Ending a chain of violence

Peace can only come, says Jean Vanier, founder of L?Arche, when weaker members of society are made welcome. He explains his creed to Austen Ivereigh

THE world bristled with menace when I crossed the Channel last week to meet one of the modern age?s prophets of peace. The train between London and Paris ? which could be the next target for another attack like that on Madrid two days before, the newspapers were predicting ? halted at the mouth of the tunnel for three hours. Just a broken rail, said the chef de train: ?This does not affect our security.?

From Paris it is an hour?s train to Compi?gne, then a 15-minute drive through foggy woodlands to the little village of Trosly. Almost at once I was overwhelmed by a sense of deep peace. Could this village, where the handicapped reveal what it means to be human, have a message of hope for a world tailspinning into fear and retaliation?

I met a beaming Jean Vanier at his little farmhouse, where he heated some rustic soup. He is tall, mildly patrician, his upper-class English softened by Gallic vowels. But the most striking thing about the 75-year-old founder of L?Arche is his face. Its lines hint at an amazing story. The son of the late Governor-General of Canada, Vanier joined the British Navy in 1942 to be part of the struggle for peace and freedom. He left eight years later to work for those same goals but in a different way ? ?to better understand the causes of conflict and the way to resolve them through a deepening in spirituality and in a love that flows from the heart of God,? he says in his little book Finding Peace (Continuum, 2003).

The crucial step in his journey came when, in 1964, following an invitation from his Dominican friend and mentor, P?re Thomas, he left his life as a philosophy lecturer in Canada to live with two disabled people in Trosly. Having started as ?a generous Catholic looking after a few poor people?, he realised that through them God was gradually bringing him a joyfulness and a happiness which he had sensed nowhere before. As he began to speak and write about this experience, people began arriving in Trosly, and L?Arche?s spark caught fire. There are now 120 communities (each with a number of houses, or foyers) in 29 countries worldwide; alongside these is a movement, Faith and Light, nourishing families with disabled people from the experience of L?Arche.

Experience is the word. Vanier has written about it frequently, but there is still no theology, as such, to express it. ?We are based on an experience rather and not an intellectual or faith certitude,? he tells me, ?and that renders us extremely fragile. L?Arche could possibly not exist in 20 years? time. But maybe our strength is our fragility.?

Attending to the ?core members? ? the handicapped ? and dealing with their aggression is the stuff of everyday life in L?Arche ? and the stuff of conversion of hearts. Reflecting on that experience has made Vanier a part of what he describes as ?a trickle of peacemakers in a world of war?. He describes the trickle as ?a sort of movement?, as yet unnamed and unexpressed theologically, which has in common an experience of communion with the oppressed, rejected, and the despised. That experience has brought people directly into contact with God?s love and the redemptive, healing power of Christ ? whether or not named ? in the world.

The experience points to non-violence, rather than pacifism. Vanier, who was once a naval officer, understands the need for properly trained armies and military interventions, as well as policemen and prisons. ?The question is, how to be patient in listening to what the Spirit of God is saying to the world today?? says Vanier. ?It?s learning how to ask: ?is there another effectiveness???

The effectiveness learned in L?Arche is one of conversion through mutual acceptance. Peace hinges on this conversion through communion. Crucial to communion is allowing the weak to teach the strong. Vanier points to the Pope?s address in January, when he spoke of the disabled as ?humanity?s privileged witnesses?: as heralds of a transfigured world, one no longer dominated by force, violence and aggression but by love, solidarity and acceptance. People with disabilities, said the Pope, ?reveal to us what it means to be human?.

It is hard to imagine the Pope making such an address without the experience of L?Arche to draw on. But Vanier also believes it arises from the Pope?s own experience of fragility.

He is not among those who, as John Paul II becomes the second-longest reigning Pope in history, is calling on him to retire. ?To have someone so vulnerable at the head of the Church ? I think it is fantastic,? he says. Embracing vulnerability and poverty, he explains, is L?Arche?s way into the spiritual depths.

Paths taken by the ordinary able-bodied person ? to pursue status and achievement as a means of affirming their worth by their own means ? are not open to the severely disabled. ?In order for them to live, to be fulfilled, they need relationships,? he says. ?They need communion more than generosity.?

It is a distinction he is fond of making: generosity, while worthy, is when someone superior gives to someone inferior; communion involves conversion and vulnerability. It is the particular gift of the disabled, Vanier has learned, to ?lead us into communion?.

