L'Arche Kent from the inside

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

Tomorrow, I'm helping in Rainbow house. I work Monday to Friday as Assistant Coordinator but the house is low on assistants (Lisa is on holiday and we have a vacancy to be filled next week) so I'm helping out in the morning. Its been 6 weeks since I helped Pete and Damien in the morning and went out shopping with people from the house. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm guessing if I go with Damien, we'll head off into Canterbury, balloons, postcards, leaflets from Whitefriars Shopping Centre and finish with McDonalds. I'm not psychic - its been a similar routine most Saturdays since I arrived 20 months ago. Routine...we use the word in L'Arche a lot. Morning and evening routines are the things that core members do to go to bed or get up in the morning. Assistants are asked not to vary them too much so that the core member feels in control of whats happening, knows whats next. For Damien, routines seem to mean something a little more. Damien is a young ma

Welcome to a blog of life in the L'Arche Kent Community. Life in a L'Arche Community is in many ways inseperable from life more generally, so I apologise now if my blog overspills. But maybe it should. No man is an island etc., and that goes double for communities. Apart from Island communities I guess. I've been in the community for about 20 months now. In some ways, like the Army, I was born into it - my brother used to live in Little Ewell house in Barfrestone (Kent) 17 years ago and my sister was in the L'Arche Bognor community about 10 years ago. Like the Army, my time also taught me to peel potatoes - lots of potatoes! As a house assistant in an international house you quickly learn to cook for many and potatoes are the United Nations of international cooking. Unlike the Army, I also learned to rattle a tambourine, bake a cake and blow up balloons. But more of that later. Welcome anyway. I'm not entirely sure how to write this blog, so I guess I'll just fo