9. Becoming Friends of Time:
Learning to Live in the Present Moment
The friend of time doesn’t spend all day saying: I haven tgot time. He doesn’t fight with time. He accepts it and cherishes it.
JEAN VANIER
Fidelity asks this much of us, that we remain with him even as he fails to remember us; abandonment is not an option.
MARY JO IOZZIO
Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. 	GOD
Now here is my secret, very simple: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye...  It is thet time you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important .
ANTOJNE DE SAINNT-EXUPERY, LE PETIT PRINCE
In 1964 the Fiench Canadian Jean Vanier, former naval officer and Aris-totelian scholar, began a movement that would change the way that people with intellectual disabilities would be cared for.1 Vanier’s “revolu-
^0°k titled hist<>rt’ an<t perspective on the development of L’Arche is Kathryn Spinks’s 1 on I 'iinier ig/UTlie: A Communion of Love (New York: Crossroad, 1990).




tion” started with a small gesture and ended with the development of a profound sign that points the world toward aspects of care, friendship, and being human that are often hidden, but nonetheless vital. Distressed by the institutionalization, isolation, and loneliness of people with intellectual disabilities, Vanier invited three men with intellectual disabilities who had been living in a local mental institution to live with him in his small house in Trosly, France. He called the house “L’Arche,” which is French for “The Ark” in the biblical story of Noah and the Flood. His intention was to invite them to come and share their life in the spirit of the Gospel and the Beatitudes of Jesus.2 Vanier’s intention was not to start a miniature institution; he wanted to live with these men not as carer and cared for, but simply as friends. Vanier’s initial patterning for community and relationships established the template for the beginning of a worldwide movement that has come to be known as the International Federation of L’Arche Communities. L Arche grew quickly and spread around the world, attracting many young people who dedicated their lives to living with people who have intellectual disabilities as opposed to caring for them. Today, there are over 130 L Arche communities in thirty-four countries on six continents.
Vanier s interest is not in dementia, but there is an aspect of his theology and practice that holds particular relevance for the purposes of this book. At the heart of Vanier’s perspective lies a rethinking of the nature, value, and use of time. In his book Community and Growth, he makes the following statement:
Individual growth towards love and wisdom is slow. A community s growth is even slower. Members of a community have to be friends of time. They have to learn that many things will resolve themselves if they are given enough time. It can be a great mistake to want, in the name of clarity and truth, to push things too quickly to a resolution. Some people enjoy confrontation and highlighting divisions. This is not always healthy. It is better to be a friend of time. But clearly too, people should not pretend that problems don’t exist by refusing to listen to the rumblings of discontent; they must be aware of the tensions.
2. Tim Kearney, “Discovering the Beatitudes at L’Arche,” The Furrow 35, no. 7 (July 1984): 460-64.

