Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Kolachi

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Kolachi or nut rolls. By Hu Totya (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Kolachi or nut rolls. By Hu Totya (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Kolachi (or kolach, or kolache, or kolacky depending on your nationality) is one of those staple holiday foods. In the next weeks I suspect many who grew up in Youngstown will either be baking or buying kolachi for Easter family gatherings.

I discovered something very interesting as I researched kolachi for this post. What most of us from Youngstown mean when we talk about kolachi is a nut roll made with pastry dough rolled out in rectangles, with a nut or poppy seed or lekvar (a jam or fruit butter made with prunes) filling. It is rolled along the long edge of the rectangle like a jelly roll with the ends folded over. The outside is then brushed with a beaten egg to give it a golden brown glaze, holes are poked in it and it is baked. There are also several recipes in Recipes of Youngstown (pages 282-285, and 287). (If you are from Youngstown, or simply love good food, you have to get this cookbook as well as the new Recipes of Youngstown that is coming out soon!).

What others consider to be kolache. By Lou Congelio; Photographer: Ralph Smith (Kolache Mama) [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

What others consider to be kolache. By Lou Congelio; Photographer: Ralph Smith (Kolache Mama) [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

What I discovered is that what I always thought of as kolachi is not necessarily what others consider kolachi. For others, it is a puffy round pastry with a big dollop of fruit filling in the center. It is interesting that the word originates from the old Slavonic word kolo which means “circle” or “wheel” (the Wikipedia article that is my source here has pictures of these pastries). What we call kolachi is otherwise known as potica (po-TEET-sah) or povitica or simply as nut rolls. This is pure speculation but it appears that sometimes these rolls were formed into circles or spirals that may not have looked that different from the round kolach.

The popularity of kolachi in Youngstown no doubt stems from the large eastern European population of Slovaks, Slovenians, Polish and others who all made versions of this food for special occasions. That’s not my own ethnic heritage but there were many in our neighborhood who were from one of these backgrounds and it was never hard coming by some good kolachi at Christmas and Easter times. You would slice the rolls into thin slices that were light and tasty.

My wife, who grew up in a Slovak home, remembers making kolachi with her mom, and particularly that it was her job to knead the dough. Her mom’s kolachi was so good that the whole neighborhood wanted her to make them. The only recipe we have is from her old cookbook–we suspect that like any good cook, she improvised, but didn’t write it down!  But she took a pass on becoming the neighborhood supplier–too much work! She made both nut and lekvar kolachi and the lekvar was (and is) my wife’s favorite. I prefer the nut, so we have to get both!

My wife remembers taking a basket of food to Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church on the Saturday before Easter to be blessed by the priest. The basket included kolachi, hard boiled eggs, ham and some cookies. Her family would then eat this food for their Easter breakfast.

Easter and Christmas were two of the times when people in Youngstown baked up a storm and kolachi (especially the nut roll version) was one of the centerpieces on any pastry tray. Writing about this makes me want to go out and get some!

What are your memories of kolachi or your tips for the perfect kolachi?

Like this post? You can read all the “Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown” posts by going to my home page, scrolling down, and clicking the “On Youngstown” category on the left side of the page.

Upcoming Reviews of New Works: March 2015

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One of my “blog resolutions” for this year was to review more recently published works. I still will review “backlist” works simply because they are of interest to me, and I hope others as well. But I also realize that reviews of new works are helpful to others who hear about a recently published work and are deciding whether to read them. Here are some of the books on my TBR pile that I anticipate reviewing in the next month or two (links are to the publishers’ websites):

Minds, BrainsSufferingCollege Disrupted

1. Minds, Brains, Souls, and Gods by Malcolm Jeeves. Probably the oldest book on the pile with a 2013 publication date but dealing with a number of the current issues in neuroscience research and the implications of this for what we believe about what it means for us to be human and even the implications of claims for a “God spot” in the brain for our belief in God.

2. Suffering and the Search for Meaning by Richard Rice. I’m part way into this book on six different ways Christians deal with suffering, the problem of evil and God. Very clear, with numerous personal stories and yet good theological and philosophical depth.

3. College Disrupted by Ryan Craig. This book deals with the rising costs of college education and the ways college education is becoming “unbundled” to deal with these costs through MOOCs, other forms of online education, and cobbling together degrees through courses from various institutions.

