Above, Rachel (left) and Dana (right) together in 2016 with the L’Arche Chicago community. They both joined L’Arche around the same time and quickly forged a joy-filled friendship. This – friendship – is the real gift of L’Arche.
In 2016, I was a live-in assistant in Peace House, in the L’Arche Chicago community. I was preparing dinner with Dana, a core member, for our home including guests – family members. As a new assistant, the stakes felt high to impress.
Rice was on the menu, which I had a complicated, insecure relationship with: never quite getting the ratios and timing right. Sure enough, as guests started to arrive, the rice was deemed crunchy and irredeemable. We quickly pivoted to boiling some noodles instead.
Dana would never let me forget it. From time to time she would look at me and slowly say… “crunchy riiiice!” and we’d both burst into laughter.
Our experiences are shaped by the people we meet along the way. Dana profoundly shaped my L’Arche experience. It all started there, at Peace House just over 10 years ago. As I arrived to move in, nervous at the front door, Dana swung the front door open and welcomed me with an enthusiasm that set the tone for my experience there for the next year and a half: friendship, belonging, and pure joy. My time with L’Arche Chicago remains a highlight of my life, and ultimately what brought me here to Saint John.
I first learned about L’Arche communities in 2012 through a book club. I was an undergrad at the time without much experience with folks with disabilities, but I felt so drawn to L’Arche, I couldn’t explain it. In my final semester abroad, I had a one-page document saved to my desktop that listed all the L’Arche communities around the world. Procrastinating from writing an essay, I would study the page and daydream about where I would end up. Joining a L’Arche community felt like a calling – an inevitability.
A couple months after the crunchy rice incident, Dana and I traveled a few hours away for an overnight retreat with other L’Arche members from the region. As she got in the shower one evening, I’d promised – and forgotten – to put a fresh towel out for her. She later emerged, covered up but soaking wet, and my mistake quickly became clear. We laughed so hard my stomach hurt.
What that one-page list of locations I studied a few years earlier couldn’t have prepared me for was the richness of relationships along the way. Building a friendship with Dana, and so many other core members and assistants – people with and without intellectual disabilities – has been a highlight of my life.
Recently I texted Dana, “Is there a favourite memory that you have of us together?” She replied, “I don’t have one, I like them all. My L’Arche journey was good because of you.”
This is the beauty and gift of L’Arche: friendship. It’s such a simple thing, yet so profoundly important – especially for folks with disabilities, and especially in our ever-isolated world.
When you support a L’Arche community – whether Saint John, or elsewhere – you help bring these opportunities for real human connection to life. And it is nothing short of life changing.
With gratitude,
Rachel Vander Vennen
Community Leader & Executive Director
1 comment
I love to read this story, Rachel. It shows your commitment to people and to something that’s larger, or: more valuable than a simple, straightforward way of living.
Your writings are a gift for us readers. Thank you.
Please share our warm regards with the ones we learned to know in L’Arche St John.
Lisette and Marc