WE are Necessary.

(re-posted from Awakening the Everyday blog)

Even in my weakest moments, I am seen as important and worthy.  Even in the hair-pulling curse-worthy moments, I am looked at with loving and supportive eyes.  Even in the pity-party, PMS moments of my day, I am given a hand to hold or a kiss on the cheek.  I have been living life on the margins within the L’Arche community for just more than five years now, and I am still in the process of realizing all the aforementioned statements are Truth. While I do live and work in the land of the red, white, and blue where we pride ourselves on individuality and freedom, I am still among the majority of our global society shackled to the nagging questions of our humanity: What can I offer? Am I good enough?  Will they still love me?

My life holds with it a personal collection of struggles and challenges, beauties and gifts, just like everyone else, each relative to their own experience of Life.  Many times I find myself alone, questioning the presence of god not only in my own daily happenings but also searching for a god of any significance within the bigger picture.  As my cynicism often gets the best of me, I am left alone with my questions and doubts.  Of course, if I manage to look beyond the tip of my own nose, I am able to quickly realize any meditation on these doubts is silly and dead-end from the beginning.  To be alive – spiritually and emotionally in this physical life – is to live in full faith that You and I are necessary.  I can question the power of God, the rhymes and reasons of Life, the significance of praying to a Higher Power, but to doubt the person next to me is the first step in losing my Spirituality. 

L’Arche is an imperfect community made up of imperfect individuals striving for something extraordinary.  It is a community of people living on the margins of society, working from the ground up, living as signs of hope for a beautiful and dignified world. My work upholds my Spirituality in knowing we are worthy of lives full of Love, and that together we discover Redemption in our imperfectness.  While the heart of our community lies in the individuals with intellectual disabilities, each of us comes to L’Arche in search of our refuge, our salvation.  While Diane struggles physically with the constraints of a wheelchair, hands tight and constricted from Cerebral Palsy, and a voice that is hardly intelligible to most people, she depends on me and others to keep her included in every choice of her life from going to the bathroom to mopping the kitchen floor.  While I may have the intellectual and physical capability to choose my daily choices, I struggle with an overbearing ego and an idea of individualism that keeps me guarded and distant from those around me. I depend on Diane and others to keep me grounded and involved in the importance and significance of the daily routine of life.  Together, Diane and I are redeemed in the here and now of Life by recognizing we belong to each other. We are held together in forgiveness, compassion, and acceptance. L’Arche communities are able to meld the strengths and weaknesses of individuals in ways that are rare within our global mindset of achievement and progress.  While I continue my journey in community, I am now blessed to watch my daughter grow in this unique environment with the hope that some day she will dance on the margins of our world with a known sense of freedom in Love with others.

If we keep our faith in each other and remember the necessity of even the weakest among us (which we may often identify as our self), we are capable of achieving an extraordinary life of love and beauty.  I am important and worthy.  I am supported and loved.  I am necessary. WE are Necessary.