Liska Stefko

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Hello and welcome to the Love, Henri podcast, produced by the Henri Nouwen Society. My name is Wendy VanderWal Martin, and I’m part of the team that’s committed to encouraging spiritual transformation, particuL’Archely through the work and legacy of Henri Nouwen. If you’re new to who Henri is, he was a Catholic priest and connected with a n ber of universities and with L’Arche as we’ll hear about more today. And he wrote 39 books in his lifetime. But that has expanded since his death in 1996. And he really is a contemporary spiritual master for our times, and his writing is timeless in its wisdom. So, as we encourage you to get to know more about Henri I’d invite you to check out our website, henrinouwen.org, where you’ll find our free daily meditations. You can sign up to receive those by email, and every day get a reminder that you are the beloved of God. Now, if you’re a longtime Henri fan, you’ll be delighted to know that we’re pulling some of his letters out of the archives as a catalyst for this podcast and our conversations. Today, I’m so thrilled to have Liska Stefko as a guest. Liska, welcome. I’m really excited to talk to you today.

Liska Stefko: Thanks for having me, Wendy. Appreciate the invitation

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Now to tell you a bit more about who Liska is, she holds the role of pastoral ministry at L’Arche Daybreak. Now, if that sounds familiar to some of you, it’s because that’s the place that Henri served. Henri was in that exact role until his untimely death in 1996. L’Arche is an international network of communities in which people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together. Liska has also lived in L’Arche in Italy and Mexico, and has frequently offered leadership at retreats and gatherings for L’Arche International. Weaving together multicultural, ec enical, and interfaith threads to create an experience of unity and belonging. Makes me want to go to one of your retreats. Liska is also a priest in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, served in a variety of parish roles with a focus on ministry to children, youth, young adults, as well as pastoral care and community building with people of all ages. Liska, it’s really a joy to have you on the Love, Henri Podcast. Welcome.

Liska Stefko: Thank you so much.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Now, I’ve mentioned L’Arche a few times and gave a little bit of the mission statement of L’Arche, but tell us about your journey with L’Arche. How many years, what has captivated your imagination? What’s your passion point when it comes to L’Arche?

Liska Stefko: Okay. Well, L’Arche was originally meant to be a one year experience on my way to law school. I had heard about L’Arche, and I don’t remember exactly where I heard about L’Arche for the first time, but it, I did know about it when I was at Notre Dame, and it may have had something to do with Henri. And I was familiar with Henri’s book that he wrote with a priest at Notre Dame, a Holy Cross Father named Dawn McNeil, a book called Compassion. And that was required reading for another service learning experience that I had done at Notre Dame as part of my undergraduate studies.

Liska Stefko: And so somewhere around there I was, I was aware that there was a place called L’Arche, where people lived in community. And so I knew that existed. I also wasn’t sure, maybe I just wanted to do something completely different from anything I’d ever done and maybe just go live in another country and learn the language. So I was undecided there, and I went to an undergraduate’s service fair at Notre Dame, and there were booths set up in alphabetical order. And there was a sister from the Religious of the Assumption, which would’ve put her right at the beginning with the A’s. And she was wearing a pale purple habit. I have never since seen sisters wearing pale purple habits, but she said, “Honey, do you know what you’re going to do after graduation?” And I said, “Well, sister, I’m undecided. Either I’m going to go to a community like L’Arche or I might go live someplace wonderful that I’ve never been like Italy.” And she said, “Did you know that there’s L’Arche in Italy?” And it turns out those sisters help to facilitate connections with young people who are looking to go to L’Arche in other countries amongst other service projects. So when she said that, I said, “Well, that sounds about right.” And there it was. That was, that was my next step after graduation. This sister had offered me a way to put together these two little sparks of inspiration. And so off I went without a lot of Italian language. I had some French to build on, and, you know, they’re similar, but my first experience into it which I think is really important for how, for how L’Arche has become a part of my life, was one in which  I didn’t have a lot of words.

Liska Stefko: I had to pay attention to everything because certainly in my first months there, my language wasn’t very strong. I think I had one semester of Italian, so I had a fair bit of comprehension. But I was slow to speak. I was slow to speak. And what that meant is that really my first direct encounter of living with people with disabilities was very much one where I was much like some of my dear friends, essentially non-verbal. And I needed to draw on all these other instincts to communicate. I needed to watch. I needed to listen. It’s very, it’s very humbling, right? When you don’t have the words to articulate what it is that you want to be able to share you can be aware that others might be thinking that you’re not very smart  or that you don’t know what’s going on or that you’re not competent because you’re not saying anything.

