, including therapy, moving out of the family home, exercise, volunteering, and new relationships. While these changes helped, spiritual and moral questions continued to pull at him. Eventually Michel met a therapist who introduced him to an alternative to the rules-oriented religion of his youth. To his surprise, he found these conversations peaceful and a relief from his daily routine. Michel grew certain that he wanted to find work that was more closely aligned with his spiritual yearnings. That was how he began to volunteer for L'Arche. The desire for change seems to emerge from a feeling of inauthenticity. He felt that his work and lifestyle did not reflect his beliefs or nurture him to grow as a person.

“One must live the way one thinks, or end up thinking the way one has lived.”

(P. Bourget)

The stories of two talented women who faced similar situations are instructive although because they were at different stages of moral-spiritual tension, they responded differently. Karina and Judi both had a religious upbringing in closely-knit families and spent high school and university involved in various social-service activities. They are both self-described over-achievers with boundless energy. Both also found themselves accepted for graduate studies at prestigious American universities. Karina had spent almost two years in a European L’Arche community. While graduate school had been a long-held desire, Karina could not shake the feeling that she was being called back to L'Arche; she felt that further formation in L'Arche would strengthen her values. This would help her later to stay her path and resist what she perceived as the competition and materialism in law school culture. As such, she resolved to work in a domestic L'Arche community for another year.

Judi faced a similar decision after her exploratory month working in a L’Arche home. Judi and I met at a L'Arche retreat house where we were both staying one night. After someone else mentioned that I was in graduate school, she shared her dilemma with us, asking for our perspectives. She was plainly torn about whether to engage now in her long-held desire to live a more deeply Christian lifestyle or to push that personal project off again and begin her Master’s degree first. She was excited about being accepted to a prestigious programme and also felt pressure from her parents to follow the academic path. As she said, “My parents are telling me that I can always do L'Arche later, once I am done my education.”

Unlike Theo or Karina, it seemed that Judi was not experiencing enough moral tension in the decision-making process to push her to make the more unconventional choice of L'Arche. Her desire for spiritual development was genuine but less of an immediate priority than professional development. Judi chose school but is apparently planning to return to L'Arche later.

Another sort of moral tension experienced was a feeling of having lost one’s moral compass. Several assistants described feeling instinctively that they needed to be in a place like L'Arche so that they would be shaped well. Being in L’Arche was an intentional surrender for them in some ways. Nina, now an LTA, explained that she decided to leave her risky, fast-moving street lifestyle because she realized, “I felt right out of control and I needed some reining in, but there was no one in my life who could do that. As much as it was fun out there, I started realizing that it was an escape for me too. I didn’t want to deal with stuff like family issues and questions about my sexuality.” She had heard of L'Arche years before through a family friend and felt intuitively that the structure of home-life, the bigger purpose, and responsibility for serving others would get her on track, personally and spiritually.

Audrey’s experience reflects a similar sense of losing one’s moral compass. She had always been socially active but while working in the years following high school, she began to feel disillusioned and lonely with her life and friends: “Partying together gave us some sense of community but really there was no commitment. I started to see that it was so false. If I talked to my friends about it though, they thought I was too intense…. After awhile, I just felt more and more outside the circle.” Eventually a bad relationship and an unwanted pregnancy scared Audrey into realizing “something has to change.” She made lifestyle changes on her own, such as less partying and trying to pray for the first time; this helped to some degree but she still felt relatively lost. She decided to live and work in L'Arche because she believed, as did Nina, that being in a structured community environment would help her to change those habits she had developed that she considered unhealthy.

Although Vanier often cautions that people should not choose L’Arche as a way to hide from the world, Daniel, a community leader, believes that even when people come to “lose themselves in the community,” their presence in the homes can be turned into something fruitful with proper guidance: “Good religious communities try to work with people to name those fears, and challenge them to get beyond the fears. We want our communities to be places of growth so that people can be out in the world and radically committed to service and people, not staying in and losing their personality in the group.”

5.5 The twin dimensions of meaningful fulfillment

“Ta pathemata, mathemata ~ The suffered, is the learned.”

(Burke 1962 [1945]:40-1)

In making a decision about whether or not to come to L’Arche, people considered what could come of the experience that was beneficial. All assistants expressed having been motivated by personal self-interest and collective or altruistic goals. They described the outcome of such interwoven goals in terms of what I will call meaningful fulfillment; fulfillment with a socially responsible dimension. I present the dual goals as interwoven here as was the case in their narratives. For example, while some people sought a sense of belonging in L'Arche because this would be personally enjoyable, it was also noted as something that would allow them to continue to give care (See also Wuthnow 1991:106). Working in L'Arche offered a chance to do good and make a difference in the world, and in turn felt rewarding for them. As deToqueville pointed out over a century ago, the experience of being involved in public service can transform egocentric motives into “reasons transcending private self-interest” (Bellah 1985:168).

