Tina and Tim joined our director, Dan McKanan, to discuss the transparency and accountability put in place by the organization in the wake of the sexual and spiritual abuse perpetrated by the founder of L’Arche, Jean Vanier. We talked about how communities can restructure, rebuild, and find healing after new information about their founders comes to light.
Full Transcript:
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SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.
SPEAKER 2: Rebuilding community and accountability in L'Arche, lessons learned from a founder's abuse of power, October 13, 2021.
DAN McKANAN: Good day and welcome to all of you who've joined us from so many different places. I'm delighted to report that we have about 90 people here joined in conversation on the theme of rebuilding community and accountability in the L'Arche movement.
I'm Dan McKanan, I am the faculty director of the program for the evolution of spirituality at Harvard Divinity School. I'm Zooming in from Cambridge in the unceded land of the Massachusett people and the river shed of the Charles River.
Today's event is part of an ongoing series of colloquium on power dynamics in emerging spiritual organizations. Delighted to welcome back those of you who have been attending our events since the beginning and to welcome those who are joining us for the first time today.
As I said, this is sponsored by the program for the evolution of spirituality, which is committed to sponsoring scholarly conversations that fully include both practitioners of emerging spiritualities and persons who have experienced harm within spiritual movements.
For this reason I'm especially pleased to be hosting leaders of the L'Arche movement today. L'Arche's experience over the past few years is an instructive case study, in the way spiritual communities can grapple with legacies of harm and abuse while still cherishing their founding ideals.
I hope this will be just the first of many sessions in which we will engage movement leaders as they reflect on the path to transparency and accountability.
Before I introduce our speakers, I will offer a brief recounting of L'Arche's experience so that we can start with some common understandings.
The L'Arche movement was founded in 1964 when Jean Vanier began sharing his home in France with two men with intellectual disabilities L'Arche since grown into an international network of more than 150 communities in 30 countries. Also offscreen deep and collaborative relationships among people of diverse abilities.
Founder Jean Vanier was among many other things, a devout Roman Catholics. And the L'Arche movement is both rooted in Catholic devotion and open to people following many different spiritual paths.
For much of his life, Vanier received spiritual direction from father Thomas Philippe a Dominican priest who collaborated with him in founding L'Arche.
On multiple occasions, Thomas Philippe, engaged in sexual relationships with adult women who came to him for spiritual direction. He often presented sexual acts as a means to mystical experience. And demanded that the women remain silent about their experiences with him.
He was investigated by the Vatican for these actions even before the founding of L'Arche. But this was not publicly known until years later. After Thomas Phillippe's death, and shortly before the death of Jean Vanier, other L'Arche leaders became aware of Thomas Phillippe's abuses. They shared this information with Catholic authorities who found Thomas Philippe guilty in a canonical inquiry.
Questioned about his colleagues misconduct, Jean Vanier denied any knowledge of it. Then in 2016 L'Arche leaders received the first of several allegations that Jean Vanier himself had engaged in sexually exploitative relationships with non-disabled adult women who came to him for spiritual direction.
Shortly before Vanier death in 2019, L'Arche began a comprehensive investigation that culminated in the 2020 report. This report concluded that between 1970 and 2005, Vanier had engaged in exploitative relationships with at least six women. And that he had lied to his L'Arche colleagues about his own behavior and that of his mentor Thomas Phillippe.
In the wake of that report, which is publicly available in the link that will be posted in the chat, the L'Arche movement has been by the hard work of dealing with the spiritual and other fallout of a beloved founder's misconduct. That hard work is the topic of our conversation today.
So now I'm delighted to introduce our two speakers. Tina Boverman is the national leader and executive director of L'Arche USA. She identifies as a Northern European implant in the American South, where she lives with her spouse and kids.
Originally at home in the world of international politics, economics, and human rights, Tina has explored various cultures, experiences, and vocations before entering into her current role.
Our other speaker, Tim Moore is the executive director and community leader of L'Arche Atlanta. Tim joined the Atlanta community as one of its founding assistants in August, 2012. He brought his experience in two previous L'Arche communities to give shape to the new rhythms of community life in Atlanta.
By May of 2013, he had shifted to a hybrid role as a half time living assistant and half time associate director of development. In this role, he helped the community reach its 2013 financial goals.
Tim attended the extended retreat in Tralee and France with L'Arche founder Jean Vanier. Where study and fellowship with L'Arche leaders from around the world renewed his call to life together in Atlanta. And he was named the executive director and community leader in 2014.
So thank you both, Tim and Tina for joining our conversation today. And my first question is for Tina. We'd like you to begin by sharing with us how the L'Arche movement as a whole, and the movement in the United States in particular, responded when it received information about Jean Vanier's sexually exploitative behavior and abuse of power.
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah, thank you Dan. And first and foremost, thank you for having us. I don't think any leader would wish to be in the seat. This is not something we want to do in our lives but I'm glad for the prosperity to share and maybe also to learn.
So before I answer the question, the L'Arche movement is not just one homogeneous entity. So it maybe makes sense to actually unpack who these people are. First and foremost, there was this little group, and I'll merely be speaking of concentric circles here, this little group of international leaders representative of the federation who acted nearly like a clearing house for the federation. Different understandings within the federation of Jean's place, for our mission, different relationships to Jean, and also really, really importantly, various cultures with really different language around questions of sexuality, abuse, trauma gender.
So to answer that question, we have to keep in mind that we were trying to figure out how to deal with this on behalf of members in the United States but also in Egypt, in Bangladesh, and in Canada. And obviously that group was a group that had to sift through the various decisions, logistics of the inquiry process itself.
Then the second group is maybe what we would call the extended leadership of the federation so people like Tim who are close to our people, to our members, community leaders, leaders of various countries, who needed to be brought in at some point and needed to process themselves while also then starting to think about, well, how do we bring this to the third circle? Which of course, our people.
So that said, there are probably three things that-- maybe four even that I would name that struck me in this process of receiving the news. One is-- and this one was maybe most modeled by our corps members by people with intellectual disability. There was an honesty and emotional honesty about what the news did. I remember for those of us in the US, you will have to beat me out here, but I remember a corp member in the UK saying, I am so angry at Jean.
And that says something. It says something that somebody could say that and could have a space where that reaction could be expressed, whether it was shock, anger, honesty, and sometimes for some people-- I don't really care this is long ago I live today. So emotional reactions and reactions in general were really varied.