Liska Stefko: Or if you do try to say something, you’re not saying it right. You know? And I think that that formed such an incredible foundation for being at  L’Arche because it placed me right away right next to some of our friends with disabilities for whom that’s a daily reality. So I think that gave me a pretty solid grounding in how do you begin to enter into relationship with people, who may not walk up and just strike up a conversation in terms that you might expect. Right? And so, that first experience in Italy, I met folks like Paulo. Paulo had Down Syndrome, has Down syndrome. He was just 16 years old when I met him. And he was so full of energy, so full of life, so full of music and action and dancing.

Liska Stefko: And with Paulo he drew a playfulness out of the people around him. And that was really, that was so delightful to be called into that on a day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute basis of somebody turning on music and saying, let’s dance, that was quite so from Paolo. There was this whole gift of spontaneity and creativity and joy and expressiveness. I think of Armando who was also about 14, 15 when I lived with him in Rome. And he was someone with such a stillness about him, but an authority in this stillness. He was someone who had a lot of physical disabilities, which meant that, you know, we participated pretty much around the clock in supporting him with various forms of physical care.

Liska Stefko: So it required a real awareness of, how his body was working, of how our bodies were working together to lift or to turn, or to support him. With Armando we would stay up at night with him just to listen sometimes if he would work himself into an uncomfortable position he might have trouble breathing. You would get him situated just so, and if he fell asleep peacefully, so did you, and you fell asleep to the sound of this kind of raspy, uneven breathing. But you sort of got used to the rhythm of that, and you fell asleep to that, and you learned to wake up to when it got quiet.

Liska Stefko: When it got quiet, you might look over and you might need to help reposition him or help him sit up or help him cough a little bit. And so that required, that required a level of embodied trust.  So from Armando, I learned this this kind of embodied  awareness. And Sylvia was just 11 when I met her. And Sylvia has Down syndrome as well. And she has these, this wonderful mix of traits whereby in some ways she is very affectionate.

Liska Stefko: She might grab you and just kind of pull, you, pull your head right into her head, or pull herself right into your arms, or sit right close to you. Sometimes she’ll do that. And other times it’s very much at arm’s length she will use her hand or her arm to indicate she needs you to stand a little further away. She needs you to sit a little further away. And so with Sylvia, I learned that we needed to enter into this rhythm together. If we wanted to be in relationship together, we needed to learn how to walk alongside each other close enough, but not too close. Which is a really wonderful way to learn to be in relationship with people. Right? And she was someone who called that out of the people who were with her, just to be awareness of that space between us.

Liska Stefko: Was it close enough, but not too close? And we did lots and lots and lots of walking together. We spent tons of time together. And there was just this there was just this proximity in our friendship and a real closeness and a real trust. And she was someone very intelligent. Very intelligent, and again, nonverbal. So, you know, you had to watch for cues from her eyes and from her facial expressions and the way she was moving or standing moving closer, moving further away. And when I think of my experience in L’Arche, I think Sylvia and Paolo and Armando among others in that first  experience of really learning  to watch, to listen to be present. And I sometimes think if I had experienced L’Arche in a culture closer to my own, where I could have walked in and just started telling you everything I know  I wonder if I ever would have been drawn in, in that same way, right?

Liska Stefko: So L’Arche began for me in another country, an ocean away from family and friends in a language I didn’t speak very well. And after having been there for the one year turned into two years, not very long into that time, I tore up those law school applications and threw them in the dumpster behind the house. And somewhere in there also discerned whether or not I might be called  to further study, to a PhD in, in theology in ethics. But alongside that, I had this sense that a door was opening for me in L’Arche, and that it was a really important door, and that when I peered into that open door, there was a lot that was being revealed and given. And over time, the shape of that gift has I’ve lived in more than one community, so it’s, it’s taken different forms over the years.  But I can still say today there are still things behind behind that door to be discovered.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: That just sounds like a beautiful unfolding of vocation. And it draws the listener in to want to explore more about L’Arche. So thank you for sharing that. Now, for us at the Henri Nouwen Society, Henri is of course, deeply connected with our relationship with L’Arche. But maybe you can tell us a bit more about Henri’s role in your own formation. You talked about reading Compassion (insert a photo of the book cover at this point) early on at Notre Dame, but what are some of the other ways that Henri Nouwen has been an accompanier for you?

Liska Stefko: Well, like I said, I think he may have had something to do with me making my way to the community, to L’Arche Daybreak, which is a community just north of Toronto in Richmond Hill, Ontario. And I think quite possibly I may have read some of Henri’s writings from the about a decade that he spent as pastoral minister to the Daybreak community. So through his writing, I became aware there was this community. And when I decided that it was time to leave Rome, but I still felt that I wasn’t finished with L’Arche I thought, what would it be like to just spend a couple of months maybe just visiting a community in a culture closer to my own, and a little closer to my family, closer to perhaps future opportunities for study? So in the first community that came to mind for me was Daybreak.

