On June 20, 2017, 500 people from L Arche communities around the globe will gather in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for our Federation Assembly.

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1 Letter to THE Federation June 2016 On June 20, 2017, 500 people from L Arche communities around the globe will gather in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for our Federation Assembly. The Federation Assembly meets every five years, to determine the vision of the Federation, reflecting on the experience and concerns of the communities. It is a time to work, pray, celebrate and build unity among us. This is a general letter to introduce you to Belfast Starting in September 2016, you will receive regular bulletins to share updates and more information. Please watch out for these! The people of Belfast will welcome us next June. We will encounter a people and culture rich with experiences of forgiveness and reconciliation, and of hope for the future. Participants in the Federation Assembly from further away will be invited to visit a community in Europe in the days before arriving in Belfast. This opportunity to welcome and visit is an integral part of the experience of Belfast You will receive more information about the community visits in the coming months. In brief When? Where? for info and questions? June 20 27, 2017 in Belfast, with community visits prior to this. Queen s University Belfast belfast17@larche.org 1

2 The planning committee The planning committee for Belfast 2017 is Pat Favaro (Director), Anne Chabert d Hières (Inclusion), Marie-Sandrine Saas (Logistics) and Hazel Bradley (Drama and Liturgies). Other committees will begin their work over the coming weeks and months. Plans for music at the Federation Assembly have already begun! Please see later in this letter, a message from Anthony Kramers who is responsible for music. Journey to Belfast The theme of Belfast 2017 is Re-membering our future Rappeler l a-venir ensemble. Starting in September 2016, everyone in the Federation will be invited into a Journey to Belfast. The Federation Assembly is not just for the people who attend. This next year is an opportunity for all of us in L Arche to revisit our story, acknowledge and claim it, put together again the different parts of our body, and to welcome all that is to come in our future. Later in this letter you will find an important message from Hazel Bradley describing the resources that will guide us on our Journey to Belfast. Choosing participants Each community will send one delegate to the Federation Assembly. Individual Members also attend (as defined by our International Constitution). Each country has been allocated a number of additional places. Countries distribute these additional places according to their needs and reality, and to ensure that participants reflect our diversity. Now is the time to choose your delegates and additional participants. It is important that you follow the criteria as you make your choice. Please go to Starting in March 2017, participants from some countries will need to apply for a visa to enter the United Kingdom. For more information, please go to Let us all pray for our Federation, for our Assembly, and for all that we will be called to live in the coming months. Pat Favaro 2

3 Music at the Federation Assembly I am happy and honoured to be asked to co-ordinate the music for Belfast. Pat and all the planning team hope it will be an integral part of the meeting, that helps us find joy in our diversity and strength in our common mission. We have many people across L Arche gifted in singing, playing instruments, choosing or composing songs - and many who love animating a meeting or time of prayer with music. I ask for your help with 3 things: 1. Suggestions of repertoire. We will have around 70 pieces in mind for the week, and they will be a diverse mix of languages, styles, themes, and number of words. With so many languages to draw on, most of us won t already know many of the songs. Do send in your suggestion of a piece used in your country, and if you have the music, or an online link to listen to it, that s great too. Leaders can also recommend someone we should refer to for ideas. While we won t have space to use every suggestion, each one received by October will be noted. 2. The full-time musicians in Belfast are expected to be 7 we could form an orchestra with seventy times that, given the talent in L Arche Country leaders in Vilnius were invited to make suggestions of names of full-time musicians to consider, and that invitation remains open to the end of July. 3. There will be lots of scope during a particular session of the meeting for delegates to offer their own gifts of singing, animation or playing an instrument. So once you know who is coming, please invite them to let me know what they can offer to one or more sessions during the Assembly. I am a member of L Arche Edinburgh, and you can reach me on anthony.kramers@larche.org.uk or on anthony.kramers.larche. Do get in touch we ll be learning together in Belfast how to leaven a session of reports with music, as well as singing a new song to the Lord. Anthony Kramers 3

