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parents not to be sad and withdrawn and angry but to realise that God loves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.
