This is the first instalment in a continuing correspondence between Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, a worldwide group of communities for the disabled, and Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown.
Mr. Brown is the father of a 12-year-old boy, Walker, who was born with a rare genetic syndrome called cardio-facio-cutaneous syndrome. He wrote about their experiences in a 2007 Globe and Mail series, The Boy in the Moon (see globeandmail.com/boyinthemoon).
Mr. Vanier, one of the world's leading thinkers on disability, was born in Canada 80 years ago and founded the first L'Arche community in 1964 in a small house he bought for himself and two disabled men in Trosly-Breuil, 70 kilometres northeast of Paris. Today, L'Arche operates 130 communities in 34 countries, including 27 in Canada.
Mr. Vanier still lives in Trosly-Breuil. The two men met when Mr. Brown visited there for the first time in April.
July 17, 2008
Toronto, Canada
Dear Jean,
My visit to L'Arche was extraordinary. I still remember La Semance, the house where I lived three days with the residents, and my early-morning walks to the village to buy bread at the boulangerie - frost on the ground, rosemary flowering - then to the hotel next door for a café. And of course the nervousness I experienced every time I walked in, for fear that my fractured French would fail me and I would look like a fool.
If you visit, please say hello to Gégé and Jean-Claude, my dinner companions every night I was there. Gégé in particular reminded me of Walker, even though he's in his 50s and Walker's only 12 - they're the same height and have the same posture, the same slow progress across the floor or up stairs.
Gary Webb, your long-time friend who runs La Semance, seemed to have a special relationship with Gégé: It was Gary who led him in to dinner, Gary who cut up his food, Gary who made him laugh. One night, Gégé managed to get quite a bit of chocolate sauce on his face, to the point where he looked like a bandito, and Gary pretended to have a gunfight with him. I suppose someone from the outside could have thought Gary was making fun of Gégé, but he was laughing.
After that, I didn't hesitate to start conversations with people who couldn't speak, in the normal sense of that word. The even stranger thing was that the next morning, when I went to buy bread, I was no longer nervous about my French. Gégé taught me there are worse things than looking foolish.
But it was hard to keep feeling that graceful after I returned to Toronto. Which raises a question I have for you: How can I sustain my belief that all the effort I am making with Walker actually means anything, especially now that I've left the gifted and comforting company of L'Arche?
In Trosly, I met people who understood the value of living alongside people who are intellectually handicapped. When you have a relationship with someone in need, with someone who is weak, you can recognize your own weakness too, and can then approach each other as equals. But now, back in Toronto, it is easy to lose heart.
How can you convince people in the real world of power and money, on Wall Street or Bay Street or the bourse of Paris - where success is addictive and always more valuable than weakness - that weakness might just be the route to a greater humanity?
It's all very well to speculate that the peace process in the Middle East could benefit from one side saying, "Help me - I am weak," instead of trying to bluster from strength to intimidation. But it's hard to be sure the idea has any practical application.
