Processing Disappointment in the Vanier Story With Norm Allen and Ron Nikkel
/NORM: Well, hello there – it’s Norm Allen here with another of our sporadic “On Further Reflections with Norm Allen” series of podcasts and videos. Today, I’ve invited a close friend of mine of long, long-standing, Ron Nikkel, to engage in conversation about the news that we received back in the middle of February about the double-sided life that Jean Vanier had, and the L’Arche International movement had to pay for an agency to do an investigation of complaints against him about sexual misconduct with women that he had been in a counselling relationship with.
(Click here to view the video)
Ron and I have been friends since 1975 when we were both youth workers in Toronto. He was working with people on the other side of the street; I was working with more mainstream youth – and our paths have tended to go down that same pattern. He spent 35 years as the President of Prison Fellowship International, developing an organization that had 122 country members, meeting the needs of prisoners and their families. Within that organizational setting, Ron was considered a Christian statesman amongst Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant leadership around the world, he had access to politicians of some significance, and was advocating for restorative justice with his life and his work. And we have spent time as spiritual friends at least twice a year, sometimes more, on retreats where we listened to each other’s lives, tried to invite the presence of Christ through Scripture and contemplative prayer, to shape our conversations. He was one of the people I turned to for conversation when I received the news about Jean Vanier in February. And we have had a series of conversations over the past six or eight weeks, and I have invited him because I value – not the fact that he necessarily agrees with me – but I value his wisdom as a counterpoint to some of my ravings. And you just never know where my alleged mind is going to go.
We’re going to talk a little first, about why Vanier matters to us – our experience of him – and why it has been a difficult thing to process this particular experience.
RON: Thank you, Norm. Yes, it’s true: we have had a long relationship – a good relationship, a good friendship, in which we have struggled through many issues. And this is certainly one of them. Like Norm, I have valued our friendship – not that we have always agreed, because most of the time we don’t agree. But we agree on essentials. And how we might respond or engage differently with the stuff of Jean Vanier is not an essential. It’s not something that we ground either our lives or our relationship on. But it is an important issue. I met Jean Vanier for the first time – I would say it was around 1977 or ’78 when he was speaking at Massey Hall. And from the moment that I heard him, I found that his words, his message had the ring of truth – it was compelling. It was engaging. And I began reading his books, which had a profound influence on my life, in the sense of affirming what I cared about. I felt drawn to work with kids and people in trouble; whether they were in trouble because they got themselves there, or because of someone else’s actions – it didn’t really matter to me. And I found his message very affirming in the sense of my own mission and work with people in trouble.
Over the years, I met Jean Vanier a number of times. I wouldn’t say we were close friends, but we did develop a friendship – to the point that in one of his latest books, he asked me to write a preface for it, which I took as an honour, and as a sign that our friendship had some mutuality to it. Mutual respect, anyhow.
I also spent time with him in France at the L’Arche community, where together with a video team, we did a number of videos on love, justice, compassion and mercy. During our time in producing those videos in his home, I felt increasingly drawn to him. So, when the news came, it was a tremendous shock, because it’s not something that I expected of him. Although I do know that leaders like him get put on pedestals. And whether it’s Bill Hybels or Jimmy Swaggart – or we can go down the list of people in spiritual and Christian leadership who have fallen – and fallen badly. We can go to all kinds of analysis on why that is the case – because they are put on a pedestal, or because of a lack of intimacy in their lives; the kind of affirmation that they get from a crowd is not the same as personal affirmation and the embrace of someone who really cares about them. And so there’s a vacuum, I think it was Ronald Rolheiser, who talked about a ‘holy longing,’ and used that ‘holy longing’ idea to describe why it is that some people enter into perverse sexual relationships to satisfy an inner need. And that may have been what is was with Vanier. I don’t think the analysis matters so much. I think it’s disturbing, because it’s another leader taking advantage of people in vulnerable positions, people who put themselves into his trust.