What I sensed in the US, and I think my colleagues elsewhere in the world would agree, is that there was real resilience in people's commitment to the mission. I have yet to encounter one member who left L'Arche because they felt somehow demoralized in their commitment to the mission. We nearly take that for granted but we shouldn't. That's a big deal. Lots of people have come to L'Arche because of Jean. Because they've met him or read him, and yet they stay because of the experience that we have as members in L'Arche today, which is really the core of the mission. So that's to be named, it's also we want to be grateful for that and it's also I think a testimony to the mission itself.
Then the third thing that I would mention is-- and I was very humbled by that to be honest and feel really grateful to be in the company of people who can do this. I sensed in most folks an incredible capacity to hold tension and an avoidance of black and white.
It would have been so easy to say, Jean was all bad. This was all horrible. And in many ways it was. Of course, it was. And we wanted to make sure that we were clear on condemning what was not to be accepted. And yet at the same time, most people were also able to say, well, there was also something that was born out of this person and this founding story that we're all part of, and there's light there. So there's dark and there's light.
It takes a lot of maturity to hold that. And to figure out how to reconcile what in our minds and hearts and souls, is really hard to compute.
And then the last thing that I would mention is that we had very little denial. Also not to be taken for granted. I would assume, I don't know this, but I would assume that in other contexts, it would be much harder work to actually get our troops aligned to integrating the truth. And while we did that work and there was a little denial, it was very small pockets. And most people just open up their arms and hands and received and try to do what they needed to do with it. Yep.
DAN McKANAN: Could you say a little bit more about the values and goals that underlay your strategy in crafting the response in the United States?
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah, that's a really good question. We talked often about what would guide us and what guides us in this process, but we of course, didn't write it down. We never really articulated in writing the principles of the values that guided us in this decision making. And it's maybe somewhat serendipitous that we are now in the process of rewriting our charter as a federation, which is of course, nothing else than the accumulation and the articulation of our values.
So if I were to paraphrase what I sense, and other people would use different language here so you need to take this with a grain of salt, the first thing that comes to mind is our mission. Our mission, first and foremost is to give voice to people who often don't have a voice. And that entails an understanding of equality and the value of that voice. It entails an understanding of the place of power. Somebody has a voice because this person, this human being exists regardless of the power that person has or is perceived to have in society.
Our mission, I think was a really strong driver for what we were trying to do. And if we are about giving voice to those who are often marginalized in our society then we could not dismiss the voices of these women that came to us. Now we had to make space, regardless of the power that Jean carried as a public figure for these voices to be heard. So I think that's a really, really important North Star that we were trying to follow.
And then maybe on the other side, it's also important that the details to the chronology of how this all evolved but Jean had just passed away. He can no longer speak to this. So we wanted to do right not only by what we now know are the victims and the story itself but also by Jean.
There's temptation once things come out, you just want to run out and just be humble and open. But we want to do right. It's not just about clearing ourselves off, maybe a perceived sense of guilt, it's about trying to get closer to the truth as we can.
And then maybe the third part, we are a movement of communities. So what happens when something like this comes out? What happens when there are people who are in need for support and need to be rallied around? What does this call a community to? And I do think it called us as L'Arche. And our communities to stand up and to show up. And the way that we rolled it out, and that I have perceived our members to engage in the process of processing the news but also being spokespeople to our friends and partners in media. I think is nearly-- I would hope is a sign of how we as a community, we're trying to rally around those whom we wanted to give a voice to.
Ask me again in a year or two years when we have developed the charter. And I would wonder whether in the charter process, we come up with values that we could lay over the process of getting this inquiry out.
Maybe more prosaic, the word care came up a lot. We were, particularly in the US, we were very concerned about caring for our members and making sure that we offer tools and processes that allowed them to process themselves with one another. We were less concerned, obviously, we're also concerned, but less concerned about what's happening on the outside, what's happening in the media. There's little control that we have there but we had control over how we cared for our people.
And there's something in this story that touches on all of our stories, it's very convoluted. Whether you are a survivor of sexual abuse or spiritual abuse, whether you have questions of power in your life or not, there's something in there that touches you. And we wanted to tend to those points where we connect with the story individually.
DAN McKANAN: Tina, one of the things you just said, really resonated with me, talking about the mission of giving voice to those who've been denied a voice. L'Arche has historically focused on those who've been denied a voice because of their disability. And you talked about the process of moving to also see ways in which non-disabled women who had been sexually exploited had also been denied a voice. How is that shifting the way you think about the relations of people across differences of ability in L'Arche.
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah, it's a really good question particularly in the US. I don't know if it's as prominent in other countries, but of course, in the US, as we are in this season of reckoning, a racial reckoning, we think and talk a lot about notions of diversity, inclusion, belonging, equity.
And for me personally, I cannot understand L'Arche as an organization has this mission as valid if we reduce it to differences across abilities. It's nearly a denial of the mission, if we were to do that. If we believe that we want to give voice to those who are maybe voiceless or more marginalized in a society then that has to extend to all kinds of differences. It would be very presumptuous for me to say that we know how to do that. We don't.
And we have-- I don't think intentionally really thought about this in the various aspects of human diversity. Certainly within the realm of spirituality and religion, historically we've had to deal with lots of different denominations and religions and maybe we thought a little bit about gender. Over time we might have thought a little bit in certain countries around sexual orientation, but we have not really intentionally unpacked all of that.
And in the US, at least that's a big to do in the next couple of years. And it's also I think the call that comes out of the results of this inquiry.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. Now I'd like to turn to Tim, and ask you to share with us how the L'Arche Atlantic community in particular, changed its relationship to Jean Vanier in response to information about his exploitative behavior. I'm sure your community has practices of talking about him telling stories, remembering him through images, how has that changed in the wake of all of this?
TIM MOORE: Thanks, Dan. And I want to acknowledge that there is a rich history of L'Arche experience in our participant list here. I think if you were to count it up there's at least a millennium worth of experience. And with only 10 years in L'Arche, 11. I'm looking at some names who have 50 plus years worth of experience. And so the question is why am I here? I don't know. But I do have some experience here and I'll promise to bear.
In terms of L'Arche Atlanta's relationship to John, I have to confess that while we have some roots in a relationship with John, John came to Atlanta in 2002 to lead a retreat, and out of that came the founding group of people who were committed to bringing L'Arche to Atlanta.
Along the way though, John's input was very minimal. And the kinds of people who were attracted to building L'Arche in Atlanta, maybe had a stronger connection to Henri Nouwen than they would have to Jean Vanier.
By the time I got involved in 2012, we were launching the first house. In that year, I'll also highlight that there was the International General Assembly of L'Arche, which happened in Atlanta at Agnes Scott College.
