Monday 4 February 2013

The Call of Faith and Light



"I have neither silver nor gold but I will give you what I have
..."(Acts 3:6). In Faith and Light we cannot offer food, clothing,
money, courses, etc. But we can offer life! To be a friend is to offer
life to another. It is to draw a person out of their pain and loneliness
into the sunlight of relationship. That is the simple message of Faith
and Light: to offer friendship and so to give life.

We may be able to offer other things - food, clothes or wheelchairs
sometimes - But these are not essential to Faith and Light. We hope
people will not come to us because of what we have to give but we hope they will come because of who we are.

We, the friends, have a task. And our task is to set up the 'structure'
where those who are wounded can breathe and live. If you want to live
you have to have a house. Our 'house' is the meeting that we faithfully
arrange, with great care to detail, every month.

Let us be faithful, absolutely faithful, to the monthly meeting. The
people with disabilities rely on us, look to us, expect something from
us like the cripple did in Acts 3:2. Let us not fail them. Let us share
what we have. Let us share ourselves with them. 

Written by Fr David Harold Barry SJ
Chaplain: Capricorn Province 

St St Monica Community Faith and Light Christmas Party



Over 35 community members came together at the St Monica Parish Church in Chitungwiza on the 29th of December 2012 to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. The community members from St Monica put aside all the commitments they had as individuals and they collectively organized a warm experience for the people living with intellectual handicaps, their families and friends.  The party which started at 1000hrs in the morning and lasted throughout the afternoon, was enveloped in songs, testimonies, laughter, sharings and generally words of encouragement to family members and friends who labour each and every day to find the hidden treasures and gifts in people with intellectual disabilities. 

On this occasion, Fr David Harold Barry SJ expressed his gratitude to the community members for being united and steadfast in upholding the call of faith and light. He began his sharing by reminding them that   in November, the community members showed the same love and commitment by coming together to welcome Ghislain the International Coordinator of Faith and Light.  Fr David went on to talk about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and the pain that surrounded his birth for his family and the community. King Herod at that time ordered all the male children to be killed in an effort to take the life of our Lord. He related that experience to the pain which children are facing in our contemporary world and most importantly those with intellectual disabilities. He called on the community members to continue on their efforts to bring and uphold love and joy in their community. Fr David gave special thanks to the community for making the day possible particularly Mrs. Mutara (Chairperson), Lenard Chipeperengo (Secretary) and Mary who was instrumental in funding the party through the contributions she got from her workmates.

Time Baluwa implored the community to encourage young people to participate and find value in Faith and Light. He applauded the commitment the members have in the works of Faith and Light but reminded them that this heritage should be passed on to the young generation. Time shared his own experience when he joined the Faith and Light family. He was young and many of his friends always teased him that he was going to go crazy like the people with intellectual disabilities. Whenever he said a genuine joke which they would normally laugh, his friends would react differently saying that his relationship with people with disabilities was now getting into his brain. He never lost his love and commitment because he discovered the treasure in the Faith and Light experiences. It is that same treasure which the community should accompany the youths in discovering.

A representative of Life Empowerment Support Organisation (LESO), Mrs Kudyanyemba gave a word of encouragement to the parents who were present. She enlightened the community members on how the organization was started as a response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic. The organization operated more as a Home Based Care organization identifying people living with AIDS and offering care and support as well as mobilizing communal support.  She related that LESO has gone beyond HIV and AIDS issues to focus on any illness that is terminal. Now, the organization reaches out to people who have cancer, orphans and disabilities. Mrs Kudyanyemba emphasized the need to identify children who are stigmatized and hidden in homes because of their intellectual disabilities. She went on to do something very brave. Mrs Kudyanyemba disclosed her HIV+ status stating that she almost died 5 years ago if she had not been found by people who care from LESO. Faith and Light members should as well identify people with intellectual disabilities and support them. LESO as an organization networks with St Monica Community assisting the community with resources such as wheelchairs.

The children were thrilled to have such a gathering. Music and food was organized to give a merry finish to the whole event. Sister Mary who contributed so much to the organizing of the event made available a big cake which supported the theme “For the Love of God". Indeed the party was an amazing way to end 2012 and welcome the New Year 2013. St Monica is a community in Chitungwiza just a few kilometers out of Harare in Zimbabwe.

Friday 1 February 2013

Go! Endai! Hambani!


Go!
Endai!
Hambani!

The mission of Faith and Light

‘Go’ is a short word in English and ‘endai’ or ‘hambani’ are not much longer. Yet this little word contains everything! The word ‘go’ opens the final solemn sending out of the disciples when Jesus is about to return to the Father (Matthew 28:19). The mission of Faith and Light, like the mission of Jesus from the Father and indeed the mission of the Church herself, is contained in that little word. We were not created to stand still, like the rocks of Epworth or the Matopos, but to move and grow and enjoy the gift of life. The mission of Faith and Light is simply to share that gift of growth and life with people who are ‘disabled’ or unable to share fully in these gifts because of their circumstances.

