My placement with the London Jesuit Volunteers (LJV) took me to The Dove — one of five L’Arche community houses in the Lambeth borough of the capital. L’Arche is an international community where people with and without learning disabilities live and work together. The Dove is home to Andrew, Caroline, Betty and Keith and the multinational team of assistants who live with them. Some volunteers come to work in the community workshops or the office. Others, like myself, become friends to a particular house family — hopefully to develop a long term relationship and provide some continuity as assistants complete their period of service and move on.

The LJV programme came along at a critical moment for me. I was feeling increasing discomfort at that gap between the faith I profess in church, and what happens in the rest of my daily life. I also felt that over the years my home and working lives had become much less aspirational than they were in my 20s, and that I had little or no contact with the people who are marginalised by our society. I knew I needed to do something about this, but it was only when LJV provided the support — in the form of companionship with other volunteers, and a commitment to regular, guided prayer and reflection — that I could sense how it might be possible to get started.

In January 2007, at the outset of the LJV pilot season, we stated our placement preferences, however, with the encouragement to be open to use our skills where they may best serve the greatest needs. I had indicated an interest in L’Arche and was both excited and daunted when the placement was confirmed. The arrangement was simply that I would go for dinner at The Dove weekly, on Friday evenings, and gradually get to know the community there. When I arrived on my first visit at the end of March, I found the house in the throes of major building work (including an unnaturally white cat who turned out to be a very black cat covered in builder’s dust!). Andrew would be arriving in June — a young man who had been in an institution since early childhood, and was very severely disabled. The ground floor was being rebuilt to accommodate him — and the community were getting ready to receive him, with great care and excitement.

On that first visit I met the three other permanent residents — Caroline, who talks a lot, and Betty and Keith who say very little but nevertheless communicate very effectively — and four of the assistants — Marcela (from the Czech Republic) and Eileen (from Germany), who are special needs teachers; Mary (from Poland) who plans to train as a music therapist and Helen (from Northumberland) who hopes to be an audiologist. Together before dinner, we lit a candle and sat in a circle — and Betty chose a picture (the healing of a sick woman) from a book of drawings of the life of Jesus, which we took turns to look at and comment on. We thought together of the people we wanted to pray for, we said and signed the Our Father, and sang the L’Arche prayer: “Oh Lord, through the hands of your little ones bless us. Through the eyes of those who are rejected smile on us”.

Dinner followed — with a decidedly celebratory “bring on the weekend!” feel to it — and I have since discovered that L’Arche is really good at parties and celebrations of all kinds. ... The challenge turned out to be that I was not being asked to do anything, but just to be there (and to find ways of communicating without words). This was really difficult after a lifetime of targets, objectives, “get in there and sort it”, “just do it” and the like. I felt pretty exposed, and I know I have a long way to go to grow into this role. This was something I took back to my LJV peer reflection group, which met monthly. From the start I found the commitment of other LJV volunteers inspiring, and the sharing of anxieties and difficulties — as well as the moments when we make connections between the volunteering and other parts of our lives - fed our prayer life as a group.

In July 2007, as our pilot period drew to its close, I realised I was committed now to L’Arche, and wanted to continue. This in spite of feeling I was “outside my comfort zone” — and also that I had not been entirely successful at regular practice of journaling or the examen. As we read back St Teresa’s prayer “Christ has no body now but yours...” I was struck by how this applied to both the person caring and the person cared for — and how in fact we find ourselves in both roles. And certainly I have learnt that the poor teach us about our own poverty.

This article originally appeared in “Jesuits and Friends” magazine. The names of residents at The Dove have been changed out of respect for their privacy.