4 Journey to Belfast These have been the international themes since Jubilee to Sabbath living to Forgiveness and Reconciliation to our Journey to Belfast! And now we prepare for the coming International Federation Assembly in Belfast 2017 with Re-membering our future Rappeler l a-venir ensemble as the theme. There is a coherence. A Jubilee calls for thanksgiving and celebration. We are very good at this but it calls also for a year of rest, for Sabbath living. We are not so good at this! Too many daily demands push us into doing rather than being. Do look up the document on Sabbath living on the International Meeting Ground: A Jubilee also calls for forgiveness and reconciliation so our international leaders, Patrick Fontaine and Eileen Glass, called us to work on this in a deeper and more conscious way after our Jubilee year. One of the major obstacles for us, identified during our Identity and Mission Process , is: Too often, individuals and groups in communities do not experience loving and honest communication resulting in personal hurt and broken relationships. Therefore over the past months various resources, (including reflections by our church leaders, stories from communities across the world, images and suggestions for activities), have been provided by L Arche International for specific times of the year: L Arche Family Day 2015 Welcome Home Advent 2015 Welcome Home Lent weeks Encounters of Forgiveness Easter period weeks The Journey of Reconciliation All the material is still available and relevant. Do adapt it and use as is useful to you and your community at other times or occasions. 4

5 And now we prepare for Belfast participants will come representing every community in the federation. But the Federation Assembly is for everyone in L Arche. It is an important moment when together we approve the mandate for the coming years and appoint a new leadership team. We all need to work together, whether attending or not, in the preparation for this assembly as we re-member our past in order to look forward to our future so that we might be faithful to our identity and mission. This means there is work to do on identifying our priorities for the future, based on our knowledge of our past history. It will include being aware of our gifts and being thankful for them, acknowledging our failures and limits, asking forgiveness for these and a seeking of reconciliation. Belfast and Northern Ireland have much to teach us in these areas. Too often thinking of Belfast brings up images of the Troubles, of the so called Peace Walls which continue past divisions, yet there are so many inspiring stories of forgiveness and reconciliation which need to be told and to be heard. There is also the story of St. Patrick, stolen away from Britain in the 5th century, living as a slave and exile in Ireland, escaping, feeling called to return and choosing to return to the people who had exploited him, to bring a message of hope and love. In the so called Dark Ages, Ireland was renown as the land of saints and scholars. It is from this land that missionaries sailed in small round boats (curraghs), to the rest of Europe, taking with them their learning and the message of the gospel. Today too we live in an age of exile and fear, an age where more and more walls are being built physically and in our own hearts, dividing us. May we all over the coming months, and in Belfast during the meeting there, find ways to break down these walls, ways to be windows not walls as L Arche Syria has discovered their mission to be today, as together we work on forgiveness and reconciliation. May we be inspired by the people of Belfast, by our community there, and by our own past stories, to find the ways to move forward together into our future with hope and renewed energy. 5

6 Our whole Federation will be invited into the Journey to Belfast. Look out for the resources which will help us live this journey together starting in September. Journey to Belfast 1 - September 1st Oct. Re-member the Body L Arche Family Day Resources Journey to Belfast 2 - November 14 Nov. Light in the Dark Karthigai Deepam, a Hindu celebration 27 Nov. Past Stories, Future Hope Advent Resources (the Christian season before Christmas) 25 Dec. The Gift of Light Chanukah, the Jewish festival of lights 1 Jan. Being Faithful Muslim Resources for Prayer Journey to Belfast 3 - January Journey to Belfast 4 - March Journey to Belfast 5 - May New Beginnings Leaving the Familiar Welcoming the Unknown There will also be a series of very short films with reflection material provided over the months from September to guide us on the Journey to Belfast: 7 featuring Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest who worked against apartheid in South Africa. He lost both hands and one eye when he opened a parcel bomb, and now runs a centre for the healing of traumatic memories. 6 featuring Ruth Patterson who has worked for years on reconciliation in Northern Ireland and is well known in L Arche. Along with these films are the #As I Am films which are good preparatory material too for the Belfast meeting as a way of being introduced to the wider body of the Federation, but more importantly to renew our awareness of the gifts which people with learning disabilities bring to our world. May we all be enriched by our Journey to Belfast together as we Re-member our future Rappeler l a-venir ensemble. Hazel Bradley 6