The thing that I have grappled with, was: What do I do with all the books on my shelf? The books behind me? Do I burn them? Do I get rid of them? Do I now discount the message that I found so compelling and moving? What do I do with that? Does his action invalidate the good stuff that he taught? What do we do with that?
NORM: That is one of the routes that we’re going to go down in our conversation, I am sure. My relationship with Vanier was different than Ron’s in the sense that he was my companion as an author. I first read a book by him called “Followers of Jesus” in probably around 1982. And that introduced to me, out of my ‘born-again’ faith background, a very different way of experiencing the presence of Jesus in a person’s life; and in the day-to-day life. And to be able to follow Jesus, who goes ahead of us, into all of life. He talked very profoundly about the brokenness of all of us. One of the journeys that Ron and I have been on is that my work tends to be with affluent, highly advantaged people; his history was working with prisoners – and one of the discoveries we make is that we all have similar brokennesses, that in the world that I operate in, many of us have better tools for masking our brokenness than people who are more observably broken. Ron and I would both put ourselves in the category of broken people who need the help of God and the help of one another, and the help of our spouses, and Ron’s dog, and whoever happens to be available to help us stay on the straight and narrow.
I found him a very helpful person, even in thinking through how I do my work. His book on the Gospel of John, I would say Touchstone paid for at least 200 of them to give away to people, because it was very helpful listening to the music of the gospel of John, and revealing Jesus in a profound way.
So, we do grapple with ‘What do we do with that?’ I don’t believe anything I learned from him that I have come to believe is truth is not still true. Obviously both Ron and I have tested a lot of these ideas with each other; we have tested them with Scripture; we have tested them with our communities of faith, our own personal practice of the ministries that we have been involved in… So, something that is true, is still true. And so somebody who led me (as Vanier did), who was one of the door-openers to the contemplative tradition for me – I have lots of influence in that pattern, but I have to be very selective and have my own filters about what I accept, and what I reject; and what I ultimately base my life and ministry on.
He is a guy that I referred to frequently. I held him in high, high esteem. And when I got the news from the letter that was released by the L’Arche International organization, I was everything from angry to sorrowful – a whole host of things. There was a flurry of responses In various media: writers and speakers and people trying to deal with some of the questions that Ron and I probably think are not necessarily resolvable, but they went along the lines of: “Well, we are human, after all. David had a big sin, and God loved him.” Another one is: “Well, we are better than him – we wouldn’t be like that.” Another one is: “Well, at least he didn’t use the same kind of techniques with the residents of L’Arche.” And the last one – for some people it was like “A saint in my life has fallen.” And those categories for me were the lines that I have been going down, trying to come to grips with my own attitude – because I don’t think I can do anything about who Vanier is or was. I can grieve over his life and pray that God loves him still – but I do have to figure out my own reactions, because that tells me something that may be good or bad about myself. And there are lessons here to be learned about how I go through my listening to God and my spiritual formation, and how I serve the world.
As we continue the conversation, we will grapple with some of these issues together – but not from the point of view of saying, “Here is the answer,” or “Here is the reason.” I think that neither of us believe that we have the right answer to whatever your question might be about Vanier, and apart from – the only information that I am using to have my opinions is based on the report that was released by the L’Arche Foundation. Beyond that, any information that might be out in the marketplace is not particularly helpful to me. Just their investigative report is all that I am dealing with.
RON: Well I think the unfortunate thing about any investigative report is that it deals with one segment of a person’s life – one point in time. And I think that as serious as that is, it is unfortunate that we tend to focus in on that one segment. Yes, I think that we are all broken people, we are all human – and certainly, he was, too – and in a sense it is refreshing to know that he wasn’t perfect. It makes him, in some ways, more relatable. Not to in any way condone what he did – but it makes him somewhat more relatable; because it tells me that he probably did struggle with issues that are common to humanity, common to ourselves. And I am not so sure, in various areas of life, that we have been perfect either.
