During the meeting of the long-term assistants, Nick, who works with four handicapped men in the wood shop, spoke about his joys and frustrations. He explained how hard it is to do a job well and at the same time keep the needs of the handicapped men uppermost in mind. He wants to become a skillful and efficient carpenter, but realises that the product of his work are less important than the growing self-esteem of the men he works with. This requires a lot of patience and a willingness to let others do slowly what you yourself can do rapidly. It means always choosing work in which people much less capable than yourself can participate. It asks for a deep inner conviction that a slow job done together is better than a fast job done alone.
Nick told is how long it had taken him to come to this insight. At first he had been primarily concerned about learning the skills of carpentry from Joe, the director of the wood shop. He was very excited about learning a new trade. But then he came to see that his skillls were meant not just to make blackboards, play blocks, and coat hangers for kindergartens, but also and above all, to help four handicapped people grow in human dignity and self-reliance.
I found this out myself this afternoon when I went apple picking with Janice, Carol, Adam, Rose and their assistants. My attitude was to get the apples picked, put them in bags, and go home. But I soon learned that all of that was much less important than to help Rose pick one or two apples, to walk with Janice looking for apples that hang low enough so that she herself van reach them, to compliment Carol on her ability to find good apples, and just to sit beside Adam in his wheelchair under an apple tree and give him a sense of belonging to the group.
We finally collected four bags of apples, but eight people took more than an hour to do it. I could have done the work in half an hour. But efficiency is not L'Arche's (a community for handicapped people in France) most important word. Care is.
- Excerpt from "The Road to Daybreak - A Spiritual Journey", by Henri J.M. Nouwen
Nick told is how long it had taken him to come to this insight. At first he had been primarily concerned about learning the skills of carpentry from Joe, the director of the wood shop. He was very excited about learning a new trade. But then he came to see that his skillls were meant not just to make blackboards, play blocks, and coat hangers for kindergartens, but also and above all, to help four handicapped people grow in human dignity and self-reliance.
I found this out myself this afternoon when I went apple picking with Janice, Carol, Adam, Rose and their assistants. My attitude was to get the apples picked, put them in bags, and go home. But I soon learned that all of that was much less important than to help Rose pick one or two apples, to walk with Janice looking for apples that hang low enough so that she herself van reach them, to compliment Carol on her ability to find good apples, and just to sit beside Adam in his wheelchair under an apple tree and give him a sense of belonging to the group.
We finally collected four bags of apples, but eight people took more than an hour to do it. I could have done the work in half an hour. But efficiency is not L'Arche's (a community for handicapped people in France) most important word. Care is.
- Excerpt from "The Road to Daybreak - A Spiritual Journey", by Henri J.M. Nouwen
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