A Glorious DarkNonviolent ActionA Year of Living PrayerfullyAccidental Executive4. A Glorious Dark by A.J. Swoboda. This book is described as dealing with the tension we often experience between what we believe and what we experience.

5. Nonviolent Action by Ronald J. Sider. Sider explores the common ground between just war and pacifism theorists on the ethical requirements upon Christians to pursue where possible nonviolent solutions to conflict.

6. A Year of Living Prayerfully by Jared Brock. Brock is a young activist who spent a year on a global “pilgrimage of prayer”. This book is his account of that journey.

7. The Accidental Executive by Albert M. Erisman. The book’s subtitle is “lessons on business, faith, and calling from the life of Joseph”. Erisman is a former Boeing executive.

These aren’t the only books I anticipate reading but are some of the new (or newer) titles you can anticipate on the blog! I realize that all of this is non-fiction. If any of you have suggestions of quality fiction you think I should read, I’d be glad to hear from you!

If you want to be sure to catch the reviews of these and other books as well as other thoughts on books, reading, and life, I hope you will consider following the blog. If you have a WordPress account, just click the “follow” section of the black header. If you do not, just click the blue “Follow” button that appears near the top of my pages and WordPress will send you email previews of my blog posts.

Rockin’ With the Oldies

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We had the pleasure last night of doing something we have not done for a long time–going to a popular music concert. We were treated by friends to a Neil Diamond Concert at Ohio State’s Schottenstein Center (a very nice treat indeed!).

Neil Diamond was definitely a blast from my past. As something of a loner as a teenager, I identified with his early hit (1966) Solitary Man (one he didn’t sing at the concert). There was that string of hits that followed: Cherry, Cherry, Kentucky Woman, Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show, and, of course, Sweet Caroline (long before it became popular as the theme song of Red Sox Nation, and a fixture at sporting events across the country).

We heard all those songs as well as newer ones I wasn’t familiar with including Pretty Amazing Grace and a love song off his most recent album, dedicated to his third wife. Diamond was on his game all the way to the end when he sang his anthem, “America”. It was a walk down memory lane, as we thought about where we were when we heard these songs first, and sang them again in our minds or out loud (amazing how you can remember these words).

What also struck me from the moment we were lining up to enter the arena was, compared to my concert memories, this crowd was by and large, much older. Then to my chagrin, it occurred to me, so am I! I look like these people.

I’ve seen this phenomenon before, mostly on all those PBS shows bringing back performers from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s to sing their big hits. And — you guessed it — the audience looks like me. And one thinks, how did this happen — weren’t we just twenty-two? Truth is, I think many of us still think of ourselves this way at times, only to get rudely awakened in the mirror, or when our bodies remind us that twenty-two is way in the rear view mirror.

I found myself musing at points about what this is all about and I had several thoughts:

  • This is simply a wistful trip down memory lane.
  • It’s one more chance (in my case my first chance) to see a music idol from our youth.
  • It’s an inspiration to see someone as old or older than we are (Diamond is 74) looking and singing and moving so well. There’s hope for the rest of us.

But I was also struck that for both him and for us, there is an element in these concerts of tracing the arc of our lives and summing them up. One of Diamond’s songs traced his childhood roots back in Brooklyn (complete with video from old family movies), the sweetness of youth, and the sense that many of these places are no longer what they once were. His songs trace a life of love, and heartbreak, and hope and sometimes, alienation (I am, I said), and redemption. As we listen to the arc of Diamond’s life, it prompts us to think of the arc of our own. And with all the ups and downs, I found myself thinking as we responded to Sweet Caroline that it has been “so good, so good, so good.”

And that is a gift that will endure beyond this evening.

Review: The Grand Paradox

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Grand ParadoxSummary: An exploration of the mysteries and apparent contradictions in life that call followers of Christ into the life of faith. A good book for a thoughtful, general audience for whom the “conventional” answers are not working.

Most of us don’t like things that seem contrary to each other. We often try to resolve the messiness of either-or binaries by choosing one and dismissing the other–until that stops working. Ken Wytsma argues that paradox is at the heart of the life of faith in Christ, and is the only way to live with the messiness of life and the mysteries that lurk behind statements like having to lose one’s life to find them, that it is more blessed to give than receive, and that givers prosper while misers perish.

