Theology, Disability, and Spiritual Transformation: Learning from ...

elements in their respective approaches that must be accounted for in order for the theory of transformation to claim phenomenological, psychological, and theological depth. The final section of this chapter focuses briefly on the methodology of the study to clarify the inductive approach adopted.

The third and fourth chapters set the context for the study of the spiritual experience of L’Arche assistants. Chapter three offers a historical account of the spirituality of L’Arche and attempts to set the social and communal context for the narratives of long-term L’Arche assistants. Chapter four is devoted to a phenomenological description of the experience of transformation in the lives of L’Arche assistants. By listening carefully to their narratives and to those who are responsible for their supervision, this study grounds itself fully in qualitative empirical data on the particular experience of change that assistants report. This chapter also draws heavily on the experiences of healing and transformation that have been described by Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and other leading figures in the L’Arche movement and seeks to offer a “thick description” of the contours of growth in communion. This growth is described in terms of three interior awakenings: the awakening to the inner capacity for love, tenderness, and compassion; the awakening to anguish, pain, and inner darkness; and the awakening to human and divine acceptance.

In chapter five, the psychological hypothesis advanced is that through the process of entering into this succession of awakenings, assistants in L’Arche communities experience a profound healing of shame and a shift in their felt sense of identity and self-worth. This chapter attempts to bring psychological insight on shame to bear on the process of change in consciousness, identity, and behavior through a critical appropriation of Silvan Tomkins’ affect and script theory and its interpretation by Donald Nathanson, Gershen Kaufman, and James Fowler. Through the lenses of these theories, an exploration is undertaken of how, in the restoration of an “interpersonal bridge” and surrendering of cultural, defending, and identity scripts in relation to persons who are nonthreatening, L’Arche assistants are able to begin the process of externalizing and dissolving affect, need, and drive-shame binds. The reason for choosing shame as the psychological focus of this study is explained in terms of its evident