And this is something that the International Federation does every four or five years, it brings delegates from every community around the world or so it aspires to. And this was the first year that Jean did not make an appearance at the assembly. And this was an incredibly founding experience for us, it put us on the map, it gave us a lot of volunteers.
Of all of the people who were really involved in say like the administrative, the assistantship, the community leadership in the beginning, there were however, deeply influenced individuals by Jean Vanier and Jean's vision of spirituality within L'Arche. And I would count myself among them.
Our corps members, however, never met Jean. And so we don't have the experience of hanging a picture of Jean Vanier on our wall because of this one time when Jean came to meet and hang out with us. He was just some other name. But I want to honor that there are some communities who have long enriched relationships with Jean in the United States.
And whereas it was somewhat easy for us to say, we're going to push pause on reading any of Jean's works, we're going to push pause on referencing Jean's wisdom in our reflections and our retreats. There are some communities where that was a very difficult decision to make. And in fact may be still ongoing, especially in communities where you have corp members, members with disabilities who are in their twilight years, and whose memories may not be able to accommodate this tragedy in their understanding of this human who's so important to them. Compound that with issues of dementia and Alzheimer's, it gets really, really complicated.
And then of course, you have assistants who may have experiences of trauma themselves, and they're being asked to care for members who may insist that this is still going to be a meaningful person in our community. It's complicated.
I will say that in Atlanta, I will tell the story of how we announced it to the community. So the news broke on a Friday in Ireland, and we were teed up to be able to release the news in a very, very coordinated way on Monday. And so we had to scramble over the weekend and get emails out on Saturday. My first emails were actually to our assistance, who I wanted to make sure had seen the news or at least had a chance to hear it from us directly.
And of course, the language was, this is going to be disturbing and it's going to be upsetting, we want to give you the truth but in a trauma informed way, and if you need time away or assistance to process this, please let us know right away.
And then we had planned to gather core members, assistance, family members, we have a category of volunteer who we call faithful friends who are very involved in the community, everyone was gathered at one of our houses in Atlanta for that Tuesday night. And we shared the news. We didn't read word for word what was written in the publication but we gave very, very clear, but not watered down sentences about what happened.
And what Tina said ring true. The truth of-- especially of our core members, this was a terrible thing. He did a bad thing, he did a horrible thing. Those were all refrains that were repeated.
What's interesting, though, is that I felt like in our community, at least in the first wave of receiving this news, that our community needed to sit more in the place of condemnation rather than the more nuanced holding the dark in the light in the beginning. And I want to name that because this was something that our members claimed pretty explicitly that they needed. They needed permission not to have to go too quickly to that more mature place. I knew anecdotally and then of course, statistically, that there were going to be experiences of exploitation of violence, of trauma in our community. And this was going to be a triggering event for people.
And I don't know to this day, if I made the right call, and allowing that to just be but I do remember being invited into a conversation to consider by one of our members that we maybe should have pushed people toward the more balanced and mature perspective, to push back that there was both good in light. And I'll be honest and say, I still don't know whether that was the right call.
DAN McKANAN: Yeah, I'm just fascinated by your phrase, the phrase of condemnation. We so often think about condemnation as something that is not only very negative but very final. And it sounds like what you were embracing was the possibility that it can be a place in which we live for a time but with an openness to other times coming down the road.
TIM MOORE: Dan, I think you said it much better than me. Yes, that this was perhaps part of our journey as a community that didn't have as much of our web of connections to Jean. That at first needed to stand in a place, that this was absolutely utterly wrong. And for a time, we want nothing to do with this person.
I also want to say, I'm going to put this in context, that this was less than three weeks away from when this would become a pandemic, and we would shut things down. And then less than a few months away from when Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd would be killed by police brutality. And so there were three successive crises that pushed us to the brink of just surviving and nothing else.
And so I think that while the pandemic is still ongoing, there are still some questions that people want to ask and spaces that people want to hold. And I think I'm guessing, that there are this many L'Arche people from around the world, is also indicative of that we want to have this conversation, we want to be able to process this together to move to the more integrative piece where we can claim the light and the dark.
DAN McKANAN: Yeah. Could you say a little bit more about the integration of the three traumas? That are simultaneous. What did sitting in the place of condemnation, these are the Jean Vanier mean for how your community responded to the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.
TIM MOORE: I think Tina said it really well. That if our mission has to do with creating spaces of belonging, and we are blind to areas in which that belonging does not extend to certain people, then we're not living our mission, we're actually living in violation of our mission.
And so Jean's behavior in the news helped us to reconcile with ways in which we might not be prioritizing voices of people who are claiming a truth that we may not be facing and not willing to face.
The last summer as protests emerged claiming, proclaiming, demanding for racial justice, for justice in the criminal justice system, it forced us to ask questions about, who are we and for whom are we? And is if you look across the board at the leadership primarily in the United States, at the majority of our members, there is a lot of whiteness. And so to the extent to which L'Arche Atlanta centered whiteness became an open question.
And we have already articulated this as a need for our community to understand the ways in which our coming together may be inhibited or didn't allow for others to sit at the table and belong. But this certainly gave the urgency of the moment to really face this. And so we asked policy questions about our hiring, about unconscious bias in the way that we bring people. We asked ritual questions about the manners in which we pray, we asked questions about the way that we might interact with core members and ask assistance who may be victims of microaggressions on a regular basis to be in relationship with someone who they're supposed to care for, who unknowingly and maybe sometimes knowingly, will commit violence.
And I don't have answers to those questions. But it all came to the fore and it felt like drinking from a fire hose. And there was no way to disentangle or to create spaces, again, because we couldn't gather together in physical proximity out of need for safety. So I can't tell you I have answers to these, but I can tell you it's surfaced a ton of questions and tensions.
DAN McKANAN: Amh, my next-- oh I'm going to turn to Tina now and ask a little bit about how L'Arche USA changed its ways of talking about Vanier or displaying his image in response to the information.
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah. Maybe to pick up on what Tim just said, the language that we often use when we were preparing for the rollout of the publication of the results of the inquiry was creating safe and brave spaces. And it's a tricky one. What is safe for me is not safe for somebody else, what is brave for me is not brave for somebody else. And that directly relates to your question then, how do we essentially, your question is, how do position ourselves today in respect in relationship to Jean.
Yesterday I think I came across a role description that I needed to update that we had drafted before the inquiry started. And it said something like the ideal candidate might have read Henri Nouwen and Jean Vanier. And I stalled and it really made me thoughtful, why we clearly said please for respect of those who might be triggered by seeing a ton of Jean photos or Jean books in the library in the home where they actually are supposed to feel safe. You want to be respectful to those who are most triggered here.
