| Summary: | In spite of the frequent usage of the word community to describe various
groups and social networks in our society, the nature of the experience of
community living has been largely unexplored. As a response to this lack
of research , this inquiry attempted to answer the question of what
community meant to six members of the residential communities of
L'Arche, an international network of communities where people with and
without disabilities live and work together. L'Arche was selected because
it represents an extreme effort to establish a whole way of life based on
communal values. The phenomenological research method incorporated
twelve in-depth, open-ended interviews. Analysis of gathered information
revealed six themes and 17 subthemes. The themes describe the
participants' experiences of making a purposeful decision, adopting a
communal way of life, deepening their spiritual and religious orientations,
enhancing personal growth, facing personal limitations, and being involved
in conflicts and disagreements. Each of these themes contains from one
to four subthemes which are dynamically interdependent and revelatory of
the complexity of the shared experience. The pattern described is a more
complete picture of the meaning of the experience of living and working in
L'Arche than previously available in the research literature. === Education, Faculty of === Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of === Graduate
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