I'm hoping to use this blog as a forum for some personal reflection on my current and fastly approaching experiences, as well as some personal and communal discernment and dreaming about what life with persons with intellectual disabilities in Nashville could look like.
So, I figured it would be helpful if I explain where I am currently in all of this. Maybe some of you will already have read something like this in an email I send to the many folks I have found to be interested in my vision, but I imagine it will be good to have it here as well.
Current state of affairs: I am jobless and homeless - joyfully and a little scarily so.
I think I have a post from my personal blog which I'll post here explaining how the heck the notion to "start something like a L'Arche community in Nashville" took hold of me. But suffice it to say, the idea grabbed hold of me my last year of Divinity school at Vanderbilt, and it wouldn't let go. Initially (in September 2009), I was so convicted that the need was so great and urgent, that I was certain we needed to have everything in place by my graduation date in May 2010. I still feel convinced of the hugeness and urgency of the need, and even more convinced of the moral, spiritual and financial support for a community here in Nashville.
However, I soon realized that:
a) completing my coursework and internship were going to require their usual "more hours than are in a day" for the remainder of the school year, leaving me enough hours only for exploration of this new idea, not concrete formation of a new not-for-profit.
and b) it takes a long time to do something like start a faith-based residential community for persons with and without intellectual disabilities.
So, the journey from Sept. 2009 to December 2011 has looked like:
-completing my M.Div. program
-talking with lots and lots of folks who have some degree of interest and desire for a community such as what I have envisioned, including some folks from L'Arche USA, and even visiting some potential properties
-working as a Live-in Companion with 2 men with intellectual disabilities (Dean and Ronez) through a primarily state-funded, secular, not-for-profit agency in Nashville, called Progress, Inc.
In the course of my year and a half as a Companion, I experienced many trials and joys, as I transitioned out of living in community, took on primary responsibility for the day-to-day activities and welfare of 2 adults with intellectual disabilities, and sought to understand and converse with administrators of a secular not-for-profit that has spent 40 years maneuvering the state bureaucracy regarding persons with intellectual/developmental disabilities and developing a bureaucracy of its own.
Suffice it to say, my learning curves were probably the largest and most practically oriented as I'd ever experienced. And while these learnings were all (the good, the bad, and the ugly) of utmost value, they all made me yearn for L'Arche more deeply. When I began, I wasn't sure how long I'd stay - maybe a couple-few years? I quickly discerned that was absolutely not an option. I need community, some shared faith practices, communal decision-making, shared language about who we are and why we conduct ourselves in certain ways.
And my wandering path soon led me and my guys to a contra dance with Friends of L'Arche Atlanta. That weekend led to an invitation and many conversations about the possibility of me joining them as a founding assistant when they would be ready to move into their house. After a bit of discernment, I said YES!...I think that would be a good idea...and if I say yes, does that mean that you say yes?
They said, everyone's enthusiastic and thinks it would be a good idea. But we need to make sure this is really a communal decision and that we do all the proper formal things along the way. So we've kept stepping forward - tentatively, but with progressive certainty.
I finally felt certain enough that I put in my notice of resignation at Progress, began the transition process with them and the guys, and moved out. Beginning Dec. 1, I became homeless and jobless in foul swoop.
I'm not going to lie - I freaked out a little bit a few days beforehand - what? share my things again? fit all my belongings into my car? leave the guys in someone else's hands? go without a paycheck and good insurance for awhile? hand off my plants? hand off my food processor?
But I gathered my composure, and with the help of many friends who offered good homes to many of my things, words of support, encouragement and affirmation, quality time, and places to stay in my interims (between moving out and going home for the holidays, and wrapping things up in Nashville before moving to Florida), and with assurance of a peaceful transition between me and the guys' new Companion - I got through it!
And now...I'm home in Texas, relaxed and cozy for awhile. Then I will be back in Nashville for a week to finish goodbyes and some remaining errands. Then I will drive to Jacksonville, FL. So yeah - Jacksonville is not Atlanta. Confused? Well, the thing is - L'Arche Atlanta's move-in date is June/July 2012, and I needed to go home for Christmas (it's important. I didn't get to do this last year - my job doesn't offer enough time off for such things.) - so I needed to quit my job before Christmas. And - we thought it would be a good idea for me to be "trained" / "share life" / "observe" awhile in an established L'Arche community awhile before I arrive in Atlanta.
So...I will live and work in Jacksonville, FL at L'Arche Harbor House for January-May 2012.
And then will join L'Arche Atlanta in Decatur, GA in June 2012.
Other cool things in the works over the coming months:
-1 week of retreat/vacation in February
-2 weeks of training with L'Arche Mobile in Alabama
-1 week of commissioning interviews and receiving results in Beersheba Springs and Nashville, TN - with the Tennessee Conference Board of Ordained Ministry of the United Methodist Church
-L'Arche International Gathering in Atlanta in June!
-Hopeful UM commissioning ceremony during Annual Conference in June!
