The Human Mirror

I’m finding my time with the core members have been more and more beneficial not only for them but mostly for myself. As my co-worker Bill from my last job at St. Germaine said to me once, “spending time with them is like looking in the mirror” (or something like that).I know it sounds funny, but hear me out. You aren’t seeing an intellectually disabled person in the mirror ... instead you are seeing a different type of disabled person: disabled through sin & vice. When I am with our core people there can be times where they know EXACTLY which button to push and whether they do it on purpose or not, it is helping me look “in a mirror for my soul” and see those vices I need to work on. It isn’t them that’s the problem, it’s me and my pride, arrogance, impatience, etc. How do I know this? Because of instances such as when I moved to Prescott Valley in 2008 and couldn’t stand certain people and their personalities. But 3 years later right before moving back to MA I didn’t mind them at all. Was it because THEY changed? No. It was because I changed. I surrendered myself to Christ more and more each day and let Him change ME. Indirectly those people were holding up a mirror to me, to my soul, helping me purify it.

When the world says that people like Donald, Debbie, Katie, and the core members here at L’Arche are a “waste” and shouldn’t be born because of suffering or because they "use more than they give" or whatever excuse, it is because these people only see the core members for things they can physically do and what they can produce (i.e. jobs, college, etc). I feel those kind of people with those excuses have a lack for seeing the person as what a person really is: a human with a soul, or better said by C.S. Lewis, "... we think we are human bodies who have a soul, when in fact we are souls who have human bodies." These core members really ARE the best doctors in the world because they help fix the most important part of the human person: the soul, the part we so often forget about… the part that WILL last forever and needs to stay as healthy as possible. I need to remind myself every day: how did I take care of my soul today as well (or better) as I did my body?