5.5.1 Work-related concerns

About half of the assistants named work-related factors as a motive to work in L'Arche. Younger assistants were especially likely to mention the benefit of work experience; 80% of respondents to my pre-arrival survey volunteering “work-related experience” as relevant. This makes sense given that they are at an early stage in their careers. Younger assistants seemed to feel pressure to justify their chosen experiences by assigning them an instrumental value related to career development. Leore, for example, was considering doing a Master’s degree in Social Work. She explained her motives: “I hope to gain an understanding of how people with disabilities live each day, and to build relationships with them and other assistants. I hope to have a broadened view of life and find out what exactly my career goal is – if social work is really for me or not.”

Mia, another respondent to my survey, wrote that she hoped for, “A break in my life as a student. Time to reflect on my personality and how to have a better attitude. To be patient, to help if I can, and to have some good relationships. To learn a lot about people with disabilities who I would like to keep working with later.” In interviews, assistants indicated that at the outset, the possibility of these intrinsic benefits, (e.g. personal growth, direction, relations) made up for the lack of extrinsic job benefits in L'Arche (e.g. money or prestige). They also helped encourage the assistants to continue on as caregivers.

When LTAs mentioned work, it was usually related to their desire to do meaningful and fulfilling work. Betty explained to me that after four years in full-time church ministry through music, she knew it was not right. She felt the work was meaningful, but something about it did not feel fruitful for her. She went to L'Arche originally for a transition year to consider her future vocation and direction. Peter had enjoyed working and studying in the field of disability advocacy for several years before he decided to go to L'Arche. While both meaningful and fulfilling professionally, advocacy work did not nourish his soul. At a spiritual retreat, an acquaintance gave him a book by Jean Vanier, suggesting that the ideas might resonate with Peter’s own ideas. While he did not actually read it for a year, once he did, he was indeed moved by the message.

A final example is Calvin. Now a seasoned community leader, Calvin is a passionate, energetic man, the son of an immigrant family. He worked extensively in various large care organizations but once he attained a certain level of authority in them, he realized that the work was demanding much more of him than it was giving back. The structure there did not allow him time to nourish other important things in his life such as religion and family. He believed that he would be able to balance these elements better in a L'Arche setting.

5.5.2 Adventure, becoming and growth

Having a special, out of the ordinary experience was an important theme in at least half of the assistants’ narratives. They saw L'Arche as a chance to explore new terrain. I had not anticipated the prevalence of this element of adventure. My original conception of what assistants did fell within the more serious frameworks of caregiving and social activism. One survey respondent explained her multiple curiosities succinctly:

I knew I liked people with intellectual disabilities, and I wanted the chance to travel. I read Vanier’s writing and looked on coming to L’Arche as a bit of an adventure! I was also interested in community – creating community (Lukeman 2001).

This motivating factor is important to discuss because I believe it is underplayed in L'Arche. The axiomatic belief in L'Arche that people go there seeking belonging makes it easy to overlook the fact that going to L'Arche was also an act of separation, an uprooting, and a movement away from their previous community or home. Anthropologist Michael Jackson notes that humans have twin, conflicting longings to feel rooted at home and also to reach out and explore the frontiers of “otherness” (1995:3). Jackson argues that while philosopher Simone Weil extolled the soul’s fundamental longing to be rooted (Weil 1952:43), we “have an equally strong need to uproot ourselves,” to avoid stagnation, and continue to seek inspiration (Jackson 1995:3).

Most people found it hard to explain their attraction to exploring difference, but it was nevertheless compelling for them. As Sam explained, “I just thought it would be really neat to be able to get to know a few people with disabilities better – to just look at someone who is so different from me, and try to understand what is going on inside of them.” Rivers, who was studying for his Master’s of Divinity, hoped that in his summer term at L'Arche he would “develop my compassion for those who are different from myself” because he felt that this was fundamental to a life of ministry. Their hopes reflect a “yearning to open oneself up to the world at large” and a desire to reach out across differences and connect with people (Jackson 1995:4).

For others, it was not specifically the difference of disability that attracted them but the whole package of alternative living that L'Arche offered with its intense, intentional community lifestyle and its alternative spirituality. When Benjamin finished school, he had no romantic relationship or job holding him at home and so was able to indulge his desire to travel to Europe, and live in L'Arche there. When I asked him if he was looking for anything in particular, he said, “An experience – I told myself, I am young, why not do it? Leave home, live on my own.… I wanted to grow - to be different by going away. I wanted to be enriched, to know myself better, and to know the meaning of my life. What do I want to do? I asked.”

Maria’s story reflects the same sentiment: “I was looking for time away from school. And I think I was looking for something out of the ordinary. I wanted to do something different so that if I did go back to school, then at least for one year I did something really out of the ordinary.” Both are still in L'Arche now, years later.