Faith and Light focuses on people with intellectual disabilities (mental handicaps). These brothers and sisters of ours were born the way they are or they became disabled for some reason and often they have lived cut off from the mainstream of life. They have not gone to normal schools. They have not got a job. They cannot marry. And their parents suffered at their birth. ‘Why do I have a child like this? Is it a punishment from God?’ Sometimes it leads to tensions between husband and wife and can even lead to divorce. To have a handicapped child is a painful experience. Our calling, our mission, in Faith and Light, is to help people with such disabilities and their parents not to be sad and withdrawn and angry but to realise that God loves them just as they are and that he has a mission for them in our world today.

The Mission
What is this mission? We know that there are many people and institutions that care for people with disabilities. At the most basic level they provide food and shelter and medical care. Some go further and try to stimulate the person with disabilities by providing work opportunities and social gatherings and entertainments. All these are good but we need to go further. In Faith and Light we do not claim that we have all the answers but we do try to provide one thing that every human being longs for, namely, relationship.

The early church struggled for three hundred years to understand what Jesus meant by ‘baptising in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ Are there three Gods? Definitely not! But in a way that lies hidden to us there are relationships within God. We can say ‘God is relationship’ just as we say ‘God is love’ (I John 4:8). You cannot love without loving someone. And since we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) relationship is as much part of us as breathing. We cannot live without it.

Yet people with intellectual disabilities are often forced to live with a minimum of relationship. Their humanity is starved. They can turn in on themselves and hate themselves because at a deep level they feel it is their fault. People in Faith and Light have heard of disabled people who cannot look at themselves in a mirror. It is too painful. And we have heard of parents who ‘hide’ their disabled children by locking them in a back room of their house. Other forms of poverty a person can work their way out of. But this form needs the help of those who have a compassionate heart that hears the word of Jesus, ‘go!’      

How does it work?
The simple answer to ‘how does Faith and Light work?’ is by relating, by offering friendship. To do this we set up simple structures which enable us – the friends of the disabled people – to meet them at a level that goes beyond food and drink and entertainment. These are important as the Shona saying goes, ‘ukama igasva …’ but food and entertainment are not ultimately what disabled people want. They want friendship.
All of us in Faith and Light have had experience of disabled people saying, not necessarily in words, ‘will you be my friend? Are you going to care for me enough that you will come to see me regularly? Are you going to sit by me and, if I cannot talk, look at me and just be with me? It will make all the difference to me if I have a friend who cares for me.’

So we set up times and places, normally about once a month, where we meet with the disabled people and their parents. The ideal ‘community’ is where there are about ten disabled, ten parents and ten friends, often young people. But, of course, these numbers are only a guide. The meeting has to be planned – where, when, contacting people, the programme, the food and drink, the games, the activities, the prayer – and so we have a ‘core’ group of four or five people who meet some time before the Faith and Light meeting. When we started Faith and Light in Zimbabwe in 1984 we were astonished by what we discovered. People with disabilities suddenly, perhaps for the first time in their lives, came out of their shell. They came alive and we rejoiced to be part of this discovery; how we can give life to people. Gamuchirai (now late) was a 13 year old girl in Kwekwe who had a terrible life before she came to Faith and Light. Those of us who were there the day she came and did cartwheels across the floor will never forget her.

So the communities of Faith and Light, which are now all over the world, have no walls, no place to call their own (Luke 9:58), no budget, no paid staff. But they are communities of action, obeying the word of Jesus, ‘go!’ They are held together not by membership cards or qualifications but by bonds of friendship. You do not retire from Faith and Light just as you do not retire from friendship. These are now ‘my people’ (Ruth 1:16) and one of the ways we have discovered in Faith and Light is to follow up the meetings with visits to the homes of the disabled. Their parents are sometimes overwhelmed to discover that, ‘you have come to visit my son, my daughter, not as a social worker, not because you have to as part of your job, but you come as a friend, one who cares for my child.’ This can be overwhelming for a parent and it can help them to see their child in a new light.

In Zimbabwe, we have communities of Faith and Light in many of our cities and towns and we have coordinators in both the north and the south of the country. Their names and contact details are given below. Faith and Light started in 1971 in the pilgrimage centre of Lourdes in France. A family had tried to take their disabled son there but people had said he will ‘make too much noise.’ In their sadness the parents turned to a French lady, called Marie Hélène Mattieu, and the founder of the l’Arche communities for people with disabilities, Jean Vanier, a Canadian, and together with their friends they organised a pilgrimage of twelve thousand people from all over the world: four thousand disabled, four thousand parents and the same number of friends. The police turned out thinking there would be chaos but they were met with an explosion of joy as they all celebrated the days of Holy Week and Easter. The police went home and Faith and Light was born.