Jean Vanier offers a simple summary of the purpose of the small community he began in 1964: "The secret of L'Arche is relationship: meeting people heart to heart; listening to people with their pain, their joy, their hope, their history." Harder to describe are the profound effects of life together on L'Arche's members, both the developmentally disabled "core members" and the "assistants" who care for their needs.

From a single house in France, L'Arche (French for "The Ark") has grown to more than 130 communities throughout the world, including 15 in the United States. From its original Roman Catholic foundation, L'Arche has expanded to include Protestant and Orthodox Christians, and is beginning to reach beyond Christianity. When groups ask for the "formula" that would allow them to reproduce L'Arche, Vanier offers a simple answer. "It's really around friendship and taking chances and believing in very simple things."

Jean Vanier was born in Canada in 1928. After serving in the British and Canadian navies, he earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Institut Catholique in Paris. He lives in Trosly Breuil, France, where he founded L'Arche with Father Thomas Philippe in 1964.


How did you first get involved with people with disabilities?
Really the story goes back to World War II and my joining the British Navy at age 13. After eight years I decided to leave the Navy not knowing what I was going to do except that I wanted to follow Jesus.

I moved to a community next to the Dominican House of Studies in France in 1950, where I pursued a doctorate in philosophy, which I later taught for some time. It was there that I met Father Thomas Philippe. I knew in some way that he was a presence of God for me.

In 1963 Father Thomas was chaplain of a small institution of people with disabilities in the village of Trosly Breuil, and he suggested I come there because, in order to understand human beings and society, he said, you have to understand and be in contact with those who are the most rejected. I was a little bit nervous, but I went. The institution housed about 30 people with disabilities, men from the age of 16 to 40.


How did you react?
I was shocked and amazed. It was a small institution, but quite intense. Every one of the residents was hungry to enter into a relationship with me. My philosophy students had wanted my head, but these people wanted my heart. It was a cry for relationship.

It was also a discovery of two worlds: the world of comfortable people, who were able to make choices, and uncomfortable people, who had no choices. So I started visiting the psychiatric hospitals in that part of France, listening to people.

But I really wanted to be close to Father Thomas, so I decided to stay in Trosly Breuil but also to live with two or three people with disabilities. I got a dilapidated old house with no electricity.


How did you choose the people that you first began living with?
I didn't really choose. I got close to the director of an institution for people with disabilities, and she said I could have three of her residents. Looking back, it was a difficult place; the institution housed 80 people and was overflowing.

One, Raphael, had had meningitis. He couldn't speak very much. Another, Philippe, had had encephalitis, one leg paralyzed, one arm paralyzed. He spoke too much. There was a third one, Danny, whom I should never have accepted and actually only stayed a day because he was unable to hear or see, and he had a deep psychosis. As soon as he left the institution, he became quite upset. And so the first night, I had Raphael and Philippe and this guy who was completely terrified. So I had to call the institution and say, "Come back quickly." That's how it began.

What did you learn from the relationship with Raphael and Philippe, and how did that set you on your path?

First of all, I was happy, and Raphael and Philippe were happy to be out of the institution. They brought out the child within me. I'd been serious, a teacher, and prayerful. But they brought out my desire to goof around. Because with people with disabilities, you don't talk philosophy, you play.

The goal was creating a relationship. But they had to get to know me, and I had to get to know them. It was a gradual discovery of this incredibly beautiful capacity to relate. Raphael and Philippe had never been appreciated or seen as valuable. For me, it was the whole discovery of the broken heart, the wounded heart.


Did L'Arche grow quickly?
All sorts of things started happening. First a psychiatrist asked if we could take in somebody who had no place to go. Soon there was another house in the village that we could buy. In August of 1964 we had moved up to four or five people. Then, in March of 1965, the whole staff of the institution where Father Thomas was chaplain left-it then had 32 people-and I was asked to take it over.

People started coming to help, but it was never enough. So those years were difficult.


What was the key in creating relationships with people with disabilities?
It took time for me to realize that what was important was really listening to their needs and hopes. It was a gradual shift for me to listen and to create a community structure where we listen to each other.

Fortunately I'm somebody who can go with the flow. Assistants who had more experience than I had in working with people with disabilities would say, "You shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that." I discovered I could do nothing by myself. We could only do something together.

So the keys to breaking down barriers were listening, evaluating, discerning. It was a gradual formation in myself and a transformation. I had to move from generosity to communion.


What's wrong with generosity?
Well, with generosity you always have power. You have money and opportunity. I always had power through teaching. But communion is about losing power and becoming a friend to someone. I was trying to move from generosity to personal encounter. And that implies listening and understanding.

But that move requires me to be vulnerable. To move from personal encounter to a friendship and then to a commitment-little by little there is a loss of power. I discovered that it's vital that people be welcomed and discover a place of belonging. We belong to each other. But this realization came gradually.

I think my strength was that I didn't quite know what I was doing. When you don't know what you're doing you sort of follow the music. You go with the flow. People come. Some stay. Some go on. People are being transformed.

Yet through all that, a plan evolved. I believe it's a miracle. I never wanted to start a movement. I just wanted to be close to Father Thomas and to live with two or three people. Today we have 131 L'Arche communities and about 10 on the drawing board.


What do you think drives that growth? Why is L'Arche so attractive?
I think there is a gradual realization that it's the people with disabilities who are changing the rest of us. I had dinner last night at our community in Chicago, and there was a presence of God in that gathering, a gentleness, a peacefulness, a kindness. This is a little place in the kingdom of God. There's joy. There's happiness. There's prayerfulness.

St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians says that those parts of the body that are the weakest and the least presentable are necessary to the body and should be honored. I never read an ecclesiology that says we need people with disabilities to be the church. But the church cannot be church if parts of the body are separate. And all the parts of the body are necessary; the body cannot exist without those parts. So there's a whole new understanding of church connected to our communities.

At the same time, we are not fighting a cause, though there is a sense that, through L'Arche, something has been given to us that is for the whole church. And when I say the whole church, rather than just the Catholic Church, it's because Protestant and Orthodox Christians are involved as well. It may be for the whole world as well, as I see a new start welcoming Muslims.

We have learned how we are transformed by weakness. But we are in a culture that believes we are transformed by power. And the tension between weakness and power is in us all.


What prevents the church from placing people with disabilities at its center?
It's always difficult to pinpoint things. When a PBS crew came to L'Arche to do a report, they said, "We've never seen anything like this before." You can go into a church and not have that experience of joy and belonging.

Jesus was credible because he did things. What is being done today that makes the Catholic Church or Christians credible?

The whole question is transformation. Somehow L'Arche has moved from a place of justice for people with disabilities to being a place of the kingdom where people are transformed because of people with disabilities.

In one of our homes we have very severely disabled people. Most people think there's no relationship possible with people in that condition. And then young assistants come and they are transformed precisely because of this relationship. But they begin sensing the conflict with culture.