NORM: I’m very disappointed that you’re assuming that I’m not perfect – after all these years, you haven’t noticed my perfection?
RON: In some areas, yes. Not in all.
NORM: You are delusional.
RON: But I think the fact is that we elevate one kind of misbehaviour, one area of sin, above other areas. Now, if people knew me (and I dare say, if people really knew you), we would be off our tiny little pedestals pretty quickly, too.
NORM: Well, unfortunately, my pedestal got worn out a long time ago, and I’m… mine has gone down into the ground a bit.
RON: Well, not the pedestal that people put you on.
NORM: That’s where I think I have a slightly different view of it, in the sense that I agree: all of our broken pieces are all part of our life. We all have them. So, let’s not pretend. And that’s one of the reasons I found some of the writing that was done, saying ‘We are better than that,’ to be really, really stupid. For me to say that I am better than Vanier because of what happened, only puts me in a category where I actually need more help. Because the minute I start saying that I am better than anybody, rather than I am a person still in need, regardless - we are not doing comparative spirituality. The danger we get into if I compare my life to somebody else’s – it either makes me feel good by comparison (as in the parable that Jesus told of the Pharisee and the tax collector), which you end up being in arrogance – or you end up on the other end of the spectrum: if you haven’t really found that you have been loved by God, you end up in depression and self-loathing. That whole business of comparing yourself to somebody else, and then declaring yourself superior, is a spiritual minefield, as far as I am concerned.
When I see a lifelong pattern of taking advantage of position (and the report was very clear: this was not just an episode). His relationship with his mentor, who had these same practices and who was ultimately defrocked by the church – and Vanier was warned away from him. But Vanier for whatever reason (and we don’t know the reasons) seemed under the control of this person, and so he enabled his taking advantage of women back in the early 50’s. Then he began to repeat (it appears) as a lifetime of the same kind of pattern – using ‘Jesus talk’ to get physically intimate with women who were coming to him for spiritual guidance. For me, that is a sort of a systematic violation of the trust a leader has. We both know that there are certain things that our boards, if they looked at them, they would just say, “You are out of business.” It is not that they don’t love you, or that God does not love you, or that we are all broken people; but you have a responsibility as a leader not to take advantage of that role against anybody who is vulnerable. That is where my difficulty lies, because I hear the voices of the women, and their spouses, and their children. The voices of the victims cry out to me from the report. Even though it’s done very anonymously – because I know that the people that you served (as prisoners) are often the victims of that very kind of thing.
RON: It is very difficult. I have worked with both the victims and offenders in these kinds of cases, and it’s never really clear-cut: how the abuse begins to happen, where it goes, how it ends, who is responsible. I mean, I dare say that in some of these situations it is very difficult for a person in leadership to draw a clear line. I am not saying that Vanier was approached, or didn’t take the initiative – but I don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring that part out. I have a lot of compassion for anybody who is caught up (for whatever reason) in a problem like that. They are not beyond redemption. The unfortunate thing with Vanier is that the revelations come after his life. With so many people it comes during their lifetime and they’ve got an opportunity to deal with it personally and relationally and in their community…
NORM: In his case, just to be fair, he was asked both about his mentor and about his own practices, and he basically (according to the report) denied, and hence lied about it. And so that is again part of the challenge that I have. And again: Nobody is beyond redemption. A guy I helped put in jail, I still met with him, offering him the grace of God as much as I offered anybody else. But – somewhere in here (and it’s the thing that we grapple with) – what influence do we allow him to have going forward? And what lessons do we learn ourselves about our own leadership, about the Christian community perhaps, or the faith community, that needs to be warned themselves – not about Vanier, but about the practices that allow us to put him in positions of sainthood and [on a] pedestal. Why is it that celebrities end up having these roles in our culture, when people who walk beside us day by day are really actually the people who reveal Jesus to us? Who are the people in proximity with us who are going to care for us?