Vanier draws a series of peace lessons from the L?Arche experience. Peace is not stasis; it is not the absence of violence: where there is isolation, separation and indifference between peoples, conflict can break out at any time. Nor is it simply civility and respect for the law, in which the walls of separation remain firm. Peace, rather, is the counter-dynamic to competition, rivalry and the clash of strengths. Peace can only come, he says, when the chain of violence is broken and the weaker members of society are fully welcomed, loved and respected. It is the conversion undergone by the Good Samaritan, who was first moved by generosity, then by compassion, then by amazement and joy. ?Something must have happened?, says Vanier, ?when the man woke up and saw he had been saved by an enemy, and says, ?You?re my brother?!?

The discovery of this brotherhood in humanity which is stronger and deeper than any social and religious identity is the place where peace becomes possible. Vanier believes too much interreligious dialogue begins with theology and spirituality ? in a comparison of belief systems ? and so gets nowhere. ?You get to a point where you ask, ?are Jesus and Muhammad the same?? Either you say yes or you say no. Better to ask together, ?what does it mean to be a human being and how do human beings grow? What is freedom, what is human maturity??? Religious beliefs can then be tackled later, says Vanier, after the discovery of a shared humanity and the mutual acceptance of the other.

Peace, in other words, begins in relationships ? covenanted, committed, long-term. Such relationships seem harder now, says Vanier, because they are no longer held together by bonds of law and honour. Because they now depend on forging communion, they appear to be much weaker. In the same way, newly pluralistic societies are throwing together peoples who only years ago would never have rubbed shoulders. It is a crunch time, Vanier believes. ?Either we will find communion ? which means finding a new force, a new strength ? or fall into a sort of breakdown,? he says. That new force will depend on discovering a religion which is interior first, and a spirituality based on the discovery of a shared humanity.

This is what happens at L?Arche, where people discover a whole new vision through their relationship with disabled people. It is this conversion, this awakening, that is most important. ?It is better to have an atheist who is really attentive to people?s disabilities?, says Vanier, ?than a good Catholic who rejects them.? Once people are willing ?to go down into their depths? they discover that ?the Scriptures are all about heart, about love?, he says, adding: ?Jesus will reveal himself to them without telling them his name.? First comes this experience ? available to anyone ? of love, and of light, and of joy. ?Only afterwards?, he says, ?do we have to start naming things.?

This porosity has created difficulties in the past with the Vatican, which at one point challenged Vanier to say whether L?Arche was a Catholic organisation. He couldn?t: as well as Catholics, they have Muslims, Hindus and atheists both as core residents and as assistants. (There are Muslims who are heads of houses, and in theory a Muslim could become a future community leader of L?Arche.) The impasse with the Vatican?s Council for the Laity was overcome ? with the help of Cardinal Basil Hume ? by an arrangement which Vanier finds congenial. The Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the mostly Protestant World Council of Churches each appoint a representative for L?Arche. Last year they met Vanier in Rome together with the heads of the Vatican?s Councils for the Laity. Christian Unity and Interreligious Dialogue. It is an arrangement that allows L?Arche to remain a prophetic Catholic voice, receiving support from the Church but unconstrained by its institutional borders.

That evening I accompany Jean Vanier to La Foresti?re, the foyer in Troly where the profoundly disabled ? locked behind layers of autism, and unable to communicate verbally ? are cared for. The mostly French assistants are young, educated, and joyful; at supper they attend to their charges tenderly, interpreting signs of wanting more food, or water. The scene is cheerful and chaotic, as in a big family. But there is one core member who distracts me: Lo?c?s behaviour is disturbed and angry; he puts food in his mouth then lets it dribble out. His eyes roll, and he lets out the occasional groan. My feelings flit between revulsion and compassion.

After supper, the assistants and the residents sit in a circle to pray. There is a little singing, but mostly silence. A contemplative stillness supervenes. Vanier invites Lo?c on to his lap. Over the next half hour I watch as Lo?c gradually calms. He eventually rests his face trustingly on Vanier?s chest, a little smile on his face. No words have passed between them, but the communication has been profound.

As an image of peacemaking, it told me as much as all of Vanier?s excellent books. I left Trosly believing that the lion lying down with the lamb is more than a hope; it is a real possibility. The world looked different. Even the trains ran smoothly, unbombed.

Jean Vanier will be giving a talk, ?Working for Peace?, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, at 7 p.m. on 31 March. Free admission, all welcome.