The Single Most Important Thing I Learned in School

Last night at The Actor’s Studio in Newburyport, I took a class in improvisation for the first time in fifty years. I am not on the doorstep of a new career. I am not even in the same zip code. A chain of circumstance led me to this class, and I’m glad it did.

One of the teachers happened to be a onetime, longtime L’Arche assistant. I met her while sharing time together at one of our homes at L’Arche Boston North. I told her that I was (am) writing a play (it’s a long story). She said she was co-leading an improv class.

I explained that improv was probably the most indelible portable skill I gained from three years at a particular fancy boarding school. That and writing, I should have said. I told her I might take the class, and last night I did.

If nothing else, improvisation is a way of being that helps me be a better L’Arche assistant, a better husband, a better person. An example may help.

Becoming Old Myself

For thirty years, I have helped old people write their memoirs. Since my thirties, this has been my number-one bread-and-butter occupation.

One insight of my work as a private memoir ghost-writer is that old, or retired, people, have less ego, less push-forward, less need to prove themselves right or prove themselves at all. In general, they have worked with me on their life stories not because they consider themselves important but because they consider their children and grandchildren important, and they want to pass along a few things to these next generations.

Today, I find myself becoming that old guy. Somewhere in my sixties, I have already taken one stab at my own memoir and I now find myself working with a much younger population, who view me as, well, old, or at least older. They are not blind or deluded about this. I am older. (The photo shows me with John, a core member at L’Arche Boston North, with whom I was privileged to travel cross-country recently. With only a few months’ difference, John and I are the same age!)

“L’Arche Across America” — Day 27 — Epilog

It was not the way we drew it up, but it was, as Jane would say, beautiful. Last night after supper I was sharing time at Pat House of L’Arche Boston North when a van pulled up outside. My van. Containing my friends Jane, Doris, and Woody.

The meter on the dashboard read: Trip A / 9,298.6 miles.

The way we drew it up was, six of us would arrive in triumph earlier in the day, at the end of a coast-to-coast, round-trip odyssey, to be greeted by a gigantic celebratory cookout. The six of us were supposed to be the three in the photo above, plus Todd, John, and me.

Flying with John

By now you know I’m home. At least you do if you’ve been following the on-again, off-again saga of  “L’Arche Across America” in which my dream of six months was derailed in two weeks by the illness of one of our members.

Yesterday, I flew with John home from Seattle, a good decision. It was what needed doing, for his safety and long-term health. Last Thursday, John had a choking incident that may have included aspiration, which carries the risk of pneumonia. The ER doctors weren’t sure. But I was and so was our community leader-in-waiting, Jen, when I suggested it. John needed to come back to his L’Arche community in Haverhill, Mass., and as the closest to him of our traveling party, the obvious accompanier was I.

So that happened.

Turning Homeward with Gratitude

Yesterday, watching my own mini-van pull away from the curb on 15th Avenue in Seattle, pulling away without me and John, I felt sharp pangs of regret.

The “L’Arche Across America” tour, which I had done much to plan and promote and chronicle, was rolling on without me. The circus was leaving town and I wasn’t in it.

(The circus arrived in Portland late yesterday, as the picture proves. Left to right: Todd, Shonda, Doris, and Woody, with L’Arche Portland’s Adam, second from left.)

But today, waking up early at Angeline House in Seattle, where community has been very gracious to John and me, my thoughts are turning homeward with gratitude.

I am sifting through some little lessons granted by two weeks on the road in the company of some remarkable people.

L’Arche Across America — Day 12 — Hidden Life

On Sunday, May 21, the “L’Arche Across America” van rolls on to L’Arche Portland and from there south to San Francisco and LA, before turning east toward home.

It is a bit hard for me to accept that the van and its story are rolling on without me. It is like knowing that the story of life on earth will continue without me after I am gone.

Following John’s two nights in Seattle’s Virginia Mason Hospital, Thursday and Friday, I agreed on Saturday, with the okay of leadership back home, to return with John to Massachusetts by plane early in the coming week.

L’Arche Across America — Day 11 — Seattle

Someone is watching over us on this trip, either the Big Fellow Himself or a flotilla of guardian angels. Or both.

Just when we needed a rest, we got it. Just when we needed community, we have been enfolded by it.

We are staying three nights (Thursday thru Saturday) in two homes (Angeline and Shuinota) of L’Arche Seattle, when all along it was our intention to stay only one. And in our neediness, the community has been so hospitable to us, so kind, so good.

In the photo above, I am with Robin and Andrew at the breakfast table in Angeline House. Their kindness and that of so many others in community, beginning with Isaac, who has orchestrated our entire visit with Todd, is deeply appreciated.

The thing is, we were wearing out.

L’Arche Across America — Day 10 — Music

If I don’t write about music, you will not understand our journey. Since leaving Haverhill ten days ago, we have almost never been without music.

Woody, whose knowledge of rock and roll is nothing less than encyclopedic, is our music leader. He brought along a large paper bag full of CDs, and every afternoon one of the CDs comes out, goes into the CD player, and leads us to our next destination.