After introducing this idea he begins with our idea of faith and drawing on Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling uses the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac to talk about faith as implicit trust and obedience that walks into the unknown. This means walking into the life of unceasing prayer that learns to listen for the voice of God. This in turn leads to the startling paradox that loving God calls us into living justice in the world. Living joyfully is found not in having but “on our heart’s wanting the right things” (p. 62). The remedy for doubt is not answers. He argues that when we doubt and struggle, the answer is both honesty about our doubts and pain, and paradoxically a faith in the goodness of God we cannot see.

We find our way in life not by discovering God’s plan but by pursuing God and pressing into the life of love which is always God’s intention for us. Living well is not a consequence of more information, more experiences and more technology but growing in the Christ-shaped life. As flawed as the church is, it’s messiness is what we need to sort out our lives.

The last chapters focus on our destiny, the eternity that begins now, living with hope in the darkest hours, and the patience that waits for the blessing of God on God’s terms. It is living in the tension of being between the gardens of Eden and the New Jerusalem, which is often a Gethsemane experience.

As you can tell from this summary of the book’s contents, Wytsma gives us less a linear argument for paradox than a series of reflections on the paradoxes that run through the life of a Christ-follower. He draws on philosophers like Pascal and Kiekegaard and theologians like Niebuhr and stories out of his own life and community to provide to explore different facets of this paradoxical life of faith. It’s one of those books to be mused on a chapter at a time rather than read straight through.

This is a readable book with short chapters but not simple answers. He describes a Christian life with lots of loose ends and mess, with doubt and pain and darkness. Yet he also gives an account of the life of faith that has a ring of truth–one that helps the person in the midst of the mess to go on pursuing God. Such writing is all too rare as are such voices in the pulpit. May Wytsma’s tribe increase.

___________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

 

Review: Can We Still Believe the Bible?

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Can we still believe the Bible

Summary: an apologetic work on biblical scholarship refuting current “debunkers” of the Bible

There is a cottage industry that has developed around “debunking” the Bible. It goes something like this:

  • The Bible we have is hopelessly corrupted, having been copied and re-copied and this is evident in the numerous discrepancies in the extant manuscripts.
  • The Bible we have was the result of a political power move that suppressed other books that proclaimed a different, more “gnostic” Christianity. Finally these books are getting the attention they deserve.
  • With so many translations of the Bible, how can we trust any of them?
  • Given all these issues and various apparent discrepancies, can we possibly believe in an inerrant Bible?
  • Some of the passages of scripture that purport to be narrative history are either unhistorical or plain fiction.
  • Then there are all those miracles, similar to those in other mythical books. Isn’t the Bible simply another mythical work?

Clothed in the authority of “biblical scholarship” these contentions insinuate doubt in the minds of many believing people who base their beliefs and the way they live on what they find in these scriptures.

Craig Blomberg, an accomplished Biblical scholar answers each of these contentions, arguing that such contentions distort the evidence of biblical scholarship, concluding with a resounding “yes” to the question in this book’s title.

For example, he argues that the manuscript evidence actually argues for the high probability that the text of the scripture we have is very close to what was written. Discrepancies between manuscripts don’t affect any fundamental teaching of Christian faith and most are simply minor copying errors.

Those supposedly “suppressed” books? They were known but never enjoyed the significant level of support from various church communities as did most of the canonical books. Also, the books that are being argued for typically were written a century or more later (with the exception of the Gospel of Thomas) than the canonical works.

All those translations? Actually, the standard versions all reflect the careful work of translation committees and actually read remarkably similarly. Except for those originating in sectarian groups, any of these can be profitably read. The main difference in translations tends to be around differing approaches that either focus more on word for word translation of more for accuracy of meaning in the language of the translation.

Most interesting are the next two chapters discussing whether it is possible to hold to a position of inerrancy and whether some “narratives” are unhistorical and what this means for our ideas of inerrancy. And here, Blomberg becomes more explicit about the reality that he is not simply arguing for a believable Bible against the debunkers, but also that it is possible to affirm inerrancy without dismissing serious scholarly claims and questions–for example about the possibility that Job may not be historical (Blomberg does not contend this but allows that those who hold this are not denying inerrancy). Blomberg thinks these rigid positions (far more rigid than the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy which Blomberg uses as a benchmark) are in fact harmful to evangelicalism in creating the kind of “all or nothing” stance that leads those who can’t affirm all to go to the other extreme of affirming nothing (as he thinks has happened to scholars like Bart Ehrman).