The people who reveal Jesus to me – I can learn from people at a distance, but the people who are close to me and have walked with me for decades – like you, like Susan, like my kids, like other friends who know me well, and know my brokenness, and know how to deal with it – they are the ones who speak to me. And we have this, you know ‘The Saint has fallen’ thing; and you go, “Wait a minute: how in the world did you put him in that position? Why would you allow yourself to think of somebody at a distance…?” You and I have talked about this. A lot of this - maybe - has to do with personality style… He was just gentle-spirited, he had a presence about him that oozed kindness, he exuded generosity and people just were drawn to him. But, as I said to you one day: the apostle Paul – he had more edges than Vanier. Peter – even Jesus was - according to the way people want to create saints, none of those people, not even Jesus would have been a saint. And so – how do we find the revelation of God in each other in all of our complexity, and not turn to these people at a distance and think that they are somehow superior to the guy sitting there in Cape Breton who has been my friend for 40 years, and is by no means a Vanier-like saint, but is a loving person of God in my life.
RON: Well, if I put you on a pedestal and call you a saint, that’s my sin – not yours.
NORM: Exactly. Or stupid.
RON: Certainly, if you put me on a pedestal and call me a saint, I would probably want to kick your butt, because I know that that would be a lie. But we do that. I mean, we do look up to certain people, that doesn’t mean necessarily that we have elevated them to sainthood. But we look up to them because they have offered us something that has a ring of truth. The message is real, it’s right, it’s relevant. And the reality, the truth and the relevance of that message doesn’t go away. So, I don’t feel the need at the moment to discard the message, or the validity of the message – just because the messenger has failed. God knows that we are all feeble messengers. As were some of the prophets – and certainly some of the disciples were feeble messengers at points.
NORM: Right. But the apostle Paul – or Jesus – in their communication, didn’t have a lot of patience for people who would take advantage of the vulnerable. So that is where my difficulty lies. And it’s again not to pile on Vanier, because it doesn’t matter.
RON: Yeah, I know, but after all, sin is sin. It doesn’t matter. Where do we get this hierarchy of stuff that one is worse than another…
NORM: Well, I’m not saying that the sins are worse; I am saying that the violation of leadership trust…
RON: Well, okay. Call it something like that. It is still – we are saying that that is worse than other ways of betraying trust.
NORM: No, I am saying that any leadership betrayal of trust is equivalent. So, if he had stolen money, if he had dealt drugs – the sin issue isn’t the issue for me. The issue is taking advantage of a position of power and misusing that in the lives of those who are vulnerable, and who are looking to you for help, then you use their longing for protection as a weapon against them, for your own selfish…
RON: No – we both got that. So, what do you do with that?
NORM: I basically have to say, the lessons that I learn are along the lines of the lifetime lessons that we have learned. We can’t allow ourselves to be so isolated that we can’t see evil when it’s in our face. Why is it he wasn’t able to see the evil that was going on with his mentor, even though it was outlined by the authorities of the church? But he for whatever reason, saw good in evil. And so, when people use Jesus and spiritual-language to then mess with people to get money, to take advantage sexually, to take advantage emotionally and to control… using the Bible, faith stuff as a weapon to take advantage of them… that’s the issue. So, whether it happened to be a sexual one is less important. There is an issue for me, making sure that I put myself in a healthy place spiritually, but it’s also in terms of the people that I live with and work with – my longing is that we would never allow ourselves to be so focused on one point of view – or one speaker, or one teacher (especially me) – that we aren’t listening to varieties of points of view. That people in one particular faith-tribe think it’s the only one, when in fact we need the richness of the Body of Christ at large to inform a wider understanding of the Kingdom. I think if there is any kind of lesson to be learned from Vanier, it’s that somehow he never allowed himself to be challenged or addressed about some of these things. Maybe he thought that they were fine anyway, I don’t know. But it creates a whole different kind of challenge for me. Because I see people quoting whoever happens to be the most recent celebrity that we have, I just hope they’re doing their own thinking. That they’re not just saying, “Okay – he answered all the questions that I ever had;” but “Oh, there I just learned something from him, but now I am going to go and test it with Scripture, with Jesus and with my friends,” and that’s another thing I can learn.
