An Unlikely Teacher
The
late Henri Nouwen is one of the most celebrated spiritual writers of the modern
era. He taught at Yale and Harvard and wrote over 40 books, but for the last
ten years of his life he lived with physically and mentally challenged people
at the L’Arche Daybreak community in Toronto ,
Canada . In
their little community, there were six people with disabilities and three other
assistants besides Nouwen. None of the assistants were particularly trained to
work with people who were mentally and physically challenged, but they received
much help from doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and behavioral
management people in their city.
Writing
of that community Nouwen says, “We all have our gifts, our struggles, our
strengths and weaknesses. We eat together, play together, pray together, go out
together. We all have our own preferences with regard to work, food, and
movies, and we all have problems in getting along with someone in the house,
whether handicapped or not. We laugh a lot. We cry a lot too. Sometimes both at
the same time” (Finding
My Way Home,
57)
For
part of the time that Nouwen lived in that community he cared for Adam, the
weakest member in the house. At the time, Adam was twenty-five years old, could
not speak, could not dress or undress himself, could not walk alone or eat
without much help. Adam suffered from severe epilepsy and, not withstanding
heavy medication. There were few days without a “grand mal” seizure that would
last for about an hour and a half. Though Nouwen was Adam’s caregiver, Adam
became Nouwen’s teacher.
Nouwen
writes, “As I sit beside the slow and heavily breathing Adam, I start seeing
how violent my journey has been. This upward passage has been filled with
desires to be better than others, so marked by rivalry and competition, so
pervaded with compulsions and obsessions, and so spotted with moments of
suspicion, jealousy, resentment, and revenge. What I believed I was doing was
called ‘ministry.’ It was named ‘ministry of justice and peace,’ ‘ministry of
forgiveness and reconciliation,’ ‘ministry of healing and wholeness,’ but there
was disparity for me between the words and the experience” (65–66).
Nouwen
says that his experience with Adam in the Daybreak community caused him to ask
himself, “When I work for peace and am as interested in success, popularity,
and power as those who want war, what then is the real difference between us?”
(66)
Nouwen
says that he learned from Adam that our identity is not tied to our doing, but
our being, and that the core of the spiritual life can be found in our capacity
to love. Adam taught Nouwen that real community, true peace is not constructed
by tough competition, hard thinking, and individual stardom, but in simply
being present to one another and working together, allowing the love of God to
hold the community in a fellowship of the weak.
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