Well, we said those kind of things, and we worked with our leaders and with our members on the most obvious questions. Well, what do we do with Jean's legacy? There might be well a ton of people out there who have read Jean Vanier and thus are maybe good candidates for whatever role we were looking for. So can I still write this or can I not?
So I sense in conversations that people are trying to find their way. And as Tim said, this we called it a triple whammy. This first whammy of the inquiry and being followed by the pandemic and then by the unrest within the country hasn't given us lots of space to actually really sit with this question. And to some extent it might be premature. Because creating a safe space is precisely. The purpose is precisely for what Tim was describing, people needed to feel what they needed to feel. And some needed to have permission to condemn and to just say no, no I don't want to be in touch. And then need to be space for that some people straight away needed to somehow find a way to reconcile what they couldn't reconcile.
So the language that I would like to use here going forward, and maybe that's a call to myself and to fellow leaders, is can we have the institutional humility to continue to ask ourselves the question? Can we figure out as we walk through the study commission? Which still is in working for another year trying to figure out from an academic perspective what actually has been happening there and researching a much broader platform of archives. Can we wait for that? Can we integrate whatever comes out there into our learning so that we can reestablish our relationship to the founder?
So I would say mostly, we're cautious. I think we are pretty explicitly not trying to use quotes, pictures, because we don't want to trigger people and it doesn't seem to be appropriate. Is that right forever? I don't know. Today I don't know, I might never know. And maybe there's only a right for a certain season or maybe there's a certain right for certain geographical context. Tricky.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. The next question is for both of you. I wonder if you could each say a little bit about how L'Arche has changed its safeguarding practices in response to the situation. Tina.
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah, actually prior to this inquiry being launched, L'Arche international had already started a pretty substantial reflection on what do we need to do as an international movement that takes into our care people who are dependant intellectually, physically, financially, to get ourselves up to speed on safeguarding standards that are just appropriate for international movements?
So some of these reflections had already been going on. In the US particularly, we just actually a couple of weeks ago approved a national reporting structure, which seems very bureaucratic, that seems to be a really detailed piece. But it's one of several pieces that I think-- well, hope I hope will ultimately increase not only our accountability to one another as a movement, and we are a federation we are not an organization so you need to keep in mind that all of these communities have their own structures, their own boards, their own legislation depending on where they are, but so accountability to this principle that we want to keep our people safe. And if we want to be accountable to one another and thus to our members, we need to have a system that actually holds that and allows us to not hide away. So that's one thing.
The other thing is audits. We have yet to do regular safeguarding audits. So we have been and will be launching that in the US. Again, L'Arche international has done a lot of work there too for other countries and has established a framework for all of us.
And then the last piece, and maybe that's the most important piece is, any kind of safeguarding structure, whether that's the policies, the protocols but certainly the reporting structure, needs to serve the person who makes the report. It needs to be accessible to whoever I am, whether I have a disability or not, whether I'm an assistant or a board member, whether I sit-in Seattle or in Burkina Faso, I need to be able to very quickly and easily and respectfully and with dignity, tell the story that probably is extremely painful to me. How do we do that as an organization?
And as you can imagine, the fact that we serve people with intellectual disabilities makes this even more complicated than for some other organizations who can rely on the more general verbal, written reports. So we are working heavily on this. It is not fun work but it's really essential. I think it speaks to our mission and it's a gap that we need to fill anyways and we're also learning things. We're learning things about how we operate as a federated structure, we're learning things around solidarity and partnership, amongst various entities within the L'Arche ecosystem. We're learning things about accountability. So it's good work. It's tedious but good work.
DAN McKANAN: Tim, what would you add on safeguarding?
TIM MOORE: Yeah. I want to just highlight the piece that Tina said, that I think is really key here. Is that in L'Arche where we are in relationship with people who are very existence creates power differentials that have to be honored. And seeking to be not just a service provision entity but also a community that builds trust. How do you strike the balance between watchful, vigilance and the trust that creates the context for real true mutual relationships? It's such a tough balance to strike.
I'll say the one meaningful change that had already begun prior to this but was certainly articulated or at least punctuated by this, was we have done away with what L'Arche traditionally called accompaniment or at least the way in which L'Arche has done accompaniment.
So when I first came to L'Arche, I was paired with someone who had a long relationship with the community, hadn't necessarily lived in the community before but the purpose of the relationship was support. A space outside of the community to go and to process the experiences within the community.
I, of course, had nothing but positive experiences of that. At least in my experience of that, we're not asking people who necessarily had the professional background to provide that. And so we had already started pivoting to finding resources and finding ways to fund resources that come with the professional training, the board certified practices. So therapists, counselors, spiritual directors who will come with the training and the ethics background that can minimize the chance of that kind of exploitation happening in that context. So that's the big primary change.
As a result of being a Medicaid provider, already have a very complex layered system of accountability that always can be fine tuned. And so the extra layer that we're creating at the national structural level is an augmentation to that. That will only just reinforce and strengthen what we're already doing on the ground well here.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. Next I'd like each of you to reflect on this at a more personal level. What has this information meant for you? How has it changed your spirituality, your sense of connection to L'Arche, and your understanding of the leadership that you exercise? Tim, would you like to start?
TIM MOORE: This is the one that gave me the most pause.
[LAUGHTER]
For me personally, I had to hold open the question of Jean's exploitative behavior potentially being symptomatic of a L'Arche disease within L'Arche spirituality. And so an image that has been helpful recently is of this big beautiful oak tree in our backyard. And in this tree lately there have been rather substantial branches that have just started dying and falling. And they're dying as a result of this bright orange fungus that's killing these branches. And so is the fungus localized to the branches?
Has it rotted the core, the trunk of the tree? Has it infiltrated the roots? These are all questions that really resonated for me as an image of how I was holding out L'Arche's spirituality.
And I want to be clear here, I'm not saying was there some larger conspiracy where other members of L'Arche leadership were committing similar behaviors. I'm not asking that. I'm asking that, if someone who was so central to articulating L'Arche spirituality was committing this atrocious behavior and somehow justifying it spiritually. What does that mean for our spirituality?
I had given myself over to Jean's teaching. I had read all the books, I have been on retreat with Jean, in fact, there are many people who are on several of those retreats here today in our participants, in our audience. And those were deeply formative experiences for me.
Having been raised in the Conservative Evangelical Church as a white male cisgendered head role. There was a certain worldview that I inherited that was very narrow. And within L'Arche, I found a home that opened me to difference. And this could be shattering from the source. If the source was distorted, what does that mean for everything else?
The mature position that Tina talked about earlier of holding the dark with the light. I wanted to say that in my head, I knew in my head knowledge that was eventually going to be true but in my heart there was too much of an experience of betrayal that I had to work through.
