Community Stories: Vulnerability, Grief, and Re-Founding Flourishing in L’Arche

In the wake of the findings about Jean Vanier, L’Arche communities have faced a shared grief over what has been lost—trust, meaning, and a coherent founding story. This paper argues that L’Arche’s future rests on local stories that actually constitute community: the embodied practices of mutuality, care, and belonging lived by core members and assistants. Drawing on first-person experience and the theological reflections of virtues of vulnerability and grief, I propose an ethical-theological model in which grief (interpersonal and institutional) becomes a truthful form of remembrance and a catalyst for re-founding and for a broader social ethic of belonging.