The last ten years of his life were spent at Daybreak, Jean Vanier's l'Arche community in Toronto, Canada, where the concepts of his books finally met hard reality. At Daybreak he took care of a profoundly retarded young man named Adam. Henri made no more sense to the secular mind than his Master, and this is true greatness. Henri Nouwen died in September 1996. R eal care is not ambiguous.
Real care excludes indifference and is the opposite of apathy.
I am very much struck by this background of the word care because we tend to look at caring as an attitude of the strong toward the weak, of the powerful toward the powerless, of the have's toward the have-not's. And, in fact, we feel quite uncomfortable with an invitation to enter into someone's pain before doing something about it. Still, when we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. You might remember moments in which you were called to be with a friend who had lost a wife or husband, child or parent. Our tendency is to run away from the painful realities or to try to change them as soon as possible.