Liska Stefko: And I thought, I’ll go and visit Daybreak, because in Henri’s books, he would talk about how he lived at Daybreak, and how he would invite various friends from his different universities and different, you know, other parts of his world. He would invite them to visit him at L’Arche. And I thought, well, people go and visit L’Arche Daybreak all the time, so maybe, maybe I’ll go do that. And I called and asked, could I come and visit for a couple of months? And that was in the fall of 1997. And what that means is when I arrived at Daybreak, the community had just marked the one year anniversary of Henri’s death. That’s right. And I don’t know if I would have been aware of that even at the time.  But so when I arrived at Daybreak it was, it was around the same time of year.

Liska Stefko: It was in late September. And so I arrived to find a community that had been profoundly shaped by this incredible charismatic presence, pastor, someone that people loved very, very deeply, and someone who shaped, certainly the prayer and worship life of the community, very, very profoundly.  People were still in some pretty, pretty fresh grief, just one year later. And so that was, that was the L’Arche Daybreak that I encountered for the first time. People spoke about Henri on a first name basis. Our core members, our folks with disabilities, people had stories about Henri. And, and most of those stories were just about how much they loved him. And so, in some ways my knowledge of Henri is my experience of Henri has been shaped by years of stories of people telling me what it was like to be with him.

Liska Stefko: So that’s kind of a fun way to encounter him. And I feel like all along, in my various roles in community, and then coming into the role of pastoral minister in which I’ve been serving for about 10 years now all along, he is been there as someone who walked before. And certainly as someone who held a vision for what the spiritual life of a community of a L’Arche community could look like in a very concrete way.

Liska Stefko: And there’s a beautiful picture of Henri as you enter the building, a picture of Henri next to his dear friend Adam  who was very, very formative for him.  And Adam is someone with a disability, and Henri wrote a book called Adam speaking about his relationship with him and how Adam called him more and more and to discover sort of the gifts of community and to discover the gifts that Adam himself held for Henri.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Yes, I have been to that space, and it is just it’s colorful.

Liska Stefko: What are your, what are your impressions?

Wendy VanderWal Martin: It’s creative. It’s, you know, it just, it absolutely draws you into both this vibrancy and this stillness. I mean, when I was there, Karen Pascal and I were the only two in the building, so it was this lovely paradox of vibrancy and stillness. So I don’t know if that’s typically how it feels, but that was my encounter.

Liska Stefko: There’s some of each there. And I think maybe even beyond this space, I think I can also say something of Henri’s legacy has, is that’s what I entered into in community, in terms of how the community comes together in praise. And what I understand is people felt deeply drawn into prayer, into connection with Henri. I know Henri exercised I mean, his primary place of welcoming people into prayer was the table at Eucharist, because of his vocation as a priest in the Catholic church, that said, I also understand that he had a very expansive approach to that. And that he welcomed in people of various denominations and perhaps even faiths. And he really had a great insistence of deep welcome. I know that he had a love for the arts.

Liska Stefko: And so he would bring icons or paintings and place them up front and invite people to look at them and to have a focal point for reflection. He loved music. And I’m told that he, that amongst his many gifts that singing was not really one of them, but sometimes he was….. so, he would be so enthusiastic, he would try to get people to sing together. And it was always enthusiastic maybe a bit comical, but people would join in as well. But I think that all of those things are part of what I’ve inherited, what our community has inherited from Henri, because that sense, I would say, that sense of deep participation of deep welcome, of drawing in the senses, in worship, of movement, of stillness, of art, of singing,  of people really engaging.  All of those things are part of the life of the community as I’ve known it. And we’ve built on that in a generation since Henri’s death.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, at the Henri Nouwen Society, we’re just actually are in the midst of preparing for our 2024 Meditation Series. We’ll be releasing that on the Saturdays in September with Carolyn Arends as our guest. And the topic is a Beautiful Adventure: the gift of the arts in spiritual formation. The folks who are listening, keep your eyes open for that. It will be released on our YouTube channel, and you can register for free. But we encourage people to take part in that series to, again, find that creative, vibrant way into contemplative spirituality and to a deeper life of prayer.

Now, this podcast is called Love, Henri because there’s a book actually called Love, Henri. I try to show it every time. If people are excited about the letters of Henri, we’re taking a letter each podcast episode as a bit of a catalyst for conversation.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: And today is no different. Today’s letter is written in 1987. So I always joke that I was wearing neon colors and harem pants and <laugh> headbands with very big permed bangs at the time. But from February 16th, the day before my birthday, and Henri’s writing to a priest who wants to bring those living with disability into a more centered place within parish life. That’s the context for the letter. So let’s take a listen to what Henri had to say.