His last chapter focuses on miracles. He sees the biblical accounts differing from others in not being sensational but rather confirming the power of God over “the gods” and confirming the messianic character of Christ and his people and encouraging belief. Of course the paramount miracle central to all is the resurrection.

It was something of a surprise that Blomberg would defend the language of inerrancy. He is one of the few scholars of late who tries to argue inerrancy while engaging critical scholarship. This is tougher to do because it begs the question of apparent errors that other approaches around the terms infallible or trustworthy have to deal with only by implication. I actually found this, particularly as Blomberg framed it, refreshing.

This book is most useful for the student or thoughtful Christian who encounters these debunking efforts, and for apologists in providing the basic outlines of a response based in good, if evangelically based, scholarship. For those who wish to go further, the notes provide extensive additional scholarly sources.

I suspect that Blomberg will be dismissed by more liberal scholarship and attacked by conservatives. I admire his willingness to let the chips fall where they may in this effort to provide a thoughtful work for those facing the debunkers’ challenges. He models an approach that embraces both orthodoxy and engaged biblical scholarship.

 

Review: The Steward Leader

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steward leaderThe author of this book caught my attention in the third paragraph of his first chapter when he wrote:

“Here is the confession: in my roles as a leader I have been mostly wrong.”

He goes on to describe the trajectory of his career and reputation and observes that the point wasn’t a trajectory of greater responsibility and reputation. It was rather in following Jesus in becoming a leader of no reputation. Fundamentally, he contends that what matters most is transformed character through one’s encounter with God, where one’s greatest desire is to be accounted trustworthy by God, to be a steward of God’s trust. Then one is ready to lead.

The first part of this book lays the foundations for this steward leadership. He traces the work of the Triune God from creation of humankind as stewards of creation to the fall where we act as owners through our redemption and the call to godly stewardship.

He goes on to talk about the freedom of the steward leader, and this, I found, was one of the highlights of the book. Very simply, it is the freedom of trusting and obeying God in our relationship with Him, ourselves, others and the creation. An old chorus says, “Trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.” Leaders who live like this are happy and free.

Finally he contrasts being a steward leader, which is about character with other theories of leadership including transactional, transformational and servant leadership. He urges docking the “ship” in leadership that focuses on practices and focusing on transformed character that results in trajectories of leading.

The second part of this book elaborates what transformation looks like in a leader’s relationship with God, oneself, others, and the material world. He then describes “trajectories” of leadership rooted in these transformations. He looks at both the implications for the people and the organizations one leads. Such leaders prioritize relationship with God and living out of one’s call and gifting and empower people and organizations to do the same.

One other critical idea that recurs through this book is that steward leaders are not owners and that the great temptation leaders face is to forget this. Owners are self-reliant and shallow, they consider a vision theirs and resist change, they use others, and exploit the creation.

This book proposes a new model of leading. The idea of a steward is comprehensive, addressing the leader in relation to God, self, others, and the world. The author also gives a number of examples from his own leadership journey to illustrate what it means to be a steward leader. At the same time the book seemed a bit conceptual. Perhaps the next step that would be helpful in developing this model would be to highlight organizations led by steward leaders and committed to developing them. I hope Rodin will consider a follow up book along these lines.

R. Scott Rodin proposes a new approach to thinking about leaders rooted in an old biblical idea–the steward. His focus on character rather than charisma, and on transformation rather than technique, is a welcome departure from bulk of leadership books.

 

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Easter Eggs

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Unused egg dying kit (c) 2015, Robert C Trube

Unused egg dying kit (c) 2015, Robert C Trube

Easter eggs. Do you remember dying them as a kid? Mom would hard boil a number of eggs, you would dip them in dye and put them around in baskets for Easter. Perhaps you would use a wax crayon to draw a design or write your name or just “Happy Easter” on the egg. The design would magically appear because the dye would not adhere to the wax. Sometimes you would get fancy and you would paint on the egg as well after the dye dried.

None of these were intended to be lasting works of art because the eggs would eventually spoil. [In fact, according to What’s Cooking America, hard-boiled eggs are only safe for a few hours at room temperatures and only a week refrigerated in their shells.]

