By: Candace Attwood
Candace Attwood (known by some as “College”) was a L’Arche Assistant for almost four years and now works building trails in the California Conservation Corps. Those of us who worked with her remember her for her improbable pranks on April Fool’s Day, her game nights that brought us together, and her indescribable wit that is just so “Candace.”
“Whenever people ask me lately about what animal I would be, I like to say a phoenix. As many people who’ve read the Harry Potter books know, phoenixes are mythical birds that have healing tears, can bear many times their own weight, and are reborn from their own ashes when they die. I like to think that my own life has gone through the lifetime pattern of a phoenix, that when part of us moves on, changes, or even dies, a new life begins from those ashes, from what is left.
When I came to L’Arche in the fall of 2011, I was fresh out of college. It was a new time for me. I’d been in school my entire life before then, and life would bring many new adventures, changes, and challenges. There were no more finals weeks, but I’d be learning some people’s very particular, and very detailed, life rhythms and routines. There were no more dorms, but I lived in a house, as part of an overall community, with a bunch of super awesome folks. There was no more cafeteria food, but we had some quite fun and interesting mealtimes with each other, not to mention many parties and community nights. Part of me felt like I was looking at parts of the world for the first time.
I learned to drive in L’Arche, I talked on the phone more times than I ever had before, and I actually felt like I was making true friends, the kind you knew and felt would be there in the long run. I appreciated others, embracing all their quirks and uniqueness, just like they valued mine. It was new, and then eventually became comfortable and familiar. It became a true home. It still has the feeling of home in my heart.
Lately I’ve been thinking of the pillars of L’Arche spirituality as something that changes as time goes by, wherever you are in life. Some pillars are more vital, supporting structures, and others are more peripheral, semi-supporting beams. Sometimes it has the shape of a tent (like my life for most of the past year), or the shape of a house, where someone could stay awhile. Then beams and supporting structures have to be replaced, or sometimes people do some remodeling, or start over completely. Wherever you are, or wherever you live, the basic building principles, and the pillars of L’Arche spirituality, stay much the same. It was like that after Pat died, and we had a big community shift. It was like that after many people in the community left in a relatively short time span this past year. It continues to change, as people come and people go, and as different times and circumstances require.
L’Arche is where I learned not to stigmatize, or idealize, but to realize the humanity of each individual person as they are. I had to learn to heal others, and myself, with tears, to carry much more than my own weight, and to be reborn from those ashes again, in order to rebuild my own life with those same pillars of L’Arche spirituality. And as time and circumstances will keep requiring, as I have to keep adjusting and adapting throughout my one wild and precious life, I’ll have to keep doing so again, and again. And there goes the upward, and downward, and sideways spiraling of the Fibonacci sequence of life. At least part of it, anyhow.”