Top picks on Woody’s music list are anything by the Grateful Dead, as well as Jethro Tull and The Essential Bob Dylan.

Wednesday, on the way into Sea-Tac, we sang loud choruses of “The Times They Are A-Changing” and “Like a Rolling Stone.”

L’Arche Across America — Day 9 — Doris

Doris was the first core member I met at L’Arche Boston North, as I wrote a year ago. That was in August 2015 at a picnic in Haverhill. I am only now beginning to understand how providential that meeting was, and how important Doris is to me.

It may not be particularly easy to convince you of Doris’s importance, because as the world usually reckons such things, Doris is not important at all. She lives quietly, often wordlessly on the ground floor of a Haverhill three-decker with her husband Woody, who is also among our travel party.

Doris is not particularly active. She requires a certain amount of personal care at her age and weight and level of health. She does not work outside the home. She does not “add value” to our economy.

But I am coming to think that Doris’s value is beyond estimating. Indulge me while I try to plumb the mystery of this important unimportant woman.

L’Arche Across America — Day 8 — Travel Day

When I was a child, there was a TV campaign with the slogan, “See the USA, in your Chevrolet.” It was the era of the family road trip, and when I was about nine, my parents loaded their first four children in their Chevy wagon and headed off from Minnesota to see The Badlands, Yellowstone, and other points west.

That was my first taste of the boundless space and infinite skies that await anyone who travels beyond the Mississippi.

Now, more than half a century later, I’m seeing the USA once again, this time in my Toyota Siena minivan, which I’ve offered for a larger purpose, “L’Arche Across America.” It doesn’t have the same ring—See the USA in your Toyota Siena minivan—but the effect on me is just as momentous.

L’Arche Across America — Day 7 — Great Men

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Especially when the words are my own while the picture, however amateurish, captures the joy of an entire way of life, something I could never do if I wrote about L’Arche forever and a day.

The picture on this page was shot at Mt. Rushmore and posted on Instagram with a single phrase: Eight great Americans. This may seem presumptuous, but please note that the four Americans in the foreground are living and the four in the background, however important to history, are currently dead.

And that we are called by Christ and sometimes by our own hearts to love the living while letting the dead bury their own.

L’Arche Across America — Day 6 — Mother’s Day

When a drive through the Badlands at dusk is the second best thing that happened, you know it was a good day.

On Saturday, Jane and I sat in the “way back” while Todd drove, and we talked about St. Catherine of Siena, for whom we each feel affection. I told her there was a St. Catherine’s Church in Luverne, Minnesota, where we were planning to spend Saturday night, and that the MassTimes app said it had a 5:30 Saturday vigil and a 10:30 Sunday morning.

Jane said, Bee-yoo-tee-ful, and it was settled.

But we were late getting to Luverne and so we “settled” instead for the 8:30 am Sunday at St. Mary’s in nearby Ellsworth, which is part of the same rural parish in southwestern Minnesota. We thought the 10:30 at St. Catherine would be too late to allow us to get to our next destination, Custer SD, in good time.

Man proposes and God takes care of the rest.

L’Arche Across America — Day 5 — Minnesota

Saturday after leaving Clinton we beat a diagonal northwesterly across Iowa and entered Minnesota in the late afternoon. By then I was deep into memory.

The first trigger was the freight train that passed Arch IV in Clinton at 7 am or so, while I was talking with my wife and granddaughter by FaceTime. I turned the camera around and challenged them to count cars as the freight passed. They gave up at fifty.

Once you get past Chicago, trains are a huge part of the regional economy and of my own spiritual geography, too. I was raised outside Minneapolis, with family connections in the Dakotas, Montana, and Alberta; I lived on a lake in Minnesota, where my grandparents also lived; and I often fell asleep to the click-rumble-click-rumble-click of passing freights.

Today, showing the train to my own granddaughter, I felt the thrill of home.

And, by a short leap of the heart, the pain of those who have no home.

L’Arche Across America — Day 4 — Hospitality

Traveling across our country in a van with five other people, though the five are fast becoming precious to me, I have become a wanderer in the world.

I sleep in a different bed every night. I do not know where my next meal will be served or by whom. I am stripped of all that I am familiar with. Without the consolations of Facetiming and texting, I would be cut off from the person I love most in the world, my wife.

I am not asking you to pity me, because I am living the dream, and I know it and you may be starting to suspect it. But in my wandering state (since Tuesday), I may be feeling just a tiny bit what it is like to be alone, unwanted, and homeless, to stagger along on the margins of our wealthy, overfed, individualistic, judgmental, and shunning world.

And I am beginning to understand a vital antidote to such loneliness: the gratuitous gift of hospitality.

L’Arche Across America — Day 3 — Hump Day

You knew this was going to be hard, didn’t you? Maybe you even told me so and I wasn’t listening. Or you read my early posts and thought, When is this thing going to blow up in their faces?

I wrote about bad omens and you said, Duh.

