Food and faith

Eddie Gimore, Community Leader writes:

We like our food in L’Arche, and I can still remember my very first meal in Kent. It was home-made tuna pizza, eaten with a motley crew of twenty people around the big Little Ewell dining table. I enjoyed the food and also the light banter around the table. Good food shared with a fine and varied bunch of people: I knew it was the place for me. Whenever Geoffrey draws a picture for a birthday card it is always a group of people around a meal table, and I wonder what better image there is of community.
Certainly no community gathering would be complete without food, not to mention people’s favourite dishes. A few years ago there was a plan to stop having fish and chips at our monthly gatherings to save money. There was an outcry from the core members. The fish and chips were promptly reinstated!
A highlight of my winter was going up to Edinburgh with Vince for a meeting. Vince was very generously buying me drinks and crisps on the train and it was a pleasure to sit there, two old friends eating and drinking together and enjoying the lovely East coast scenery. When we arrived at The Noust in Edinburgh we were greeted with a cup of tea (where would L’Arche be without tea!) and then shared a delicious Indian takeaway with the rest of the group. It was a good meeting!
These days I don’t often eat in the L’Arche houses, but in my family we retain the L’Arche traditions. The mealtime is a key moment in the Gilmore household, and we join hands and sing grace (to the occasional embarrassment of the children if they have friends round!). The table is always set nicely and the food is always good. The company isn’t bad either! And when it is somebody’s birthday we make an extra special effort. I enjoyed preparing Yimsoon’s birthday meal not so long ago: lots of starters, the mother of all curries, and all washed down with a bottle of champagne (well, sort of, it sparkled at any rate!) We were too full for desserts so had them the next day!

As in any L’Arche house, the preparation, the serving and the sharing of the food are ways in which we communicate to people that we care for them and that they matter. And at a birthday in particular, we tell a person that they are special and valuable, and that really we all are and that life is pretty good and worth celebrating. Bon Appetit!

If a tree falls in a forest...

Question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it….

• does it make a noise?
• do the other trees point and laugh?
• does anyone care?

I was left wondering – is she? Is she quiet just because she says she is? Or is my experience of her what really counts – if people think you’re outgoing, are you outgoing, despite what you think of yourself? Are you an introvert because Myers Briggs tells you that you are? Who is your real you?

I’ve never really got to an answer to the question; neither I guess have the psychological, philosophical and theological community so I don’t feel too stupid. Isaac Newton’s third law of Motion states that ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’. Without reaction, an action can’t really be said to have occurred – the reaction almost defines that action.

Something did occur to me after my friend left. If I had lived my life on a desert island, never having met another human being, would I be shy? Would I be tall if there was no Yvonne, Da Eun or Jennie Bond around me to compare my height with? Would I be male if there was no female? Who am I – really?

Isaac Newton argues that action and reaction are inextricably linked – the one defines the other. Community life similarly offers us all, able and less able, shy and loud, tall and short, an opportunity to be, to exist, to define ourselves through our relationships, to offer a place for us to act and be.

Psalm 68 states that ‘God sets the lonely in families’; he roots the lost – all of us – in community where we can find identity and meaning.

So perhaps the conclusion of all this is that without ‘community’ or society, there is no ‘me’.

‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, …as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.’

John Donne, 1624.

The God of small spiders

Whilst she was in the Faith House garden, Gillian sat and watched a spider at work in his web. The spider had built a web which stretched diagonally all the way from the side of the house to a bush, six foot from the wall. The web was a single strand of cobweb and in the middle of the strand, the spider was busy building his net of cobwebs into a structure. Gillian commented: ‘How can people say there is no God?’

Whether you like spiders or not, you have to admire their ingenuity. Wherever you walk in Autumn, you see cobwebs spanning the most improbable places – I have a spider that daily builds a cobweb over the wing mirror of my car, only for the web to be blown away every day on the way to Little Ewell.

The spider’s willingness to exploit every opportunity can be good metaphor for us.

Spiders have faith and persevere: Cobwebs gather every week in the corner of your house, only to be swept away every week in your weekly clean, yet the spider returns and builds again the following week. I have never met a spider that has complained to me that the bush and the wall are too far apart. Every new web does not promise a juicy spider, but no spider ever caught his lunch without spinning a web. In the letter of Timothy (4: 5-7), Timothy writes: ‘But you…endure hardship,….fulfil your ministry. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith’.

More than this though, the spider describes a way to approach life and understand God within it. God provides the brick wall, the bush, the wing mirror, the structures that surround us. Our job, and that of the spider’s, is simply to use each one of these gifts as well as we are able, to build a life for us and our community. And in doing so, others will draw inspiration, find faith and perhaps exclaim:

‘How can people say there is no God?’