For me, it ultimately boils down to that there was a foundational insight about L'Arche's spirituality. And it comes to me from an actual conversation with Jean at the retreat. And I had asked him, what's the point of the gospel? Which is a really stupid question but nonetheless. And he said, the point of the gospel is to make known people's preciousness.
DAN McKANAN: Mm-hmm.
TIM MOORE: And I have carried that with me ever since. And I think and I believe that at its heart, L'Arche as a spiritual movement is about revealing through relationships of reverence and fidelity, the preciousness of all people. Whole communities are built on this premise. That we are able to make known to ourselves our preciousness. To encounter the preciousness of others in these beautiful relationships of care.
In short, I think that if you frame it as this is Jean's insight, maybe I still have some problems with that. But Jean discovered that with Rafael and Philippe and others who were at the founding of L'Arche. This wasn't just Jean's. This was an insight that was lived and was manifested around the world that we continue to give witness to day, by day, by day.
And so I think my answer at this point about, how do I lead in this moment? How has this changed me? I think it's only deepened my commitment to the importance of L'Arche. In a world where one of the dominant paradigms in public health is to put disability into a third category of non-human existence. You got zone A where people are alive, you've got zone B where people are dead, and then there's zone C, people with disabilities who are not quite alive and not quite dead. And the implications of that for a world with increasingly scarce resources, the message that you are precious, is just as important. It's vital.
And so I think I've had to go through an experience of clarifying of sorting the wheat from the chaff. And I think I've been given a lot of light as a result of it.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you so much. Tina, what about your personal experience?
TINA BOVERMAN: Well, I don't know if I want to say something after that. I just want to take in what Tim just shared. Well, firstly I'm a woman and a survivor of abuse myself, so it kicked up my story in ways that was not necessarily what I wanted to live. And also I didn't want to live within a professional context. So leading while also managing myself was certainly challenging. It was rewarding at the end. I think I grew with it, and I think to some extent the fact that I could relate to some of what had happened there on a very personal level helped me lead. But it was complicated.
And one lesson there is I think for me to never make assumptions anymore. I'd try to not make assumptions anymore on things that seem easy and OK. That might actually not be easy and OK for others. So there's something there around how we function in a professional context even in a context within the hour where we tend to be more personal than probably in some other organizations or the corporations. But I think is really valuable for me.
The second thing. So the first time I came into a L'Arche home, this was in Quebec City. I accompanied a friend who was going to become an assistant, I was a student at that point in Economics had nothing to do with L'Arche. And we were hesitant on this L'Arche thing which this is pre-internet, I'm giving my age away. Looks a bit like a Catholic sect, but we will try it. So we come up there with this beautiful welcome, all kinds of people step out on the porch and it's warm and it's heartfelt and it's joyful and it's really a sense of hospitality.
And we come into the living room, and there are plants, and their paintings, and there's one photo on the wall, Jean. Whom I didn't even know at that point who that was. Now meet a German you might have noticed in the South but I'm not an American Southerner. Meet German, all my resistances go up. Guru leader, one person movement.
I didn't know that at that point that I would have years and years ahead of me where I would spend hours and hours with Jean, probably once a month, talking about what we would say in German guard in the world. I used to do communications for L'Arche international and I'd just spend a lot of time with him, once a month, doing interviews but also just checking in. And we talked about this quite a lot.
And once I asked him, Jean, how does it feel like-- in my provocative early 20s self, Jean, how does it feel like to be a guru or be made a guru? And it was one of the rare times where I sensed that he was stepping out of this persona, but he had even in personal relationships where he was the one who tended, who saw you, who looked you straight in the eye, and his big body collapsed a little bit. And he didn't even say anything, it was his body answering.
So I carry that in me, as I think about what I have now learned about him. Because a lot of what I am thinking about and how I'm impacted has to do with leadership. Apart from the personal aspects of abuse and trauma and all of this, it's leadership, it's accountability, it's the place of power, not only institutional power but also individual personal authority in leadership. How did he carry that? How do I carry that? How do I carry me who speaks with assertiveness, myself in leadership when I know that I might be creating all dynamics that I really don't want to create? So I might come back to that.
But I'm very thoughtful about the leadership model that we have inherited from Jean and that we still practiced today. That relies heavily on charismatic leadership, on the power of the word, on personality and personal authority, on all these things that are intangible and that are beautiful that might be inspiring to people, and also that can have a really big underbelly.
So I wouldn't say that any of this has impacted my spirituality, maybe to the contrary, my belief in equality maybe has been reinforced, but it has impacted the way that I try to carry myself in this role and more. So I think that the way that I try to lead us towards a different leadership model and understanding of leadership.
DAN McKANAN: As you try to envision that different leadership model, are there lessons that you'd like to share with other spiritual or service movements whose founders have abused power or with other spiritual or service movements that are still in that early phase, where a charismatic founder has a great deal of influence?
TINA BOVERMAN: I'd be very hesitant to even presume or assume that we have lessons to share. I'll answer your question but I'm going to do a detour first here.
It was interesting to me to see how Jean was portrayed in the media and even in our own understanding, from the summer of 2019 when he died all the way to maybe a year later. When he died, he was portrayed as this person who was going to be named a saint. In February, so whatever, eight, nine months afterwards, he suddenly was this really ambiguous person who then when you look at the media how it was portrayed, how it evolved over the weeks and months afterwards until the pandemic took over, it became worse and worse, he was cut off the pedestal.
And what I noticed is, well, suddenly L'Arche was trying to be put on a pedestal. I got questions from journalists saying, well, L'Arche seems to have done this really well, you have something to teach the Catholic Church. L'Arche seems to have done the right thing. Similar question to the one that you just asked, what can you teach other organizations? I very strongly resist that. I do think we've done a lot of things right, I also think we have done many things wrong, but more so, I think there's really no lessons to give in any of this. Maybe somebody who's neutral can try to analyze best practices but it's not mine to do.
Now to answer your question. What I think was really essential-- and you don't choose this, is that Jean himself very early on, understood that for his "baby" for L'Arche to survive he needed to retreat. Now he never really fully retreated because he had charisma and authority, and people would just come to him and he'd answer and make decisions and suddenly we'd have to figure out what to do with that. But formally, he retreated from structures, from governance structures, from decision making structures, from leadership, like elected leadership within L'Arche.
And this so a decade, maybe even more 20 years ago. So there was time between the time when Jean stepped down from leadership and the time when this new leadership, this new generation had to pick up the pieces for us to actually exercise ourselves.