Dear Father Paul, it’s with great joy for me to hear about your desire to develop within your parish, A place of welcome for mentally handicapped people. This letter is simply meant to be a letter of encouragement. For the largest part of my life, I have been rather unaware of the great gift which handicapped people have to offer us. Since I’ve been living and working at L’Arche, I have become convinced that every Christian community that gives part of its energy to the care of people with a mental handicap will soon discover the special graces connected with that care. After many years of studying and teaching theology, it truly has been a blessed discovery that many of the broken people of L’Arche have revealed more about God’s love to me than much of my studying and teaching ever did. As I am trying to understand this better, I’ve come to realize that mentally handicapped people, first of all, teach me that being is more important than doing in our competitive world. So much emphasis is given to doing that we forget that God, first of all, asks us simply to be with him and with each other. Mentally handicapped people who can do so little can be so much. During my time at L’Arche, I have also learned that the heart is more important than the mind. The heart is the core of our being, and it is there where the gifts of trust, hope, and love are being offered to us.

Mentally handicapped people who often cannot be as mindful as others are uniquely gifted to bring us in touch with the treasures of the heart. In a world where so much attention is paid to analysis, discussion of issues and strategies for the future, the poor in spirit offer us the hopeful message that it is from the heart, that true peace and joy flow. Finally, I have come to see that people with a mental handicap have a unique call to us, to community, precisely because they are so dependent on others. They call us to live together, sharing our gifts, and form a sign of light. In the midst of this world, I have been deeply impressed by how people from the most different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds, who otherwise would never have met, have started to live in community because of their common desire to live with and learn from mentally handicapped people in a world so filled with individualism and so preoccupied with stars and heroes.

The call of the handicap to form communities of love is truly a blessing from heaven. It is such a joy for me to know that you too have sensed the special gift that the handicap people can offer to the Christian community by revealing to us that being is more important than doing. The heart is more than the mind. And community is more important than individual stardom. They are truly messengers of the gospel and witnesses to the Lord who became poor for us. I pray fervently that you will continue meeting and praying and working together to let this new ministry come to maturity among you. I’m very sorry that I wasn’t able to visit you personally, but I hope that this letter will convince you of my true desire to encourage you and to be of service to you with warm greetings. Sincerely yours, Henri Nouwen.

Now, as you listen to this letter from 1987, first of all, just what resonates with you as you hear Henri offering this encouragement to Father Paul?

Liska Stefko: I think the first thing that would resonate is just his excitement in wanting to share something that he is experiencing. And it’s interesting, this was, you said it’s 1987, so I think this may have been the first year or two that he was that he would’ve been living at L’Arche. So pretty early on as he was living these things. And I think I hear a kind of a newness in the way he’s trying to articulate this. Like he’s describing something that hasn’t occurred to him before, that he hasn’t encountered before. That’s something that’s kind of foreign to him. So there’s this what I hear is there’s an excitement he wants to tell you about it. And also, I think I hear, maybe I’m just reading into it, but I also think I hear he’s kind of looking for the words and the concepts to try to express that.

Liska Stefko: And that certainly resonates for me. Because L’Arche is something that you experience when you come to visit, and it’s something that you can have a little glimpse of or a taste of in sort of an initial conversation or encounter. And then if you come back and spend some more time, you’ll get a little bit more of a glimpse. And if you spend more time, that experience will, like most things that are important and of value we can grow into an experience of it. And as we grow into it the ways we describe it will grow and expand, and we’ll kind of find those words and those concepts. So when I read this, I hear Henri wanting to express something about the gift of being that folks with intellectual disabilities have a gift around being versus perhaps sort of the competitiveness or the emphasis on production that the world might present to us as sort of the end all be all.

Liska Stefko: And Henri saying, “Wait, there is a gift around being”, and I’m not sure if he uses the word presence, but, I think presence is what he’s trying to articulate. And that’s, I think that’s a key insight around the gifts that people with intellectual disabilities have to offer to the world. He also talks about gifts of the heart. And for someone like Henri of great intellectual gifts it sounds like this was a side of him that perhaps through his formation as a priest, maybe this side was did not receive as much nurture and encouragement. And so it sounds like he is so excited to share about the wisdom and the emotional intelligence of some of the people that he’s meeting. And he’s also really excited to share about a call to community, just a reality that in sort of the organism of community that our core members, our people with disabilities  necessarily remind us that we are interdependent.

