Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and Me

Jean Vanier died this week at the age of 90.  Would I have been aware of the work of Jean Vanier if I hadn't read the work of Henri Nouwen?  Probably.  But it was the work of Henri Nouwen that made me first appreciate what Vanier accomplished.

I went through a period where I devoured the journals of Nouwen and returned to them for sustenance again and again.  I read The Road to Daybreak first, and it remains my favorite.  It's the one that chronicles Nouwen's developing relationship with the L'Arche community.  And later, when I heard about Jean Vanier and the work he had done, I thought, hey, he's the guy who created the communities that would come to mean so much to Henri Nouwen.

I had been reading Nouwen for years before I found the journals.  I checked out The Road to Daybreak from the public library, and I loved it so much that I bought a hardbound collection of that journal and two previous ones, The Genesee Diary and Gracias.  The journals quickly became my favorite works.

The journals have been important to me for a variety of reasons.  I was interested in what brought Nouwen to an intentional community, since intentional communities of all kinds have always fascinated me.  I was also interested in the ways his journals illuminated his writing practices.

I was also intrigued by the honesty of the journals.  Here's a man who has so many honors bestowed on him, and yet he's almost disabled at times by his insecurities.    Here's a man who has taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard, and yet he still wonders if he's good enough.  He wrestles with vocation--is he doing what God put him on earth to do?

What finally brings him peace (of a sort) and purpose is his involvement with and commitment to the L'Arche communities.  Would he have found it in another sort of community if Vanier had never created the L'Arche communities?  It's impossible to know.

This morning, as I'm thinking about Nouwen, I'm realizing (and not for the first time) that Nouwen was 53 when he went to L'Arche.  As a 53 year old woman, I'm comforted by the fact that it took Nouwen some time to find his true home and purpose.  I also realize that the home and purpose that one needs as one gets older may change.  I do wonder if Nouwen had found the L'Arche community earlier, would he have been able to avoid the suffering of his younger insecurities?

Vanier will be remembered for a much larger good that he did, by giving people with profound disabilities a way to live in intentional community instead of in a colder community offered by hospitals and mental institutions.  But I have also said a prayer of thanks for the way that he was able to be a guide to Nouwen--and by way of Nouwen's writings, to me.