And I think that the authority of Stefon, the international leader, and hopefully also the ones who worked with him was established. And so we could make a decision to launch this inquiry, we could make a decision to say, we will publish this, regardless of what the fallout might be. If that had happened 20 years earlier, I think it would have been a much bigger threat to the unity of the federation.
So there's something to be said about the transition between the charismatic leader and founder and whoever follows, and I'm saying something that everybody knows, there's no news to this, but I think it's particularly relevant when the follow up leaders have to deal with something that's so disruptive.
For the second thing, I would say there is the group that had to hold this inquiry, which I'm a member of, had to learn to do that. It was pretty messy at times. And I have to give a lot of credit to my colleagues there for sticking in the mess, I mean, for just staying in it and walking through it despite that personal hurt, feelings, whatever everybody opinions that were all over the place. A pretty formative experience, I think of joined or scaled leadership for an organization that didn't really know how to do that before.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. One of the things that I really hear is that any organization with a charismatic founder faces two and potentially three transitions, the moment when administrative leadership passes away from that founder, the moment when that founder dies, and the moment when the community becomes aware of potentially deep flaws in the founder. And you had the burden of facing two of those transitions virtually at the same moment. But the gift of having successfully navigated the first of the three much earlier.
TINA BOVERMAN: I echo Tim. He said it much better than I did. Yes.
DAN McKANAN: Tim, would you like to add anything on messages you'd want to share with other spiritual or service movements?
TIM MOORE: I think Tina's humility is the right place to begin. Every circumstance is going to be different. I will say as a local leader of an international organization, I am so grateful for Tina and Stefan and the rest of the team, deciding to honor the stories of the women, and so I'd say that's justice, to be committed to sharing the results as they came transparent.
And then finally, the third ingredient I felt really grateful for was the humility to say, we don't know all the answers right now, we don't know what this means for us. I'm also really grateful for the manner in which there was a strategy to sharing the news. And by that I mean, Tina worked really hard with all of us, community leaders locally for about three or four months leading up to that February. And that was hard work to get us ready to be able to process this as the news came first but then also to be in a position to be able to narrate the story to our local audiences. There was a lot of gifts that were given in that.
I will say that when we did release the news locally, the responses that we got fall into almost unanimously the same response. Which was, this is horrible, we still support you because your mission is important. And that was the pattern, response, after response, after response. And I think that starts with decisions that were made by this team at L'Arche international.
DAN McKANAN: Why does this matter for the L'Arche narrative of humanity? Why is it important for spiritual or service movements to address instances or abuse that took place in the past? Tina you could start, if you would.
TINA BOVERMAN: Gosh, Dan, that's a big question. I can give elements of an answer, things that are floating around. I have no pretense that this is going to be cohesive and coherent in any way nicely wrapped up with a bow.
One of the things that has come up, and as Tim said, this is after the inquiry, after the pandemic, and so forth, is the notion of language. At least our religion, Christianity is in many ways very intellectual based on the word. And we have noticed that L'Arche carries language that actually was inspired by Jean the founder, and I could use "chromosphere", for the "vulnerable", "the poor." "Notions of the body."
So we use language that is informed by religion and by a whole concept, a whole system of theology of values. And I think we use it sometimes blindly without actually understanding what this might mean. And for me that's one-- I'm speaking of intellectually as the content that I'm giving you here, but that's one learning out of this is that, if as a society, if as humanity we want to become more respectful, we want to be able to see the "preciousness" as Tim said, in each other, then we need to be able to communicate in ways that is actually appropriate. And we have learned that often at L'Arche, we don't do that well. And I think there's a real lesson that goes way beyond L'Arche out of this.
The second point that I think is particularly relevant for communities that have a faith aspect, any organization that's based on spirituality, and I would think this is true for L'Arche as well, is that often we seem to understand ourselves as if we have the right to speak out of a moral high tower.
L'Arche was founded in dichotomy to the institutions which were all bad at that point, and L'Arche was really good. We really had it together, we knew how to do this. We can give care and at the same time we can create these beautiful relationships. So there is something there that's very heavy on that we do this.
And I wouldn't say that there is a lack in humility there but there's certainly a lack in accountability as understood as support. And the world of faith, the nonprofit world, I think lacks a bit of that at times.
And through this inquiry, I think we're called to understand accountability differently. And again, it's a dry term, but it means something in human relationships. We're accountable to one another, we're accountable to our mission, we are accountable to the greater or good, how do we understand that how do we exercise that?
I said early on, that's how I started, how do we make voices heard that other ways are not heard. I think that's the biggest lesson out of this. And I have no pretense, we're doing as well or well enough but at least we are trying and certainly there's a call here to figure out how we can create spaces where those who are not the loud speakers, not the white well-articulated, mainstream folks in our midst, how they speak, that's fine but how do we let others speak and create spaces there? I think that is a big lesson for any country, any society. And I probably many others, but as I said, I'm going to give you a little cluster here. Maybe, Tim has something coherent.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. Tim.
TIM MOORE: I don't have much to add other than just to say, this matters because it keeps happening. And it's traumatizing, not just for the individuals who were the direct victims of this, but it's traumatizing to the movements. And it requires authentic justice that-- a process that will lead to healing. And if I want to be a part of L'Arche that is going to be a source of any kind of good in the world, then we have to go through the process of wrestling with our shadow, and how we've harmed individuals.
I aspired to be a leader that can minimize harm. And this is one of the ways that you do that.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. OK. And thank you to all of you in the audience who are starting to give us your questions. We're going to start with this one. Could you share about the accessibility of the resources you used and created during the investigation? Were you orienting to make sure that whatever you did was fully accessible to the disabled residents of L'Arche?
TIM MOORE: Tina, I'm going to let you start, if that's OK.
TINA BOVERMAN: So yes, we did know obviously that whatever we brought out would need to be accessible or made accessible. So there's somebody on the international level who tried to translate the report in easy read language, pictures or pictograms.
Now that said, in many cases, those tools only work when they are being used locally in the relational context. Otherwise, it's just a piece of paper. So I let Tim speak to that part. And I think that's actually the most important part
TIM MOORE: Yeah, I'll say that in my experience, which is limited, I've not been to about a handful of L'Arche communities. But the commitment to ongoing real relationships with individuals, with disabilities, results in adaptive imagination that's ongoing and evolving. And I have witnessed over and over the usage of a tool that was used for this individual really differently than for this individual over here. And the knowledge of how to do that came about because of this relationship.
And so yes, we were given resources, but I think the work of relationship building, which any relationship has to involve communication, even with someone who doesn't use words to communicate. There is a give and a take, there's a back and forth that happens, and that's mediated through a relationship. And I think that part is the most essential.
