a simple dinner party

Last week, our community had five volunteers from a college stay with us and volunteer their time in our homes and day programs as part of a service learning trip. Two of them stayed and helped out at the house where I live, while the other three shared time at our other houses. During the day, they were involved in other things, such as helping at our day programs, or participating in formation and small group discussions. In the evenings they would come back to the house to spend time with our core members and to help out in other ways.

Another group of seven volunteers from the same college stayed at another site in Kansas City. One of the evenings that the volunteers were here, our house hosted all five that were staying in our community, as well as the seven at the other site. We set up an extra table end-to-end with our regular dining room table, and sixteen people sat around it enjoying a nice dinner and some fun conversation about all of the things they had been experiencing that week.

At one point, David, one of the core members, excused himself from the table and took his plate into the kitchen. After putting it in the dishwasher, he went upstairs to his room where I assumed he was going to stay and listen to his music or watch TV.

A few minutes later he came back downstairs bringing with him his karaoke machine. The conversation began to diminish as we all turned to see what he was doing. David sat the karaoke machine down in the corner of the room and plugged it into the wall. Taking the microphone in his hand, and turning it on, he turned and began to address the rest of us in the room.

He started by welcoming everyone, and then said that he was going to be handing out some awards. As he said this, he gestured to the top of the nearby china cabinet where his sand art collection was displayed. One of David's favorite hobbies is making sand art using colored sand and small, clear, plastic bottles. He buys kits from the store and will spend entire afternoons at the dining room table layering different colors of sand into bottles of different shapes and sizes.

One by one, he called each of the volunteers forward, starting with those who had been staying in our community, and presented them with a carefully selected sand art bottle. After the five of them had graciously received their awards, he began calling forward the volunteers we had just met that evening. Each person present in the room received one of his sand art creations, as well as some kind and affirming words. By some coincidence, or perhaps there was some other force at work, he had just enough bottles for everyone present.

The awards were simply small plastic bottles, filled with colored sand. It's hard to say how long they had been sitting on top of the china cabinet. But, in that moment, they became items of special worth. The reactions of the volunteers, as they were called forth and received one of the bottles, was as if they had won something of significance. The mood in the room changed from one of casual conversation to one of celebration and excitement. All of this was because David, a man with Down's Syndrome, decided it was time for an awards ceremony.

That evening was a tangible example of what L'Arche does. The simple became significant. People were recognized as special and loved and deserving of praise. Not because of anything that they had achieved, but simply because they were there. A simple dinner party turned into a time of celebration and joy, because of the love of a core member. And this all happened because David, a man with Down's Syndrome, who might be considered by many people in the world as not having much to offer, was able to recognize and share it.