Much to Prepare For

Today marks the beginning of Advent, a season of preparation and waiting for the birth of Christ. I must confess that I am best at the preparation part of the Advent equation. I love getting things ready for celebrations in order to make people smile.

I love preparing for things. I love checking things off my life when they are done. I have birthday presents bought months in advance and Christmas gifts wrapped by the end of November. I suppose that this strength is good because this year I have much to prepare for.

I am preparing for the day when my marriage begins. For me, that does not simply mean the one day that I get to wear a white dress, but for all the days that stretch out endlessly after that. For the good days and the bad, the possibility of children and the reality of loss. The reality of a new home is one that is so thrilling and yet something that is so difficult to prepare for because I don't know how it is all going to work out.

Preparing for a new life is something that I am looking forward to for so many reasons. The spirituality of the prairies is something amazing that lays you bare to the power of God in nature. It is a wonderful place to experience God and to wait.

The reality of Advent is that we are trying to prepare for something that we have been waiting for for two thousand years. Every year we celebrate the birth of Christ with the anticipation of when he will come again. It is a season of waiting, as the first apostles waited with the anticipation that they would see Christ again before the end of their earthly lives. We are still waiting now to see the glory of Christ on earth and while we wait, we can prepare. That means different things for every person. My preparation means trying to make the world a place that is welcoming. There is very little about the world right now that is worthy of a welcome. There are wars, famine, hatred and fear. We should make a world that is welcoming for the one for whom we wait. That is something to prepare for and we have a lot of work to do.

Acknowledging Loss

Something that I have become much more aware of during my time in community is how constant change is. Sometimes the change is good, and sometimes it is bad. Sometimes the change is forced and sometimes it is chosen. The one constant with change is that there is always a loss.

Over the past few years there have been many losses in the community. There has been the perennial loss of assistants as they return to where they came from, although they also leave changed, marked by the experience of what they have lived. There have been the loss of core members who have come and had to leave because they could not find their place here. The final loss of many in death has been the most heart breaking in the community. There is very little time allotted for mourning by government regulations before someone new is sent to fill the void left by a life that was treasured and meaningful here. All arrivals here are marred by the fact that they also represent the loss of someone else who was loved and cherished, if only for a short while.

Beyond the losses that I and many others have had to come to grips with within our community, there have also been and continue to be personal losses. Within my own family, I have come to realize that things are not always as they appear and the loss of naivete and the belief that love will always be able to solve everything has been a blow to me. While many people may see this as a normal part of growing up and becoming aware of more things, I prefer the world when it has a rose coloured tint to it. My sister went away for the summer and came back changed from what she had lived and experienced in the developing world. While I rejoice for the woman that she has become and continues to become, I also mourn for the younger sister who she is not any longer. She has grown up and I suppose that I really wanted her to stay little for a long time.

I have also realized that while I prepare for the greatest adventure of my life, there will also be loss involved in that. I am moving to a place where I don't have a support system, nor do I have something that fuels my passion for life. I will be leaving behind my family, my friends and my community. I will be able to be with the man I love, but there are also many losses for me. To be blind to what I am leaving would not be useful on many levels.

Living where I have for so long had made me so aware of the many stages of life that are a normal part of everyday living. The grief, joy, happiness and fear are all important and all deserve to be acknowledged for what they are. When they are ignored or pushed aside simply because they are emotions and lacking in importance denies part of a life. It is difficult to acknowledge loss because in the society we live in we are only supposed to gain. To acknowledge that we have lost something, to reflect on that fact, can mean that we have somehow failed. We have failed to keep someone alive, we have failed to make the right choice, we have failed to save the world. The reality is that life means loss. The acknowledge that does not mean that we have failed. It only allows us to become more fully human.

A Reminder

There are some days when it is difficult to remember why I do what I do. Today was not one of those days. The chaplain of our community supports my house on Monday night and I always enjoy the conversations I get to have with her. She has many insights into the life that I am going to lead in the prairies, as she is from the prairies, as well as the life that I am leading now.

The life I am leading now is one that can be fraught with frustrations and pain, as well as moments of grace and great joy. There is no place in which I have so often been able to see the love and grace of God, even when I am frustrated by what I cannot do or cannot change. One of my greatest pains at the end of the day is that I cannot change a system that has been broken for so many years. Actually, that is not true. There are so many more than just one system that have been broken, either by the weight of need that has been placed upon them, or the misunderstanding the precipitated their creation.

In the past decades, institutions for the mentally ill and those who live their lives with a disability have been dismantled. These institutions were a place that were intended to bring rest to families who could no longer care for the saints that were placed into their lives. The problem was the amount of need and the lack of response to that need. Because of the pain that was evident in the lives of those who were forced to live in institutions that were not able to respond to their individual needs, L’Arche was founded. I am not naïve enough to believe that the organization in which I live and base my life philosophy on is enough to meet the needs of everyone. The need of many is simply to great to be met by the individuals who choose to make their lives in a system that is counter-intuitive to the way in which North American society works. In a society that values being productive, we value relationship. We honour the individual, while society is more concerned with how well the individual can conform to being the “right” person. We put the last, the weakest and the most vulnerable first in all that we do. We treat all human life with dignity and respect, even though some of the individuals may not be able to communicate through the use of words. This is what I do. And I am so aware that it is important, today more than ever.

I have seen how many of the core members here are treated when I accompany them in public. I was at a restaurant one night with a core member who is in her eighties. The waitress did not even look at her. Whether that was solely because of her age or her disability, I do not know, nor do I care. I did not leave a tip that night. To deny a human being the right to dignity and respect is to take away one of their most basic human rights. There have been cases in this country when the most basic human right has been taken away from someone who could not make that decision for herself. The right to life. It constantly amazes me that with all the progress that has been made in the field of human rights, things like this can still happen. Life, dignity and respect can be taken away simply because someone cannot see God in the life of someone different than them.

Beyond the system in which I exist for much of my time, I am aware of the system of retirement homes. I pray with all my strength that I will never end up in a place like that. People who live in retirement homes are often treated not as individuals who have lived rich and full lives, but as objects who are simply to be moved around at the whim of someone who has not yet reached that point of their lives. There is little privacy and no dignity in many retirement homes. I have seen people praise institutions where residents are simply moved in their wheelchairs without warning, and without knowing who is controlling where they go. I have seen personal aids enter a private room without knocking or letting the resident know that they are about to enter. For those of you who are reading this and think that this behavior is allowable or acceptable, I challenge you to have all of your personal freedoms taken away for a week. To not have control over when you can go to the bathroom, or what time you may eat. To not know if you will have privacy to hold a conversation or be left a week without a shower because there is no time for you. Try to imagine what it would be like to have someone push you around when you cannot see, cannot make them stop and don’t know who is pushing you. Imagine that while you may have no control over your body, you still know in your mind exactly what is happening. How would it feel then?

I am fully aware that I cannot change the world. I have a hard enough time changing the mind of my fiancée when he doesn’t want to listen. I do know what I can do though. I can treat every single person I come in contact with like a human being, deserving of my love and my respect. I will never talk about a person as though they are not. I can look people in the eye when I talk to them, even if that does mean bending down to a level physically lower than mine. I can be a reflection of God’s love in the world. That much I can do. And I will.