On Saturday, July 23 we held a L’Arche NC SAILABRATION Breakfast at Duke Memorial UMC in Durham.
We had pancakes, music, and a mini boat regatta! This gathering celebrated our growing community. It provided an opportunity for friends (new and old) to come together for fun.
Thank you to everyone who joined us. It was so much to create and watch the regatta race. Congrats to Kevin for winning the Fastest Boat Award and Dash for winning Best of Show.
During our morning together, our Executive Director, Laura Steed Lorino, asked audience members, “What are you celebrating this month? There is always something to celebrate!” Some attendees shared of new jobs, others shared about their anniversary, while others focused on recent accomplishments. At L’Arche, we CELEBRATE! And, we continue to celebrate the community that is growing in the Triangle Area of North Carolina. THANK YOU for being a part of it.
Our breakfast also meant that we could share more about the mission and vision of L’Arche NC. We are excited for our future! L’Arche staff, volunteers, board members, and former board members shared about the impact of L’Arche.
Heather Bixler, a former Board Member and former L’Arche Assistant shared a reflection about her time at L’Arche:
I lived in L’Arche Portland for a summer, and then l’Arche Greater Washington DC from 2006 to 2008. I also had the privilege of visiting many L’Arche Communities around the US, as well as L’Arche Uganda.
Life in L’Arche is not particularly glamorous. It involves a lot of dailyness, a word we use often in L’Arche. The dailyness of cooking, administering meds, watching tv on the couch, baking cookies, attending doctor’s appointments, celebrating milestones, flossing teeth, shoveling the driveway. These are things we are all doing to some extent in our own lives – caring for ourselves, for our loved ones. But in L’Arche, those daily activities are, in fact, the heart of our community.
During my last week at L’Arche GWDC, I made a list of things I was going to miss most about my time there. Here are some of the highlights:
–Hazel laughing at my jokes and winning staring contests in the van.
-Linda rubbing her hands together in delight when she accomplishes a task.
-Big family dinners and after-dinner prayer.
-The spontaneous moments when I find Fritz in the kitchen cleaning, putting away the dishes, and laughing to himself.
-Helping Linda with her exercises and always being impressed by her perseverance.
-Hazel always seeming to know exactly where I left my keys or my shoes or my purse.
L’Arche is a place of transformation. It is a place where we can express our hopes, fears, joys, and hurts in real, tangible ways. Guests who come to dinner talk enthusiastically about the feeling of welcome and belonging. Core members who come to LArche after years of living in an institutional setting are valued for their whole selves and given opportunities to thrive. Assistants come to serve and find that they, too, are experiencing healing and growth they never thought possible. People come to L’Arche and are changed because they have never experienced anything like it before.
I was so transformed by my time in L’Arche that upon moving to Durham more than decade ago, I joined a movement to start a l’Arche community here in North Carolina. After 11 long years of patient discernment and persistence, L’Arche North Carolina is no longer a dream but a reality. And we couldn’t have gotten to this place without the help of countless volunteers, supporters, friends, and board members who dedicated their time and effort to carry our community along.
L’Arche is a community for life, and as we aspire for longevity. L’Arche North Carolina’s story is in many ways a long one, but my hope is that these 11 years will one day be a small chapter in a much longer story. I invite you to join that story today and support L’Arche North Carolina.
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If you weren’t able to join us for the gathering and would like to support our growing community, please go to: https://larchenc.org/Sail2022 to make a contribution today.