Now, do we have work to do to become more professional in the ways that we design accessible tools? Sure. But I think that we're doing some good things when it comes to the relationship side of things.
In our community, there was not an experience among our core members where they felt like they didn't have the knowledge that they needed to process this.
TINA BOVERMAN: So if I may then just to add here, there were pockets in the federation that questioned whether core members should actually be made aware of this. Now I sure hope that at this point we have given them the credit that they deserve, which is these folks are human beings who can handle a life and all aspects of life. But that question itself is an interesting one, of course. What do you give out and not? Do you hide or not? Do you trust the news can be processed?
DAN McKANAN: Yeah. We also have a more specific question about the approaches used to communicate the report to those L'Arche members who did not use language to communicate or who are nonverbal. And I guess, I would add to this, what message do you use to communicate, safeguarding practices to those members of the community?
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah. So on the second part of the question, we are trying to figure this out yet. What I can say about the inquiry, in the US, what we've tried to do is to adapt what the center for courage and renewal has developed as touchstones to build a circle of trust.
So nationally we have no-- what Tim just described is, of course, very true, every individual within the relationship has a different reaction and has different needs. But we have tried to try to do is give our assistance, our leaders a methodology to create a space. And the space then would have to be appropriate for whoever is in that space, and that might look very different in this or in that group.
And that methodology, it can be a quiet conversation. It can use photos, it can use art. So there's all kinds of expressions that fit into this what the center for courage calls the circle of trust.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. We have a question from Jennifer McCauley who is asking about the relationship between the L'Arche experience and broader patterns of abuse within Catholic and other Christian communities, when the abuse is hidden, justified, denied, et cetera. Is it possible to hope for accountability and justice?
TIM MOORE: I can't speak to this as a non-catholic, it would be disingenuous to say anything in response. I'll just say that I hope for what you hope for as well.
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah. I don't think I have anything to add. I mean, we see what's happening in various dioceses, a couple of weeks ago in France as this big report came out. Yeah, good question.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. The next question is from Chris Bemrose who asks, in what ways the inquiry was eased or complicated by the fact that Jean had already died when it started? How might the process have been different if he'd still been living?
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah. Chris, different. That's a good question and it's a complicated one. Of course, as you can imagine the international leadership team held that question when we were first discussing to launch or not launch the inquiry. Jean was actually not yet died, he was still alive but he was already in the hospital in palliative care.
I don't know. I can't answer the hypothetical question. I can't tell you what we were trying to weigh, which is we of course, didn't want to appear as the ones who killed the guy. This is flippant language here. But we didn't want to appear neither as an organization that waited for his death in order to then launch an inquiry.
I mean, you said it really well then, these two movements of the founder's death plus then the unpacking of the founders gaps and shadow sides, happened at the same time, and it was an awful space to be in. And as Tim has said before, I have no idea whether we did this right or wrong, we discussed it a lot, we brought our hands and brains and souls in various meetings. And that the best we could, hopefully, it honors the truth in a way that respects Jean as a person and that certainly respects these women.
Would it have been different? Probably, yes. Now that said, also Jean had the possibility since 2016 to-- well, 2015 actually to speak to this. It's not like he didn't have the possibility before his death do some coming out and cleansing, if he had chosen to do that.
So I don't know. There are lots of ifs in this, and hypothetically ifs, I don't think I can answer, but the question is a good one, and obviously, it's one that we carried pretty heavily in the process.
DAN McKANAN: The next question comes from Elizabeth Sanders who addresses it to Tim. Thank you for sharing how much you wrestle with whether the rot visible in one part of a life puts the entire spiritual organism at risk. Have you had conversations with fellow community members about how they wrestle with this phenomenon? And what impact it has on their spiritual integrity and self-understanding? Have you witnessed different journeys from your own and how have people reconciled that new spiritual self-understanding with their relationship to the community?
TIM MOORE: Elizabeth, I'm going to disappoint you and say that I've only had informal conversations with individual members. The triple whammy, as Tina described it earlier, meant that our community conversations were focused primarily in other directions. That said, the way you phrased this question, I'm halfway tempted to ask to see if you might want to come help us do that conversation. Beautiful entry points in the way that you asked the questions.
In my one on one conversations, the pattern has been pretty consistently a similar move of understanding that what Jean did was, of course, atrocious and wrong, and in moving to being able to separate what was good and still claim having benefited from the gift that is L'Arche in the world, as the result of this man.
That said, I'm holding out the possibility-- you can never know fully, but I think that there will be some members that are going to be resistant to that in our community, I'm really curious to see how those conversations go at the community level.
I'm also curious how to have this conversation among our core members. There's a part of me that thinks they don't care. But I don't want that to be the starting point. I know that there are several core members who have told me, they're ready to move on. And this is not a part of their conversation.
It also begs a question about on-boarding. We're about to open a new house, how do we tell this story from a foundational standpoint? What are their voices in this experience? Again, open questions, and I don't know.
DAN McKANAN: Question from Vincent Reynolds, who just asks about particular structures that intentional communities can use to prevent people in leadership from abusing trust.
TINA BOVERMAN: I echo Tim here. That's a question is really well articulated because you say abusing trust. And it's true that the leadership structure in many international communities certainly in the L'Arche structure relies heavily on trust, the leader is entrusted to lead us through what we call discernment processes.
Again, I don't know if I have a good answer to this but I would hope that as a movement, and I can only answer for L'Arche here, that as a movement we can call ourselves to seeing the qualities of a leader as enough for that leader to exist. And what I mean by that is that often in L'Arche we have this notion of a five star system, and this is my own personal language, around the person that in perception has maybe emulated what Jean has said all along. Somebody has devoted their life to L'Arche, somebody who has maybe been a live in assistant for many years of their life, maybe somebody who is celibate or not, certainly somebody of deep faith.
Now these are all wonderful human characteristics, but are these the characteristics that implicitly we want to project on a leader in order to give that leader legitimacy? I don't know whether that's right. Is that why we trust a leader? Because somehow, that leader fits the mold of a traditional leadership that we have somehow in our DNA, might not even be cognizant of that.
So can we move as an organization, as a movement towards an understanding of leadership that has more explicit qualities, and that can still function within the context of highly relational organization where trust is really important?
So that's precisely, the question that I will ask my leaders in the next couple of months, next year, as we try to figure out what kind of leadership model we want to land in.
DAN McKANAN: This actually connects to something I was wondering about in relation to Tim's comment, that the Atlantic community or maybe you meant all of L'Arche USA, had let go of the practice of accompaniment until you could find a way to ensure that the accompanying errors would be fully trained for that role. And I had a little bit of a jolt at that, because that feels like a spiritual practice that's important not only in L'Arche but in many communities. And in many communities a sense of equality between those who accompany and those who are accompanied, may be intrinsic to the practice.