5.5.3 Belonging & home

The need for belonging is the counter-point to the desire for freedom and adventure. Assistants named a desire to be part of something good, and to be with people with similar values and spirituality. L'Arche assistants commonly say that they were attracted to L'Arche for community, belonging, or a sense of being at home[xv]. Other L'Arche scholars have also discussed this theme of wanting a place to belong (Pottie 2000:8-11; Bazinet 1995; Sumarah 1988; Vanier 1998). Philosopher Charles Taylor situates such feelings of anguish over not having moorings or a sense of belonging as typically modernist (C. Taylor 1989). An interesting facet of these stories is how the desire to belong often supported both personal and altruistic aims.

From a personal interest perspective, assistants said that it would simply be more enjoyable to work in an environment where people shared the same fundamental values. This seemed especially desirable for people who had experienced difficulty enacting their moral or faith beliefs in regular life or with finding like-minded friends. Benjamin, for example, said that although he had many wonderful friends, he felt lonely in some sense because they did not share his faith or his perspective on finding a meaningful vocation. It is difficult, as Taylor has noted, to live out counter-cultural values on your own, in a modern society biased towards social atomization and consumerism (1989:7-9).

This perceived constraint is ironic considering that Canadians and Americans commonly work on the assumption that we have great moral and religious freedom due to our secular, therapeutic culture (Rieff 1966, Rimke 2000, Bellah 1985). A partial explanation for the constraint could be the deviance that is associated with compassion and altruism in our society where their uncommonness makes them seem like suspect behaviours (Wuthnow 1991:72). As Theo and I discussed various factors which led him to L'Arche a decade ago, he tried to recollect his original hopes:

I guess I’d say I wanted to know more about community. I wanted to belong somewhere that was more like how I was. I also wanted to learn about love. At that time, I recall thinking that I was interested in things, but I didn’t feel that my heart was engaged in them – I felt sort of numb and I didn’t like that.

The desire to find a place to belong was also rooted in altruistic aims. Several people suggested that being around like-minded people would provide some of the support necessary to continue doing social justice work. Wuthnow also found people in his research who said that benefits such as relationships, support, and community were essential for helping them to rejuvenate so that they could continue to volunteer or do intense, emotional, caring work (1991:96). Of one interviewee he writes: “Caring for others…presents him with challenges, teaches him lessons, makes him stronger so that he is better able to care the next time than he was before.” (Ibid:106). When Maria moved from traditional care facilities to L’Arche, she hoped to find the collegial support and values-driven environment that she needed and thrived in; this support enabled her to provide care that she felt was both morally just and mutually nourishing.

Trevor, a former community leader, now in his early forties, bounced from management in social services to small business and construction after graduating. He had been raised in a rural protestant faith tradition that was no longer meaningful for him and he was somewhat adrift spiritually. He had not developed meaningful relations with his many colleagues. After several visits and volunteer days with the L’Arche community where he lived, Trevor realized a high degree of compatibility between the L'Arche mission and his own beliefs:

It was the first time I realized that there were people who were living something intentionally that sort of resonated with some of the themes in my life…[such as] the L'Arche articulation of the beauty and sacredness of human life…and a very personalized vision of community…where each person’s value was upheld rather than being treated merely as patients or employees.

Although L'Arche assistants often spoke of ways that they had grown, most did not explicitly name ways in which they felt they were weak or in need of acceptance. Vanier names the Western reluctance to admit personal weakness as “the absent cry of the rich,” in contrast to the more familiar “cry of the poor” (Vanier 1989:89). While most people are drawn to L’Arche primarily in a spirit of generosity, Vanier insists that they are also moved by their own need for relationships, spiritual strength, love, support, and other healing (Vanier 1989, 1998). As Matthew puts it, “I wasn’t a lost soul. But there was something – I felt an emptiness.”

5.6 Conclusion

In this chapter I have presented a wide-ranging discussion of why people choose to live and work as assistants in L’Arche communities in Canada. Assistants do not enter L’Arche as a homogeneous collective, neither are they completely different from each other. They shared a passion and energy for learning about L’Arche and people with intellectual disabilities, although most of them did not enter with the intention of a long-term commitment. They also shared a blend of self-interested and altruistic aims that they hoped to work towards during their time in L’Arche. This is significant in understanding how they experience and make sense of their time in L'Arche. It can also provide clues to assistants’ eventual reasons for leaving. A finer analysis of this issue could help LTAs develop ways to accommodate some of the newer assistants’ social change projects within the community.

In chapters 6 and 7, I show that the L'Arche approach to care and community is challenging and requires different things of the caregivers than do mainstream approaches. The outlooks, values, and motives which bring assistants to L'Arche, imbue their practice with rich and unconventional meaning. It is, in the end, in the daily practice of care that a person will grow or not grow, not in their hopes and talk alone.