RON: Yes. There is a lot of wisdom in the Anglican tradition which says that there are really three pillars that we depend on when we are to discern these things. 1) One is of course, Scripture. 2) Another is tradition. 3) And reason. I think sometimes we add another one to it, which is community or relationships. Whether it is friendship, a close spiritual friendship, or a small group of people who hold each other accountable – I think those are all the core important areas of resource that we need to look to, either when we are trying to sort ourselves out, or trying to discern whether a person’s teaching is worth trusting, worth listening to. Scripture, tradition, reason, and the community of friends: I think those four things are important. I think that something that we have done to a greater or lesser degree in our relationship – do I think everything I say should be taken by anybody and everybody who hears what I say or reads what I write? Of course not!
NORM: I think the important part of community, and certainly it has been an important part of our relationship, has been that we can explore ideas, knowing that by the end of the conversation, we both might have a different point of view. That we would go and listen to a gospel story, and then wait for an hour and a half, come back and say: Here is the experience we had of Jesus for that 90 minutes. And then the thing that often would happen is that the experience we thought we had was different by the time we’d had the conversation. And so there is that sort of, how do we have some open-endedness to how we converse about ideas, without always being right and wrong – that whatever we ultimately conclude individually about the Vanier story, is not central to our relationship, and having a different opinion about it doesn’t affect the nature of our relationship. Unfortunately, so many discussions go on in our culture, that either you are in or out, or you’re for me or against me; it’s all black and white, somehow Jesus’ arms are much bigger than all that. And I am with you – I believe he loves Vanier, but I think he shed a lot of tears for those women…
RON: And for Vanier. I think it’s important to have as much compassion for the offender as for the victim.
NORM: Yes. And that’s where you get, “I am better than that,” as the danger place – just as much as, “Well, we are all just human,” is a dangerous place.
RON: It’s true. It is true.
NORM: It is true. But you and I both know that we have to help each other have moral rigour in our lives as we exercise responsibility. Because we know we’re just human – we have to do whatever we think we need to do to help us not screw it up. And so, it’s that – if we are all just human, then it allows us to say, “Ahh – well, I was just human…”
RON: It depends on how you use that statement. If I say, “But we’re all just human,” I could mean – “well, that takes us all off the hook”.
NORM: Yes – that’s my point.
RON: But to say we are all human – it is also a recognition of my vulnerability. If that guy is human, and can fall – I certainly can, too.
NORM: Yes, and that’s the point that I think we both agree on – that we both still, in our dotage, need a heck of a lot of help – even though our testosterone levels are down; we still need a lot of help.
Let me offer a couple of bits – what I would consider at least a bit of advice to people in our Touchstone community from lessons we’ve learned. And Ron if you either disagree with one, or you want to add to it, feel free…
RON: I wouldn’t dare. I wouldn’t dare.
NORM: Yeah, right. We’ve got a prayer that Ron and I are going to read. It’s from the liturgy that we use in our Celtic communion service on our retreats, and it’s a prayer focussed on God, a confession of sin, an assurance of pardon, and then a prayer to invoke the presence of God in our day to day life.
Here are a few thoughts for those of us who are trying to figure out our way through this kind of minefield of how we approach things.
First thing I would say is:
Keep grounded in an authentic understanding and relationship with Jesus. Whatever it is. When Ron introduced his segment, the centre isn’t going to be what we agree on – except the relationship that we have with Jesus. So, we have to keep that relationship with God as central in our lives. And that core relationship with a few other people. It allows us to confirm what we think is right, but it also allows us to confront that which is not right in our lives. And find ways to ultimately live out that understanding of Jesus, with some integrity.
