JUDY VALENTE: These are the people Jean Vanier calls his friends. People he describes as "pushed aside, with broken hearts." People, he says, who have "transformed" him.JEAN VANIER (Founder, L' Arche): My life is to live with them -- to be with those who are fragile, vulnerable and weak. I'm not sure that we can really understand the message of Jesus if we haven't listened to the weak.
JEAN WILSON (Core Member, L' Arche House): He's my one man and my one man only -- I love this man.VALENTE: Those who came to greet him included the residents and staff of the L' Arche house he helped establish in Chicago. The mentally challenged here are called "core members" because they represent the "core," or heart, of L' Arche.
Mr. VANIER (at microphone with Elbert Lott): We're different. We have different backgrounds. But we're together.VALENTE: Vanier introduces core member Elbert Lott, who has a mild mental disability.
ELBERT LOTT (Core Member, L' Arche House, at microphone): I had a hard time. Rough times. Barefoot boy, down south. My father be mean to me.
Mr. VANIER (quoting Mr. Lott): "My dad was mean to me.''
Mr. LOTT: He was.
Mr. VANIER: (to Mr. Lott) Because Dad wanted a son who could maybe do big things, and he looked down upon you.
Mr. LOTT: He did.
Mr. VANIER: He was mean to you.
Mr. LOTT: He was. Well, all that now behind me now. Here I am, famous.
VALENTE: Jean Vanier talks about the loneliness of people who are different -- how they can feel unwanted, unloved, and therefore unlovable. But, he says, the weak and wounded have a "secret power" to touch us. And that by opening our hearts to them, we become more human.
Mr. VANIER: We become more human with two realities. One, as we discover that we are able to love people -- and when I say love people, it means to see their value and their beauty -- and that we can love people who have been pushed aside, humiliated, seen as having no value. And then we see that they are changed. And at the same time, we discover that we too are broken, that we have our handicaps. And our handicaps are around about elitism, about power, around feeling that value is just to have power.
VALENTE: Before coming to L' Arche, these people were in institutions, or on the streets, or in families that couldn't care for them or didn't want to.
Mr. VANIER: The question is not just believing in God, but believing in human people, believing in ourselves, believing in ourselves as children of God and that we are called to see people as God sees them, not as we would like them to be.VALENTE: The son of a French-Canadian diplomat, Vanier served in the British Royal Navy during World War II, then he taught philosophy in France. He has never married. For a time, he considered the priesthood. But in 1964, he found his calling, opening the first L' Arche home in a small village south of Paris.
LINNEA FIELDS (House Coordinator, L' Arche House, to Chris Abri): And where are these mugs going? CHRIS ABRI (Core Member, L' Arche House): Jean Vanier!
Ms. FIELDS: Jean Vanier!
VALENTE: The Chicago L' Arche community owns a home on the city's west side. The core members, with the help of the assistants who live with them, have prepared gift packages to distribute during Vanier's visit to the city. Some have met Vanier during his previous travels.
VALENTE (to Ms. Msall): What's he like?
CHRISTIANNE MSALL (Core Member, L' Arche House): He's a wonderful man.
VALENTE (to Mr. Lott): What did you talk about?
Mr. LOTT: Well, he say -- I say, "He 'da man." And he say, "No, I was the man."
VALENTE (to Ms. Wilson): What will you say to him when he comes?
Ms. WILSON: Come on in, we'll give you something to eat and drink.
Ms. FIELDS: I think the prayer time is what sets us apart. That's what drew me to L' Arche, the spirituality.
Mr. VANIER: Prayer is a sort of opening of a door to something, which gives meaning to all the pain of the finite. And yet it's something we can just rest in. I think fundamentally, prayer is to rest.
Mr. VANIER: Ah. To die quietly.