So I'm wondering about how you ensure greater accountability without creating structures of professionalization that wind up being hierarchical and recreating the problem you're trying to solve.
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah. That's an interesting comment. So on the first part, I actually know that Tim had made that decision in Atlanta. So this is not true for the whole of the US so I'm going to call Tim afterwards to learn more about the why and how of that decision.
What I can say around the company meant that we certainly are trying to create much greater guardrails within any company that doesn't have a professional background. And also-- and this might more have to do with the "times" there's a call to more mentorship, which is a slightly different concept than a company image.
So that set aside, you just talked about hierarchy. I believe then that we actually have fairly hierarchical organization. So I would hope that in questioning this model of charismatic leadership, and again, I'm not against charisma or people who have the capacity to inspire, but I would hope that if we understand leadership it's something that has-- or if we understand the qualities of leadership differently than we might have in the past, that we become a more force to a more effective, but secondly, also more nuanced, the more, I don't say egalitarian but more accessible organization to leadership, which today I think we are not.
So again, call me again in a year, maybe we come even more hierarchical, but I would hope we don't. Now also I'm speaking as a German in the context of a country that highly values the notion of leadership, in about every conversation the word leader translates in German to fuhrer. So I might have somewhat different connotations to this notion of leadership than you Americans have.
But as I understand leadership, the concept of leadership in the US, it's very much a sense of what's your intrinsic leadership? What's the leadership of a person with a disability at the dinner table? What's the leadership of a new assistant versus the more senior assistant? So in that sense, I think there's no danger for us to become more hierarchical than we already are. But again, call me out on that.
TIM MOORE: And if I may, Dan, your point's well taken. I too see in other areas of our community life how the professionalization of say, caregiving can water down, again, the rich experience of community building and relationship building.
Honestly, the accompaniment structure that we had wasn't serving our needs, it just wasn't. From people didn't really know what it was, the people we asked to be a company us felt that they lacked any real experience that could ground them, they felt a little bit aimless, and so we decided as a result of that experience to pivot towards, well, here are some resources to go seek a counselor or a spiritual director. And then when the inquiry news came out, it very much punctuate. And this is another reason why we want to go in that direction.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. We have a question, a two part question from someone who did not give their name. They thank you for sharing your perspectives with humility. They ask for more details about the Bangladesh project, I'm not quite sure what they're referring to. And then a suggestion to not use the word voiceless since the people involved are not voiceless but have been silenced.
TINA BOVERMAN: Yeah. Excellent point on that last one that's totally true. I'm not sure what the Bangladesh question is. There is a community in Bangladesh, I don't think we want to get into the details of that community at this point. I'm not exactly sure with them.
DAN McKANAN: Yeah. I'm wondering if this questioner may have come in a few minutes late after the narrative I gave at the beginning, recounting the specific practices of abuse that Jean Vanier perpetrated. Because we had that as a foundation, so if you came in a few minutes late, apologies, it may have been a little bit unclear what we were referring to but it was for the benefit of all who came late.
The crux of it was, sexual exploitation of adult women in the context of spiritual direction. And then L'Arche's this process of becoming aware that Jean Vanier found to had done this and coming to terms with that.
This question from Greg Brown is thinking of Henri Nouwen, and his personal identity, which many of his readers would not have accepted, along with a voice, is there a gift of allowing members to keep silent? I think he means silent about particular aspects of one's identity or experience.
TINA BOVERMAN: Tim, you might have something to say about this. I would be very brief on this, the whole point is to give members and anybody the choice to show up in various aspects of their identity or not. It is about the choice and the safe space to be that person, it is not about being silent or being more outspoken than others. We as staff, I think have spilled some lessons to learn their.
TIM MOORE: The only thing I would add is just that honoring the agency of the storyteller, in this case, there were women who wanted their stories to be heard and known and had tried for however long, and it was very clear, this is what they wanted. And Henri, maybe made the choice not to share, maybe he did but yeah, the question to me is the agency of the storyteller in honoring their intentions.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. We have a question from Jim Corrigan, specifically for Tina to say a little bit more about the messiness in the inquiry steering group. Can you say more about the particular issues, the group wrestled with and the strategies you use to process those?
TINA BOVERMAN: Well, yeah. I don't know if we were particularly strategic, we just wrestled it out. Yeah, I mean, there's personalities, and there's people who come with their personal story, their own sense of trauma, their own sense of healing, those own sense of right and wrong, their own comfort level with questions of sexuality and abuse that are highly uncomfortable in various cultural contexts. We're human beings, it was not always smooth. We don't just sit there and function with our heads. So there's that--
I think the part that is probably most worthwhile mentioning is that between the French speakers or the French culture, which of course, L'Arche was founded in, and the Anglo-Saxons, there is this disregards, the many other cultures of the federation in the world but between those two poles, which are most prominent within the federation. There are nuances and how we understand gender and abuse and power, and more so, how we deal with that, how we understand questions of intimacy, how we-- I mean, look at politicians and scandals that come up in France and in the US or in Canada or in the UK, and they are dealt with very differently.
And so it's our personal and cultural background that informs how we show up as leaders and as participants at the table as we try to come to decisions. And the interests are different of our people we are representing. Folks who have different relationships, not only to Jean as person, but also to the founding story. So some folks needed more information sooner others didn't want to do that. I mean, it's just a messy business to negotiate that. And by messy, I mean, it's hard, it's heavy. So kudos to the group for hanging in there.
DAN McKANAN: Thank you. We are at our stated end time and we have just one question remaining in the Q&A. So I'm going to read it but not ask you to respond directly. And that comes from Paul Betts who writes, is part of our spiritual response a humble recognition, that it is true that the best of people are people at best, and this applies especially to founding pioneers of faith based communities and movements. Therefore, the lesson is a warning against idolizing people in the past while allowing authentic, transparent reflection like today to shape a healthier better future. And thank you Paul for that mirroring of what indeed we have been trying to do today.
So with that, I would like to thank Tina and Tim for joining us today. Thank as always Natalia, for her strong leadership of this colloquium series. And thank you to all 100 of you who joined us today.
If you've not already done so, we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter for information on future events, both upcoming virtual colloquium and our inaugural hybrid conference on ecological spiritualities in April of 2022. And you can find much more information about all of that on our website.
Thank you all again, so very much. And I wish you health safety in the days ahead. Goodbye
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SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2021, President and fellows of Harvard College.