Liska Stefko: All of us are interdependent. We need each other. And because someone with a disability may say, “I need you to help me get out of bed and get going in the morning, or to prepare a meal for me, or to drive me someplace. These are some of the things I need.” And at the same time, in the rhythm of that daily life that you, while you’re kind of engaging side by side in life together, you are entering into a relationship where we’re also realizing our need for one another for friendship, for presence, for inspiration, for encouragement. And so those things are happening kind of in and through, in around just those ordinary daily activities. But what Henri’s identifying here, and he’s encouraging his friend Paul, to think about as well, is there’s an insight here that there’s a call to community that when somebody says, “I need your help with something”, and they draw you into relationship in a certain way.

Liska Stefko: And while you’re there, you begin to discover how much we all need each other. And that is quite an essential insight when it comes to L’Arche. So when I read this when I read this letter, I think those are sort of key insights that I have come to know in my own experience at L’Arche. I also notice though, I’m struck by, and this is from 1987, it catches me a little bit when I hear some of our language around how we try to articulate disability has evolved over the decades. And we’ve tried to evolve with that to understand sort of what is the commonly understood term for speaking about disability. Do you say handicap? What is it that you say?

Liska Stefko: And we try to learn from <laugh> the world around us. Today, we tend to say more someone with an intellectual disability. In our communities, we might say core members, just as folks who kind of have that…. who call us to the, the center of our community as I’ve just spoken about. So there is something about the language that I notice. And I think we wouldn’t say that exactly the same way today, but that would have been, I think, at his time, I think that would’ve been….. I’m sure I trust that he was using what would’ve been a common or re respected term. I also hear him speaking in a way about sort of  brokenness or poverty. And I think I understand what he means by that.

Liska Stefko: Today, those probably wouldn’t be the first words that I would use to…  that I would reach for, to try to describe some of these people who have had this incredible impact on me. And not because that’s not true, but because, not because there isn’t brokenness in their stories, but because it does not strike me as the primary identifier, right? That there’s, for me, the naturally, sort of the first word I reached for when I tried to describe to you my friend Rosie I would say to you, you know, she was, like, strength is the word that comes to me. And grit is the word that comes to, you know, these are the words that, and somewhere as I try to fill out my description of her, I might say also, she was quite petite, and she didn’t learn to walk until she was in her twenties.

Liska Stefko: She was someone who didn’t use… she had a powerful voice, but she did not use words. She did not express herself verbally. So these are some of the things that would come through. But brokenness sort of wouldn’t be my starting point to describe people. Because it hasn’t been my starting point in relating with people. And I also think there’s something that I was struck by even just listening to you, Wendy, read this letter right now when Henri talks about, he says, being is more important than doing, and he says, heart is more important than mind. And I’m not entirely sure that I would describe it that way either. I would say that maybe what people with disabilities in our communities might teach us is something about a desire for wholeness and to, you know, an integration of mind of heart, of soul of body.

Liska Stefko: And which might not necessarily mean sort of ranking, this is more important than that. But really for each person living in community, for each of us growing in an inner life in which we come to an awareness of what are the gifts that we have been given of intellect, of heart, of life experience and wisdom, of physical strength and giftedness, kind of, how do we  how do we learn about our gifts? How do we call out the gifts in others? How do we nurture and encourage the giftedness of one another? And ultimately, how do we journey together towards wholeness? Rather than being someone who lives entirely out of sort of this one dimension of oneself or this other dimension, but really trying to live into our God given identity as loved and whole beings.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Thank you. That’s so helpful. I think in the enthusiasm that you spoke about, the newness, perhaps for Henri, it almost then comes across as a bit of a binary, right? It’s this or it’s this.

We know that there’s such life and truth and wisdom in the living in the tension of those things.

Liska Stefko: Yes. In a big way. That tension is a good word. That’s, I think that would capture what I’m…

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, it’s, it’s interesting because even as I was reading it and saying, mentally handicapped, a decision has been made to not edit Henri’s writing – not to update it.   I suppose one might wonder where that would end, right? How, how often do you update it? And so we read as he wrote in 1987, and yet, clearly not just language, but I think our understanding of the ways that words carry levels of power it strikes me that a word like broken while very true, for a lot of our marginalized friends, that has carried   a sense of, “But of course, I’m more broken than you.” So, and it becomes hierarchical and becomes imbued with a power that can do violence to the human spirit. So I’m grateful for you to articulate how some of the ways in which we describe relationship mutuality the interconnectedness of our lives in the context of L’Arche, has continued to evolve. I think that’s really life-giving and helpful to our listeners. So thank you.