Christmas and change

When I was little, one of the worst times for me was Christmas Day morning, just before opening a stocking full of presents. The anticipation of Christmas had built and built through November and December, school had ended for Christmas, Christmas shopping had been finished, as a family we’d done our ritual family-visiting on Christmas eve, Midnight Mass was over and now here I was, staring at my Christmas Stocking and knowing it would be 365 days before I’d wake up to find another one at the bottom of my bed.

A couple of weeks ago, we said goodbye to Sebastien, an assistant in the house who returned to France and welcomed a new assistant, Jeremiah from Canada, to Rainbow. Community living is always a time of goodbyes and hellos – some assistants and core members have been members of the community for twenty or thirty years – Peter has been a member for 33 years – my age today! Others come and go in less than a year.

Changes in Rainbow are always a slightly anxious time in the house – what will the house be like without Sebastien? What will be lost? What will Jeremiah bring with him? Will he chose to really join and belong? It also reminds us that no-one should be taken from granted. As a result, you see relationships between remaining people become stronger, closer, more reliant on each other - more intimate. You begin to cherish those who have been alongside you before and during the changes and will remain after it is complete.

I’m beginning to realise that the remaining assistants in the house and people I consider important friends of mine in the house will not stay forever; at some point they’ll leave to pursue their own lives away from the community and in their place, they’ll bring more change.

I used to question whether this continual change within the house was a good thing. I appreciate that in L’Arche, because assistants usually live in the houses, the houses are that much more stable, more homely than would usually be the case; but surely for core members (people with a learning disability) who’ve seen this change continue for up to 33 years it must be unsettling, confusing and painful at times. I’m sure it is – the loss of Lisa, Roxana and Da-Eun eventually will certainly be difficult for me. But I’m also aware that the things they brought to the house, the energy, humour, deep friendships, were also gifts that were valuable when present and should be appreciated and enjoyed in themselves, rather than only at their loss. Some will keep in touch and visit regularly if they can; others will find it more difficult. But while they’re here, they give me sincere and honest friendships; they accept me as I am, with all my annoying, forgetful, inconsiderate qualities; they’re people I do love, people important to me with whom I have entirely unique relationships.

Christmas for me as a child was a strange time - incredibly exciting, full of expectation. But I guess I’m finally realising at the age of 33 (a little late perhaps), that the anticipation and hope that Christmas brings should be something cherished, enjoyed and remembered in itself, rather than bereaved after the event and remembered at its passing.

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are changed.

Anniversary

Today we celebrated Tuuliki's four year anniversary in L'Arche. Tuuliki is House Leader of Rainbow House. She came to L'Arche aged 20 from Estonia and has been House Leader for just less than two years. Shes an outstanding House Leader, friendly, very welcoming, good fun and deeply committed to everyone who lives in the house. She is for me the main reason why Rainbow House has remained such a happy and contented place to live for all of my time here.

I was chatting recently with a friend who was reflecting on his recent birthday - he said he tended to be the kind of person who would find himself looking forward rather than backwards, on what he would be rather than where he had come from. He could never understand those who loved to reminisce, nostalgic for the past.

Anniversaries in L'Arche are important times in the life of a community. They're markers, some would say 'sign', of continuity, of the steady passing of years, but also an acknowledgement of distance travelled and of a step along a journey. For most people (other than my friend), anniversaries I guess are a chance to look backwards, at the journey you've taken, the decisions you've made, your accomplishments, your failures. But anniversaries in the context of community go beyond simply a personal experience, either of looking back or planning forwards.

I joined L'Arche a few months after Tuuliki had become House Leader. Over the time, Tuuliki has seen me fall in love with L'Arche, has seen me change from someone determined to make L'Arche look like something I'd have built, into being hopefully becoming a little more L'Arche-shaped myself. Similarly, I've seen Tuuliki grow confident and become outstanding in her leadership. Someone able to preserve the spirit of the house whilst becoming someone willing to make decisions...to a person I consider to be a friend and a leader. My experience of Tuuliki's anniversary is only one of ten others in the house, fifty others in the community and hundreds more who've passed through the community at different times; and her anniversary means something to me as a 'sign' - of faithful commitment to friendships with core members and assistants, of continuity of relationship and of huge growth, as a woman, as a house community and as a relationship.

So today we celebrate Tuuliki's anniversary, with all its nostalgia and journey begun, all its implications for the future. In true L'Arche spirit, the Anniversary is neither about the past, nor the future; it is a moment in the present, the today - the cake we eat, the tea we drink, the card we make and the hugs we give -so today we celebrate her presence, her belonging to us and our belonging with her. Happy anniversary Tuuliki!