Vanier’s point is that in order to truly be with a person who has severe intellectual disabilities, it is necessary to re-orient one’s sense of time. Within a capitalist society, it’s an almost irresistible temptation to treat time as one would treat any other commodity: you spend time, buy time, waste time, use time, keep time, and lose time. Many of us spend much of our lives at war with time. Time rules us and dictates the nature and shape of our lives and our relationships. Finding time to be with one another is not always a priority in lives where time seems to be racing away from us. Vanier urges us to take time seriously. To be with someone with severe intellectual disabilities, one needs to slow down and take time to notice those small things that the world sees as unimportant, but which, when we take time, are revealed to be profound.
In There Is a Bridge, Stanley Hauerwas moves Vanier’s ideas into the realm of dementia:
To become a friend with someone with Alzheimer’s, I think, is exactly the kind of challenge that it means to become a friend of time. We forget that our most precious gift for others is presence; just being present.... When there is not a lot to do other than to be present, you find out... what it means to be a friend of time.4
One profound way in which God remembers us is by being present with tts.” A deep way of remembering a person with dementia is by being present with them. Presence means taking time seriously. Memory and pies- ence form the basis for the profound act of being with another without do- lng anything for another. This is the way of being that Vanier has had to learn during his life with people who have severe intellectual disabilities. Hauerwas urges people to learn the same practice of presence as they encounter people with advanced dementia. If L’Arche is a revolutionary movement born out of small gestures, then perhaps as we reflect on the small gesture of presence as it works itself out in the lives of people with advanced dementia, a second revolution can be initiated: a revolution that comes simply from remembering and being with another person.
The basic argument of this chapter is this: To love one another, we need to be present for one another. To be present, we need to learn to remember
There Is a Bridge, DVD.	, .,, ■
Matthew 1:23: “‘The virgin will be with chi an
"■'ill call him Immanuel’ — which means, God wiwell and to use time differently and more faithfully. In remembering well and using time differently, we will discover that being with another is the most powerful way of ministering, not simply with and towards people with dementia, but also with and towards all people. As the community remembers and learns the rhythms of being with one another without the need for words, so healing can begin, even in the midst of deep forgetfulness. If it is the case that love means saying to the other, “It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world,” then our task will be to discover what it means to engage in such willful love.
Understanding Time
The place to begin is with a question: What is time for? It's interesting to note how time and our perceptions of time are shaped by our social context. Within a social context that values the market and that is determined by the need for effective productivity and output, time is perceived as a pseudophysical commodity to be bartered in the marketplace of temporal/spatial existence. We live with time as if it’s constantly about to run out. It’s valuable to us, but we can never get enough of it. And very often time becomes our enemy rather than our friend. Why does time have such a hold on us?
In Chapter 13 of his Confessions, St. Augustine wrestles with the question of time:
What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time, and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time.
Augustine is particularly concerned with the question of what God was doing before God created the world:
How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to see the answer; it is another to laugh at the questioner, and for myself I do not answer these things thus. More willingly would I have answered, “I do not know what I do not know,” than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer. . . , Rather, I say that thou, our God, art the Creator of every creature. And if in the term “heaven and earth” every creature is included, I make bold to say further: “Before God made heaven and earth, he did not make anything at all. For if he did, what did he make unless it were a creature?” I do indeed wish that I knew all that I desire to know to my profit as surely as I know that no creature was made before any creature was made.
Augustine’s concern is that if time existed before the creation of the world, this would involve the creator in time. For Augustine, the absolute contingency of the world is crucial. Time relates closely to non-being. If God is in time, then God is open to this possibility, which reduces the contingency of creation:
It is the tendency towards non-being that distinguishes the temporal from the eternal because “should the present be always present, and should it not pass into time past, truly it could not be time but eternity. s
If God were subject to time, this would contradict the idea that God wos ever-present, eternal, and unchangeable.
For Augustine, God is in a real sense timeless — that is, God stands outside of time. It is wrong-headed to ask, “What did God do with God s time before the creation of the world?” There was no time before the creation of the world. Time came into existence when the world was created; time is an aspect of creation. Creaturely ideas about time should not be attributed to God:
Therefore since you are the maker of all times, if there was a time before you made heaven and earth, why do they say that you rested from work? 
Read the above Readings:
‘Becoming Friends of Time’ from John Swinton, Dementia
and concise the following answers : Questions:
1) What do you think are three or four of the main ideas of the opening section (pp. 227-230) of Swinton’s chapter ‘Becoming Friends of Time: Learning to Live in the Present Moment’? (3-4 sentences)

Firstly, through Vanier's concept of being a friend of time, Swinton emphasizes re-evaluating our relationship with time, not as a commodity to be managed but as something to be cherished and respected, especially in caring for individuals with severe intellectual disabilities, with Vanier advocating “Members of a community have to be friends of time.” Secondly, Swinton introduces our societal perception of time as a commodity to be managed as a barrier to true relationships and care and highlights the importance of presence as a gift and a fundamental aspect of care, illustrated by Vanier’s belief. Thirdly, the chapter discusses the transformative potential of ‘being with’ someone in their present moment and “remembering well” to create meaningful connections beyond the limitations of conventional communication and foster a deeper understanding, healing, and caregiving. Lastly, it introduces that properly engaging with the present moment can initiate a ‘revolution’ of care and ministering for people with dementia and all people, suggesting that a revolution that comes simply from remembering and being with another person can significantly change our approach to caregiving and relationship building, where simply being with another is the most powerful way of ministering to the needs and humanity.