Liska Stefko: Thanks, Wendy. I think another thing is, I was curious to see in Henri’s writing did that evolve for him? Like, you talk about whether or not we would edit something posthumously. And I was curious, in his 10 years or so living in community, we’re reading something from the very beginning. So I went back and picked up just recently I picked up a copy of Adam, the book that he wrote about his friend Adam, and very much this experience of entering into relationship with Adam. I kind of had that question, “Did Henri himself grow in that language and that awareness?” And at least in sort of how and what I read, I think I read in that with the way he describes the way he describes Adam, there’s a lot of agency in how he describes Adam and his gifts in leading him and shepherding him. And I think Adam helped Henri grow in that. So I do think if you looked at some of his later writing from his time in L’Arche, I think we do see some growth where he himself began to find language to try to capture the depth of what he was experiencing in these mutually transformative relationships.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Yes. In this letter, of course, he’s just a year or so away from Harvard <laugh> and the writing of Adam was the last year of his life on his final sabbatical. So 10 years difference or more.

Liska Stefko: A lot happens in 10 years. <laugh>,

Wendy VanderWal Martin: You know, even sometimes our heroes in the faith show that we continue to grow and mature. So that’s <laugh> an encouragement for those of us who, who are still very much works in process, works in progress.

Liska Stefko: Which I think is, I think is all of us.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Now L’Arche has, has been around for what, how many years would, what’s the anniversary date of L’Arche?

Liska Stefko: 1964.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Oh, so it’s a big year. It’s 60 years in 2024.

Liska Stefko: That sounds about right.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: I’m terrible at math. So that was a big risk. <laugh>

Wendy VanderWal Martin: So 60 years and a lot has happened. What are some of the challenges that are facing L’Arche? Not just L’Arche Daybreak, but L’Arche as a movement in 2024? And, you know, I suppose the follow up question is, and what is the gift of spirituality in looking at some of those challenges?

Liska Stefko: Okay. Well, I can say that  L’Arche is an international network of communities. We’re about, I think the number is about 160 communities or projects in close to 40 countries around the world. So L’Arche looks a little different in each cultural context. And so I can speak from one of the 30 L’Arche communities in Canada, and this one being L’Arche Daybreak. Because that’s the one that I know. And so if I think of some of some of the challenges, I think in our world in general, in terms of technology and pace of life, and a sense of infinite productivity and an emphasis on productivity, I think there is a real call and a real deep need for gifts of presence. In terms of challenge, I would say that is a continual challenge at L’Arche in terms of it is getting harder and harder to invite people, particularly young people, but all of us away from a state of constant distraction or this sort of continuous partial attention where you’re paying attention to a lot of different things at once.

Liska Stefko: And concretely, how do we invite people to put down cell phones and to be, to give ourselves completely to the task of being in front of somebody. In ways that are…  much of our daily life is, most of our daily life is so ordinary and mundane. Now, there can be great joy and great meaning, and great surprise and great learning and all of those things, but much of our rhythm of day-to-day life is very, very ordinary. So what does it mean, you know how easy is it to invite people into that, invite them to take the risk of saying, “Come and spend some time, and we believe there is something of value, and that together we can, we can learn.” So that, I would say that just the world we operate in, it makes it challenging to invite people into that and invite people to make a commitment to that.

Liska Stefko: I think all sectors where people take care of people there’s constant there’s the challenge of limited resources and how do you continue to provide the quality and level of care for people that we wish to provide always working with limited resources. That’s a challenge. And it’s not just a challenge for L’Arche. If you speak to anywhere where any form of community where people are looking to support people, people at the margins, they would tell you the same thing. So I would say that that challenge is no different for L’Arche.  I would say in the last five years, there has been there have been sort of two pretty much simultaneous challenges that came our way at the beginning of 2020.

Liska Stefko: And the first of those this is pretty widely known, this information is widely available, but we came to understand some new information about what we had considered to be the founding story of L’Arche, the founder of L’Arche Jean Vanier, who was someone who wrote very compellingly, wrote and spoke very compellingly about, about vulnerability and brokenness. We came to understand not long after Jean’s death, that over a long period of time, he someone that we had really respected and trusted, had engaged in behavior that was manipulative and coercive and abusive with a number of people over an arc of time, over sustained period of time. And that these abuses took place under the pretext of offering spiritual guidance. So it really was, a form of abuse.

Liska Stefko: And we came to understand that many people lived the effects of this and carried harm and carried this woundedness into their lives. Those are deeply disturbing things to come to understand. Literally in the same weeks that this was becoming known… and I have great respect for how this was handled by our leadership internationally and L’Arche is a engaged, independent safeguarding firm from the UK to look into this in France and in the communities in France. And they really had a great emphasis on transparency on wanting to understand what happened. And an initial inquiry also led into another independent study that came to a fuller picture of some of these testimonies. So that information is available, but as it was emerging at the very same time in the very same weeks, the world was shutting down because of pandemic.

