Alumni Blog

Reflections on Just “Being”

Intercordia is about BEING with others and not DOING for others. I have been reflecting on this simple yet profoundly radical statement. 

Perhaps it is easier to do for others – and just being with others is much more of a challenge. It is this challenge that the Intercordia students are living. I am also living this here in L’Arche in the Dominican Republic. There are many times when I think I know best, or times when I want to explain the way we do things in Canada, or the way we do things in L’Arche in Canada. But I am living in a very different culture, and therefore this L’Arche community has taken on a different shape and form, a different way of doing things. I am here to be with these people, to learn from them and to build relationships.

One of the coremembers, Jesus, makes it easy to just be with him. Jesus is 15 years old and has lived in the community for most of his life. Jesus doesn’t speak but has one of the most expressive faces I have ever seen. He is teaching me to just be – to live and to share life with him and the others. That is all he is asking of me with his expressive eyes, his smiles and his ever-moving hands. I am learning to just “be,” and that I do not always have to have the right answers or the knowledge to “do.”

-Jessica Vorstermans, Dominican Republic

Juan, Jessica and Jesus in Dominican Republic