Secondly:
Have wide and varying resources for your understanding of the gospel. Work outside the tradition that you were raised in. I was raised in a wonderful Baptist tradition which enriched my life, but it wasn’t the whole gospel; it wasn’t the whole Kingdom of God. I’ve had to learn from other sides of the Christian tradition in order for me to expand my understanding of life and God. In the course of doing that, make sure that those things that are adding into your life, move you into areas that encourage transparency, not secrecy. If you look at addiction issues, most of the addiction issues that are there end up being ‘silent sins,’ and escape from reality. We need to find ways to find the comfort of friends who trust us, so that we can move to transparency. We move to love, not power. We look to service, not control. Test the truths that you are acquiring with the things that Ron was talking about – in terms of Scripture, tradition, reason, and community – but also, with your friends. Which I find even a little tighter than community, because you can sit down, and over a longer period of time, explore what you are thinking.
Of very great importance:
When we start thinking about these saintly figures: make sure you are doing your own exploring of Scripture and faith. Doing your own thinking. If you are reading somebody (and I read a lot of people) – value what you are learning, but have your own filters - “Is that true?” “Does that work?” “Is that confirmed by what anything, or anybody else around me values?” But find ways through Scripture, through creation, through the incarnational presence of Christ in other people around you, to evaluate what you are reading. Just because something is new, doesn’t make it better. A lot of times, the ancient truths are (in my opinion) – they have stood the test of time.
And along with that, be very careful about how you ascribe sainthood to people at a distance. Hold people in respect – test what they say – but don’t make saints out of people whose lives you really don’t know.
Finally:
Develop a sense of the saints around us. Value the presence of Jesus in the people who walk with you every day. The people who get on your nerves. Susan and I are stuck in a house together – Ron and Celeste are stuck in a house together up in Cape Breton – and yet we have got to see each other as saints. We have to see each other as having the presence of Jesus in one another and carry on with respect. So, find to elevate your understanding of the humanity, as well as the presence of Jesus in those around you.
Anything you would add to that, Ron?
RON: No, I think you have adequately covered it. At some length.
NORM: We have a prayer we want to read. Ron – why don’t you start with the Prayer of Focus on God, then I will read the Prayer of Confession, you can do the Prayer of Assurance of Forgiveness, then I will do the final Prayer of Invocation, and bid our friends good-bye.
RON: Prayer of Focus on God
We come in these moments to God:
In our need and bringing with us the needs of the world.
We come to God who has come to us in Jesus,
and who walks with us the road of our world’s suffering.
We come with our faith and with our doubts.
We come with our hopes and our fears.
We come as we are; because of this God who invites us to come.
And God has promised never to turn us away.
NORM: Prayer of Confession.
Holy God, Maker of the skies above,
Lowly Christ, born amidst the growing earth,
Spirit of Life, wind over the flowing waters;
In earth, sea, and sky you are there.
Oh hidden Mystery – Son/Sun behind all suns/sons,
Soul behind all souls
In everything we touch,
In everyone we meet
Your Presence is around us, and we give you thanks.
When we have not touched, but trampled you in creation,
When we have not met, but missed you in one another;
Forgive us and hear now our plea for mercy.
RON: Prayer of Assurance for Forgiveness.
The Creator of the world watches over us in our waking and our sleeping.
The Saviour of the world ransoms himself for our sins and for our eternal life.
The Spirit of the world dwells within us to guide us and keep us safe.
The God of Love and Mercy, grant us the grace of pardon, wholeness and peace,
Through Jesus Christ, Amen.
NORM: Prayer of Invoking the Presence of God in Our Day to Day Life.
Come, Father of the poor,
Come, Light of our hearts,
Come, generous Spirit;
By the glory of your creation around us,
By the comfort of your forgiveness within us,
By the wind of your Spirit eddying through the years within our lives,
Renew us, so that we come glad to our circles of friendship.
Amen.
God Holy,
God Strong and Holy,
God Holy and Deathless,
Have mercy on us.
P.S. - Link to the L’Arche International Summary Report.
