Prioritizing Presence at L'Arche Portland: A Slow (Micro)Brewing Process
By Regina Maimone, Former Assistant
I remember those first impressions of L'Arche Portland that encouraged me to say yes to committing a year to life in community there (that turned into 3.5 years). Mind you, I had spent the last several years of my life volunteering both abroad and domestically and not staying in one place for longer than a couple of months at a time; I had even transferred to a college with a "low-residency" program so that I'd have all the greater freedom to travel. I remember sitting across from Andy Noethe at Bipartisan, as we processed my discernment visit to the community over coffee, and he eventually asked: "so, do you feel that you can commit to a year with openness to more?" I said that yes, I could, and yet I distinctly remember thinking in my head at the time “but I won't make it to a year.” (Sorry, Andy!) I had good intentions, though; I sincerely meant to try.
My visit had been in December of 2016, and I found myself thrown into a haphazardly, beautifully balanced mix of a 'schedule' of this sort:
Wednesday
9am paperwork and team check-ins at NK
10:30am formation at Nehalem House
12pm lunch at Neahkahnie with Rodney
4pm downtime with the house before dinner
5:30pm dinner at Nehalem (little did I expect that the primary purpose of this visit would be for Marilyn to screen me and provide more immediate--if shadier--background check results than the county had)
Thursday
9am house meeting at NK
11:30am Big Meeting at NH
Friday
3pm afternoon pizza making at NK with Ben and Robyn for community pizza night at 5:30pm Saturday
1pm house outing to the Christmas tree lot to pick out a tree together
I remember the house rhythm at Neahkahnie House (NK), too. Coming downstairs around 8:45am or so on Wednesday, rounding the corner only to be loudly greeted with "ha,” then "who-do, come here who-do" and to see Rodney gesturing to me from where he sat facing me on the opposite side of the table, paintbrush in (gloved) hand, and the famous "Wayne Forrest" sitting beside him, drinking coffee; I think it was a bullet coffee that Wayne had brought with him in a Hydro Flask on his self-constructed bicycle. That, incidentally, was the first moment in which I found myself realizing “I'm in Portland, now;” the second time it hit me was while sitting in the 8th consecutive staff meeting in my first two months in which Nehalem House (NH) included "chicken coop" as a meeting agenda item.
During the next 10 minutes, the rest of the crew arrived: Meredith bustling in energetically and ready for anything despite a long commute involving multiple buses, Ilana descending the staircase with an her easy-going, no-nonsense air, Robin striding comfortably through the house with his characteristic lack of hurry about him (which he would later be known to maintain even throughout a game of Dutch Blitz) up to the coffee maker, and James biking into the backyard and strolling inside with a whistle. James apparently was a craft coffee connoisseur who would correct me in my coffee making process by advising me to use a scale in order to precisely measure the coffee grounds and to be sure that the water wasn't quite boiling but slightly under-boiled; although, we also had a good-humored back and forth struggle because he often (even if unintentionally) disturbed my coffee-making by pouring too much water at once into my French press batch (which I had intentionally left to steep) and disrupting the steps of my process…("ah, community!"--as Hannah might have concluded). After some paperwork time, we’d load up (bringing our coffee along) into the house van and head over to Nehalem. Rodney the painter would continue working away at his task at the house, though--unless the mood struck him to head "downtown,” that is.
Throughout my time at L'Arche, I would be referred to by many nicknames other than those endearments (or sometimes not-so-endearing ones) of Rodney's. Perhaps it was L'Arche's first lesson in flexibility to keep me on my toes as I was referred to by Marilyn as "Virginia,” by most core members (and later other community members following in their lead) as "Gina,” “Energina” by Franz, and it would be remiss not to note here that there were times when "speedy Gina" came up, too. The excuse I usually give for myself is that I still had too much of the east coaster in me and the sense of hurried, efficiency-driven, task-orientation was all a part of that cultural imprint. (My inner east coaster also manifests itself as pointless but incorrigible road rage and occasional tail-gating, if I'm completely honest).
Community members might playfully inquire whether or not my coffee consumption had anything to do with my pace of life, and there were probably "[coffee] grains of truth" in both explanations, especially since my family atmosphere of native New Yorkers was one that did often revolve around the coffee pot. Sometimes, even Rodney would suddenly call me out publicly by yelling across the house: "that one, drinkin' coffee everyday, 'eryday!!!" At one point I made the mistake of telling my team members that, when I was in high school and college, I drank hot coffee through a straw (please forgive my young and ignorant self, sea turtles), and they would often tease me (thanks, Jeremy) that this "explained a lot" about my personality style...which now makes me wonder what it might have revealed about Marilyn's personality that she consistently chugged her coffee in one or two quick gulps!
It has been noted in L’Arche literature that community members have the essential task of holding up mirrors for one another in order to reflect not only strengths but growth areas, too. Ben at NK was one of my most reliable community mirror-holder-uppers who, fortunately for myself, usually did so in a patient and gracious way. "Slow down, okay, okay? Slow down,” he'd say, at first sternly, then with a forgiving chuckle. There were certainly many times when I witnessed reactions that weren't as lighthearted, though: Rodney becoming increasingly angry if he couldn't quite catch onto my characteristically quick speaking, Ben taken aback and driving away (disappointed) when I was rushing through our communication in order to finish a given task and had misunderstood what he was trying to tell me, Robyn supplying me with vague, automatic replies before admitting she needed me to repeat what I had said...and the list goes on.
One particularly memorable moment occurred when I was training a new assistant on some things related to checking in meds and looked up at her for the first time in minutes of profuse explanations to see her eyes full of tears and overwhelm and information-overload. I paused, and apologized, and asked her if she wanted to take a break and get some air (to which she, emphatically, answered: yes), while I also invited myself to do some deep breathing and my own re-setting. Eventually--to her credit--we were able to resume, each one a little more present than before and each one now a bit more practiced in the L'Arche survival skills of self-care and resets, and when we were finished with that task, our bond and mutual understanding was slightly deeper than before.
Herein lies one of the paradoxes I noticed in community and an example of a case of the infamous "L'Arche whiplash” experienced during that delicate balancing act of task and relationships. Sometimes you need task-based lack-of-presence in order to discover real presence and attunement, the kind slowly developed through shared experiences in community and patient relationship-building (including all of its many trials and errors and forgiving of oneself and of others). The irony is that it doesn't seem to me that you can have one without the other; we need the challenge of shared tasks in order to develop deep bonds, and we need deep bonds in order to tackle difficult tasks.
Ben comes to mind for me, again, because he was the best trainer I had in developing this balance of presence at L'Arche. What can often be a source of frustration for those hoping to support him is also one of his gifts to others; he point-blank refuses to collaborate with others on tasks if they forget to begin first from a place of authentic attunement (although exceptions to this rule might possibly be made for the task of cookie-baking). I believe that one of the reasons Ben and I did naturally develop as strong of a community bond of friendship and comradery as we did is that we both have a keen innate sensitivity to authenticity and an intense perceptiveness of the lack of it that drives a lot of our relationship-building and trust-building with others.
At the end of the day, it was moments and people like these that rooted me and grounded me and kept me around for so long. Since opportunities for growth within an authentic community had been priorities for me at that transitional time in my life in 2016, I was most impressed by L’Arche Portland’s genuine, lived efforts to lean into these spiritual pillars. How else can I sum up my experience of tapping into presence at L'Arche Portland than to say that, for me, it was a *ahem*: slow-brew on a micro scale. [Insert well-deserved teasing from Jeremy and Robin, here, in retaliation for all the times I reprehended them for their cringe-worthy puns].