Liska Stefko: If we think back to those early days of pandemic, the manifestation in North America of that was something terrible was going on, was in places where vulnerable people lived. It was in residences, in places of care where people who were already physically vulnerable were catching this virus. And we were hearing these terrible stories of people in long-term care and hospitals of this virus that we didn’t know and that we couldn’t identify, and that it was taking the lives of vulnerable people in contexts exactly like ours. And so these two things happened really simultaneously. And our, what I can say is that the pandemic immediately required us to focus completely on what is absolutely most essential in our communities, which is the care and wellbeing of vulnerable people.

Liska Stefko: And how to safeguard that, how to nurture that. So in a very immediate, practical way, that’s what we spent the next couple of years doing until we got a couple of rounds of vaccines into everybody. We lived the pandemic in a very intensive way as did other folks in places of care and with vulnerable folks, both in our community, in L’Arche, all around the world, and in other places of care with vulnerable folks. So the pandemic was being lived out, and in a way it called us you know, and I described that spirit of openness that Henri described that we know is important to our communities. It required us in a very concrete way to become, to isolate ourselves, because that’s what was required of us at that time.

Liska Stefko: The place of the spiritual life in that, I would say that the pandemic also required us to discover new ways of being present to one another in our spiritual life. So, for example we were no longer gathering together around a table for Eucharist or gathering in the same room for worship. Like most things we went online. And when we did that, what we began to explore a little more deeply was how do we make our… we would use some words on a screen so people could follow along.

Liska Stefko: And we would use images. We have a treasure trove of images, of artwork that core members from our community and other communities around the world have done. So what would it look like to take our scriptures and set them alongside artwork grown by our own community members, painted by our own community members? And does that bring us to a whole new awareness of the scripture? How do we simplify the language of the scriptures so that it can be read by our core members? How do we shape our prayers so that they’re just a really simple call and response so that everyone can participate? And so we kind of needed to fumble our way around on Zoom to find these things when it came time that we could safely be in a room together and say, gosh, let’s get back in the same room together.

Liska Stefko: And we realized that we had actually learned some things, and that our goal was not to go back to the way things were. We realized that we had found our… we needed to learn our way into a new way of praying. And in this way, core members really could lead in a really concrete way from start to finish, in a way that they, that they don’t lead in Eucharist, even participating very fully. We learned that there are things that we can do around language and art that render our services even more welcoming and more inclusive. And we learned that I think a truer reflection of who we are as a L’Arche community today. Actually, I think our most common spiritual ground is in sharing our stories, reflecting on our lived experiences, celebrating one another in important moments in threshold moments, big important moments, and also in small moments rituals of welcome and rituals of sending and blessing.

Liska Stefko: Just creating spaces for deep listening and deep presence a place of silence in our prayers. So these are, kind of the things that we have come to. And, and I think it’s even a little more inclusive and more welcoming. Because the truth is we are people of various Christian denominations, people of various faith traditions, and also more and more people who would say, I do not hold a particular faith tradition. And so how do we gather all of these people together in a way that we can be together, celebrate one another, encourage one another? Those are some of the things that we needed to learn through the pandemic. And I think we are, I think we are learning.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Thank you. It strikes me that you’ll be unpacking the learning from that season for some time to come

Liska Stefko: Very much so.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: That reflection of what experience brought you through those years. So thank you for connecting some of those dots and I know that those who had to do some type of similar learning as you will appreciate the reflections you’ve shared. Now, I wind up every podcast conversation by asking each guest about their own spiritual practices that help them to flourish, not just be sustainable in their life, but flourish in their life. And as the host, it’s a delight to hear very varied answers. It brings such creativity and possibility to those who are listening. So Liska, what helps you to flourish in your spiritual journey?

Liska Stefko: One thing I would say is just sort of our Monday morning gatherings at the Daybreak that I’ve just described to you, <laugh> of people coming in and being together in this space and kind of going through seeing really our core members coming and taking leadership of everything from start to finish in the service, and creating this space to be together, to laugh together, to say what’s important to us to name what we’re concerned about, to reflect together, to say what we’re grateful for. It’s a little bit wacky of a space in some ways, is a little unpredictable, and all we can really do is kind of set up the space and kind of try to foster and encourage and listen and then receive as to what gets lived into it, right? So, those Monday morning gatherings are really nourishing and encouraging.

