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Close to home?

Today, that heroic act of Christian kindness has grown into a vast, international network of communities where people with and without developmental challenges live, work and strive together. Collectively, the 147 utopian societies in 35 countries are called L’Arche – as in, Noah’s Ark. Vanier himself stills lives in the Trosly-Breuil community and avows that he has received far more from his remarkable neighbors, men and women with disabilities, than he has given to them.

“They have brought me so much over the past 50 years, and have taught me more than all those teachers and professors in schools and universities that I have attended,” Vanier said upon learning he’d won the Templeton Prize. “They have taught me about what it means to be human.”

Vanier’s words hit close to home for me because I have relatives with Down Syndrome, as well as a pair of newfound friends who have a lovely baby girl with it. Over the years, I’ve received such a disproportionate amount of love from Down Syndrome relatives and friends; it’s left me wondering why that might be. Vanier, I believe, offers us some compelling answers.

“The wonderful thing about people with disabilities is that when someone important comes, they don’t care,” he told a reporter recently. “They care about the relationship.”

“They are essentially people of the heart,” Vanier explained at a press conference in London. “When they meet others they do not have a hidden agenda for power or for success. Their cry, their fundamental cry, is for a relationship, a meeting heart to heart.”