Swanna knew. Our fearless community leader—who gets all the credit possible for backing this trip from the get-go—looked at me in December when I was flush with enthusiasm for a journey involving three assistants, three core members, and one van that grows more claustrophobic by the hour and she said, “You know this isn’t going to be a vacation, don’t you? This is going to be work.”

As Maynard G. Krebs famously said, “Work?!” (I’ve aged myself. Google MGK.)

Usually Wednesday is “hump day,” the big hurdle on the way to TGIF and the weekend. But we started our trip on a Tuesday, not Monday; so Thursday will do just fine. Thursday was a hump.

L’Arche Across America — Day 2 — Children in the Mist

Is Niagara Falls one of the seven wonders of the world? The question came up as we reached the western end of New York State and our 26-day L’Arche journey gained momentum.

No, Niagara may not be on any of those lists, but the great split cataract, half in the US, half in Canada, gave us moments of contemplation and capering.

Annika and Tom had been caravanning with us and would be returning east to Haverhill after lunch Wednesday. We were glad they could come this far.

L’Arche Across America — Day 1 — Bad Omens?

Anywhere else but L’Arche this would have been a day of very bad omens. On my way in to Pat House at 6:50 am, I was stopped for speeding by a West Newbury constable. I looked incredulous when he said I was doing 44 in a 30 zone. Seriously?

From inside a van freighted with a roof rack and decorated with erasable paint, I chatted up the officer about the 8,000-mile odyssey I was about to undertake with six adults, three with intellectual disabilities. California and back in 26 days. I got off with a warning and a smile.

By the time five of us were loaded at Peace House two hours later, I didn’t know how we were going to get the roof rack closed, or keep seats open in the rear of the van for the two assistants not driving. Two of our core members had packed as if for a moon mission. And we hadn’t even picked up Todd and his luggage yet. Doris looked skeptical (photo above).

Bookmobile for the Idol-Rich

If you’ve visited my Goodreads page, you know that I read a bit.

Still, you might be surprised to learn the one thing I’ve obsessed about, when planning for the 26-day road trip dead ahead:

I keep thinking about what books to bring. That and whether this old gray head is going to get any sleep at all, given 26 different beds on 26 successive nights.

“L’Arche Across America” launches on Tuesday, May 9, and for twenty-six days I will be traveling 8,000 miles by van with five fellow members of my L’Arche Boston North community. Three of them have lived with intellectual disabilities their whole lives.

All three of these “core members” have gifts, but only one, Woody, shows any sign of reading much, and Woody’s reading is mostly confined to the labels on records and discs in his massive collection of vintage rock music.

Woody can tell you the name of the song and the length of the track, in minutes and seconds, on most of the tens of thousands of tracks that make up his collection. Any way you slice it, that’s a gift.

But reading, as in books—that’s irrelevant to the daily lives of Woody, his wife Doris, and John (seen in the group photo above, along with Jane, Todd, and myself, the three “assistants” accompanying them on an 8,000-mile odyssey to the West Coast and back).

So what’s the deal with obsessing over turning the van into my personal bookmobile?

Notes From a L’Arche Retreat

For the Second Week of Easter (April 23–28), I was on retreat at the Villa Maria Education and Spirituality Center in Pulaski, Pennsylvania. The retreat was an “exploratory” one for L’Arche assistants from the northeast region who have been “in community” for one or two years.

We were thirteen men and women from St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, Erie, and Haverhill, home of my own L’Arche Boston North. The average age, in the 30s, was skewed upward by two of us over 60. At 65, I am something of a statistical outlier, as I wrote here for our community’s web page.

Unlike the USA, L’Arche was founded long before its founding documents were written. Jean Vanier began L’Arche in 1964 by inviting three men with disabilities to live with him in a small house in a French village. The Charter of the Communities of L’Arche was written 29 years later. By then there were something like 100 L’Arche communities. Today the number is about 150.

So then, the L’Arche charter was a description of what worldwide communities had been living for three decades, under the guidance of Vanier, other humans, and the Holy Spirit—all before the need arose for a statement of principles. I have been “living L’Arche” for something less than two years, and I too am discerning—slowly—what L’Arche is for me.

First, let me begin with what L’Arche is not.

Re-opening the Stage Door

It is nearly two years since my last post, titled “To Blog No More Forever.” I haven’t missed blogging until recently, nor have others missed my blogging, I suspect.

A lot has changed in two years. I dropped out of a master’s program because it led me to where I am happy today: the L’Arche Boston North community in Haverhill, Massachusetts. I began volunteering there in September 2015, as field study for the master’s. Then, when the hook was set, within six months, I dropped out of the master’s and dropped into L’Arche.

Today, I work there as an assistant 28-30 hours per week, and I write a few things for the community web site.

On May 9, I’m taking an 8,000-mile, 26-day road trip with two fellow assistants and three core members (the L’Arche term for adults with developmental disabilities residing in community). We will visit and stay in 12 other L’Arche communities, reach the West Coast (Gw), and return via Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and other sights.

The photo shows the six of us who will be traveling together, L-R: Doris, Jane, Todd, Webster, John, and Woody.

But blogging again? Really? I don’t know.