Liska Stefko: Once a month, we have an evening prayer, sort of a Taize style prayer with fewer few words. And it’s meant to be contemplative space. We sing some songs. We have something visual to gaze upon. We hear snippets of scriptures and prayers. And at the heart of that is a time of quiet. And we don’t say silence, we say quiet, because the truth is, when you have a bunch of people in the room, there are folks who may speak spontaneously or who may vocalize, or you may hear some sounds, you may hear some breathing. So it’s not complete silence but it is a spirit of stillness and quiet. And more recently, we’ve sort of taken a practice of holding about a silence of about seven minutes in the center of that. And if you can imagine our community of all manner of people coming together and sitting down and trying to be quiet together for seven minutes in some ways it can be a little bit comical. And sometimes there are just these bursts of laughter because something funny happens. But there’s, I remember a physician friend coming and taking part in something similar some years ago, and she came out of that time and she said, silence. And I said, well, it’s not really silent, is it? And she said, no, but she said, you know, as doctors, we use a stethoscope to listen for breathing sounds for life sounds.

Liska Stefko: And she said, and that’s what I heard. I heard the life sounds of the community in that quiet space. And I thought, oh, that’s what she, as a doctor, you listen for life sounds, and that’s what you heard in that silence. So I would say our community gatherings, I would say the place of silence in that I would say I receive daily reflections from the Center for Action and Contemplation, meditations by Richard Rohr and other authors that are, or other theologians, authors, teachers, activists who are part of that organization. And I would say that’s been pretty formative for me. And that’s part of a sort of a daily discipline. There’s always, there’s always a little something <inaudible>. And teaches us to live in a now that is always imperfect  and teaches us to hold together things that  that seem on the surface to be incompatible and impossible. And I think I think that’s really so at the heart of spirituality in L’Arche is holding together all kinds of different experience and viewpoints and starting points, intention, as you have said. So that word and is really important. I would say. Gratitude is a really important practice.   One of the ways we live that in our community is we have instead of a sermon time where we reflect on scripture, we’ll read a passage together. And we’ll maybe we’ll launch a little theme or a little story and then we will break into little discussion groups, little reflection groups, and in that time, the question might be something like, you know, where have you experienced someone encouraging you to grow? What did that look like? So really meant to be quite open questions. A beautiful, animated conversation emerges from that all over the chapel. All these different conversations happen. And gratitude is often one of those things. And it just, whatever the question is, it often comes down to what we grateful for. And then, you know, when we walked into the room, you think, oh gosh, another time to get together.

Liska Stefko: And here we are, and it’s such a busy week, and we have so much to do, and we come to this place of stillness where people are naming, “I’m thankful for this, thankful for that.” And it’s really, it’s very grounding. It’s very, very humbling. I remember one of our core members, Jason, who was incredibly insightful, a gentleman.  I remember we were sitting with core members, and we talked about spirituality. And we said, well, did you grow up going to church or praying or anything like that? And we went around the room and some people said, I went to Mass. I went to, there’s someone from a Greek Orthodox background who said you know, we sing all the time in church.

Liska Stefko: And there was somebody, people described different traditions. And I remember we got to Jason and he said, my family doesn’t go to church.   I’m not sure what you mean by spirituality, but every day I’m thankful for my wheelchair because it lets me get around. And he said, is that what you mean? And I said, that is exactly what I mean. And over and over, Jason has been this boy. He has an incredible gift, particularly around articulating gratitude. And I remember in the early weeks of the pandemic he was living at home with his parents, completely isolated as we all were. And he talked about gratitude. And I just, and I said, Jason, tell me more about that because right now, I think a lot of us are feeling like we’re not very grateful for what’s happening right now, because this is hard. And he just smiled and he said, gratefulness can come from anywhere as long as we let it in. Gratefulness can come from anywhere as long as we let it in. And I took a pen and I wrote that down, and I stuck it on my bathroom mirror.

Liska Stefko: Gratefulness can come from anywhere as long as we let it in.

Wendy VanderWal Martin: Beautiful. Thank you. Well, Liska, it’s been a joy to chat with you today and to hear your stories of L’Arche, especially about many of your friends. Again, for those of you who are listening, if you were listening to Liska and I, but would like to actually see our conversation, it will be loaded up on the Henri Nouwen YouTube channel as well. Please, if this has been an important conversation for you, share it with family and friends, drop by, leave us a review or a thumbs up.  And again, if you’re new to the Henri Nouwen Society, please check us out@HenriNouwen.org as well. We’re going to put L’Arche’s information, websites, information in the show notes. So if this has peaked your curiosity to learn more about L’Arche, we invite you to do so.  So Liska, thanks again for being with us and for all of you who are listening, never ever forget you are a beloved child of God. Thanks for being with us.

Liska Stefko: Thanks so much, Wendy. Really appreciate the time together.