Communities that free young people

Freeing young people to fly

In my last post, I included an excerpt from Jean Vanier’s “Community and Growth”.

Vanier’s L’Arche communities are focussed on caring for the disabled, in a similar way that Fusion’s communities are focussed on caring for “at risk” young people.

I remember a conversation with George Savvides who said to me “In my view Fusion’s main product is creating a safe place for young people to discover themselves and faith”. I remember feeling concerned that if all the young people keep coming and moving on then there would be no-one to run Fusion.

What I needed to understand is that there is another group that Fusion’s communities exist for than just for the “at risk” young people. The further I get away from that discussion with George the more I think he was right.

So many young people have come through Fusion training and work and then moved on, but at the same time others have stayed. It has been easy to see those who left as a failure, however as I hear what Vanier is saying in this extract, I realise that mostly what I was seeing as failure was actually success:

Our world has more and more need of ‘intermediate communities’ – places where young people can stay and find a certain inner freedom before they make their decision. They either cannot stay in their family or don’t want to; they are not satisfied with life alone in an apartment, hotel or hostel. They need somewhere where they can find inner liberation though a network of relationships and friendships, there they can be truly themselves without trying or pretending to be anything other than they are. It is these intermediate communities, where they find also meaningful work, that they will be able to shed some of the fears that weight them down and prevent them from discovering their deep selves. It is only when they discover they are loved by God and by others, and that they can do beautiful things for others, that they begin to get in touch with what is deepest in them. Only then will they be free to choose a way of life which is truly their own, not that of their parents or the people around them nor something set up in reaction to it, but one which is born of a real choice of life, in response to an aspiration or call.

For a community to play this ‘intermediate’ role, in must have a core of people who are really rooted there. Many young people come to L’Arche having left school, university or a job which is no longer satisfying. They are seekers. After a few year they discover who they really are and what they really want. Then they can either go into a more specifically religious community, marry, go back to work or take up studies which now really interest them.

Others choose to stay. The community is no longer simply their place of healing, a place where they feel good and happy, but the place where they have decided to put down their roots because they have discovered the call of God and, in community with handicapped people, a whole meaning to life. Their personal aims melt into those of the community, they no longer feel challenged by other people’s plans to leave the community for something else. They too have their personal plan – to stay in the community.