One of the reasons for this tradition, and perhaps why Easter eggs were popular in Youngstown was that eggs along with meat were prohibited during the traditional Lenten fast. Unfortunately, no one told the chickens!  So decorating and keeping eggs until Easter was one way to deal with all those eggs!

There were many from eastern European countries who immigrated to Youngstown, who took egg decorating to elaborate heights. These works of art were preserved and to do so involved creating two tiny holes in the egg, puncturing the egg yolk and using a straw or an ear syringe to blow out the contents of the egg. There is a WikiHow article describing the process step by step complete with video.

Eggs could be painted quite elaborately and in different styles in different countries. Here are a few from the Wikipedia article on Easter eggs:

"Ostereier 10" by L.Kenzel - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

“Ostereier 10” by L.Kenzel – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

One of the other ways we enjoyed eggs at Easter in my family, (and this seems common in German and other European families) is pickled eggs. Making these involves immersing hard boiled eggs in a mix of beet juice and vinegar. The recipe on page 8 in the first Recipes of Youngstown cookbook also includes chopped onions, sugar, salt, black pepper, bay leaves, and cloves in the recipe. I still love pickled eggs whenever I can find them. Amish restaurants are a good place as these are popular among the Pennsylvania Dutch.

I don’t remember Easter egg hunts as a kid. When there were hunts, eggs were hidden and the kids who found the most won prizes. This seems to have become more popular in recent years with the advent of those plastic eggs that can be loaded with chocolate eggs and other candies. Decorating trees with eggs has also become more popular since plastic eggs have been introduced.

Decorating eggs was one of the ways we anticipated Easter. We were taught they symbolized the empty tomb of Jesus that we celebrated that day–Jesus coming forth from the grave alive anew. I’m not sure we gave that much thought at the time because we were having so much fun dying the eggs (and maybe thinking of those Easter baskets loaded with candy). But truth be told, they made a festive reminder of an event, if true, that was the most amazing miracle of them all.

What are your memories of dying and decorating Easter eggs?

[This and all the Growing Up in Youngstown posts can be found in the “On Youngstown” category that can be accessed from the homepage of this blog]

Review: From London Far

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From London FarMichael Innes is the pseudonym of J.I.M Stewart who served as a lecturer at Queens College in Belfast and eventually as a professor at Oxford until retirement in 1973. Under his pseudonym, he wrote nearly 50 crime mysteries between 1936 and 1986. His most famous character is Sir John Appleby, a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector. All my encounters with Innes’ work up until now were works in which Appleby appeared.

From London Far is not one of these. The plot centers around Richard Meredith, an Oxford don comfortable in the study of Martial and Juvenal, who wanders into a tobacconist shop and in a scholarly reverie mutters, “London, a poem”. This sounds close enough to a secret password gaining him admission into an underworld of art thieves, which he quickly realizes as he comes across stolen works of Titian and Giotto. He discovers he is being mistaken for a German conspirator, Vogelsang, and that a woman being held, Jean Halliwell, has also gotten mixed up in this plot. Through quick thinking, he succeeds in pretending to be Vogelsang, kills the real Vogelsang when he turns up, and leads Jean in a hair-raising escape through chutes and across rooftops.

As they compare notes, they decide not to do the sensible thing and go to the police, but to take off to an island off the coast of Scotland to confront the apparent mastermind of these art thefts, Sir Properjohn, who ends up being the front man for the real mastermind, Don Perez. Along the way, they encounter a pair of eccentric sisters living in a rundown castle on the island, learn of the abduction of Higbed, a distinguished psychiatrist, and end up captured only to be abandoned on a sinking sub.

In Bond-like style, they manage to escape, which leads to the third part of this story, their encounter with the eccentric millionaire industrialist, Otis K. Neff and his crazy conveyor-belt mansion. It turns out that he is the buyer of all the stolen works. I will leave the denouement, and the role Higbed plays in all this, for you to discover if you wish.

J.I.M Stewart (a.k.a Michael Innes

J.I.M Stewart (a.k.a Michael Innes)

It all seemed to stretch plausibility a bit, but probably not more than a James Bond novel or movie, and likewise with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. I wondered if this was Innes’ way of poking fun at this genre of books (although this novel antedates Fleming’s first Bond novel by six years). This is also another in the genre of detective fiction that revolves around Oxford settings and characters, including some of the works of Dorothy L. Sayers and Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books and the Lewis  spinoff. If you like these kinds of stories, From London Far and other Innes’ works might give you a new vein to explore.

I have to say I am one who does enjoy such stories, but I still found this one a bit far-fetched, though not unenjoyable. I want to return to the Sir John Appleby stories that I have not read (a good number). For literary style, and storytelling Innes is right up there with P.D. James, Sayers, and others of his period, and worth discovering if you have not read his work.

 

The Reader’s Paradox

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The world beyond my books (c)2015, Robert C Trube

The world beyond my books (c)2015, Robert C Trube

I’ve been thinking this morning about the reader’s paradox.

If you are a bibliophile, you know what I’m talking about. You might even know what I’m talking about if you are a friend of a bibliophile.

Paradoxes. These are things that seem in conflict and yet both are true. I am convinced there are a number of these in life. Is light a wave or a particle? Are we one or many? I’m also convinced that many of us don’t like to live in the tension of paradoxes. We prefer to resolve them by focusing on one of the two elements in the paradox and exclude the other. This makes life simpler. But smaller.

So what is the reader’s paradox? It is that books often are windows onto the world that give us delight and insight and sometimes diversion. And yet life and the world are far more than the books we read and there are realities beyond the page (or tablet) to which books only point but are no substitute for our experience of the real thing. Like the love of God or neighbor. The pursuit of a just and peaceful world. The making or enjoying of actual music or art. The growing of a fruitful and beautiful garden.

The danger comes when we cease to live in the tension of this paradox, which is a tension I face. I love books and reading and encouraging others to connect with the best of what is thought and written. So I read, and write about reading and books, and interact with others interested in writing and books. There is a sense in which I feel I am employing a gift, however humble in doing this.

What I realize is that I also live in need of the gifts of the world beyond my bibliophile world. I think we actually need each other’s gifts. Reading and reflecting on what I read sometimes leads to insights into problems and challenges those in my world are face. But only as I am in loving relationship can any of this be life-giving. And love takes a goodly amount of time with one’s nose out of a book!

Equally, books can sometimes distort my view of the world and those real-life encounters where my book-inspired ideas come up short serve as a good reality check. That, too, is a life-giving gift!

My faith seems to embrace some of the biggest paradoxes of all. I believe in a God who is One and Three. I confess as Lord one who is fully God and fully human. This makes me wonder if in fact the other paradoxes I see in my world and my own life stem from this. It is clear that my faith would be simpler, but smaller without these paradoxes, just as would my life. And it makes me wonder if living in wonder, faith and obedience with these great paradoxes somehow is connected to living in the tension of the lesser ones, like the reader’s paradox.

What do you think? Have you experienced the reader’s paradox? Do you think there is a paradoxical aspect to life and how do you account for this?

Jean Vanier, Templeton Prize Winner

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Jean Vanier with John Smeltzer"702524260 txjiQ-O" by Warren Pot - Own Photo: Warren Pot taken at L'Arche Daybreak, Richmond Hill, Ontario. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Jean Vanier with John Smeltzer”702524260 txjiQ-O” by Warren Pot – Own Photo: Warren Pot taken at L’Arche Daybreak, Richmond Hill, Ontario. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In the midst of many lamentable events in the news both here and abroad came the wonderful news today of the awarding of the Templeton Prize to Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche communities. His work began in 1964 when he invited two developmentally disabled men to live with him. These two men are listed with Vanier as the founders of the first L’Arche Community. Since then he has founded 147 similar communities. He left an academic post at the University of Toronto to pursue this work.

In his statement on receiving this prize he said:

“We must start to meet: people must meet people; we are all human beings. Before being Christians or Jews or Muslims, before being Americans or Russians or Africans, before being generals or priests, rabbis or imams, before having visible or invisible disabilities, we are all human beings with hearts capable of loving,”

This is in fact what occurs in his communities where people are treated with dignity. Whenever Vanier speaks he has developmentally disabled people with him. The press conference at which he received his prize was no exception.

While there seems to be a media frenzy going on right now around the SAE fraternity video, I thought it might be salutary to help circulate a different kind of video, one that celebrates rather than demeans the dignity of all human beings, and gives us an example of someone who has lived both simply and nobly in a deeply Christian mission.