Your favorite virtue: Faithfulness.
The quality you most admire in a man: Integrity. Being true, being just. And the way a father is—the ability to play with his children.
The quality you most admire in a woman: Tenderness. One-to-one relationship. That intimate way of respecting the other without judgment, of being near them, of loving them. The capacity to enter into a singular relationship, a real encounter.
What you like most about your friends: Their joy. When I see them arrive and they are happy, relaxed... Their trust in me, their openness.
Your principal fault: More than a fault, they are fears; perhaps the fear of being rejected. A fault: in relationship, wanting to step in too quickly, not really listening all the way through.
Your favorite occupation: Right now, reading and prayer. And living happily in my home.
Your dream of happiness: To keep living where I am, with the people I live with. To keep living in the present moment, for whatever time is given to me.
Your greatest misfortune: It would be not to be true, not to be at peace with my deepest conscience.
What you would like to be: Myself...
The country where you dream of living: L'Arche! Wherever I go, I go to an Arche community. It is my homeland, my home, my hearth. It is living with people welcomed into Arche. That is the place of relationship.
Your favorite color: Blue, perhaps. It reminds me of tenderness, the Virgin Mary.
Your favorite flower: Dandelions, daisies, and primroses...
Your favorite bird: I am very fond of swallows. The ones that leave early for Africa... At the Orval monastery (in Belgium, where Jean would go to rest, editor's note), I loved to watch them fly over the water, play with each other... As if they were laughing together.
Your favorite authors in prose: The theologian José Antonio Pagola. I have read him four times in two years. He is a profound scholar of the time of Jesus and reminds us how, before his coming, the Galileans were persecuted. They are a poor people, unlike the people of Jerusalem. Jesus eats with them, announces the Kingdom... He reveals himself to them with great tenderness. Pagola reveals a Jesus so humble, so simple, that it makes me feel well.
Your favorite authors in verse: Maurice Bellet. He is not really a poet, but his writing is truly poetic.
Your favorite characters of fiction: I don't read fiction... I adored Agatha Christie... A long time ago.
Your favorite composers: I don't listen to music...
Your favorite painters: Some years ago, I would have said Blessed Angelico. Today I would say Arcabas: he is less stylized, more simplified.
What you most detest: Cruelty. Domination—that is, authority that crushes instead of elevates.
The military event you most admire: The D-Day landing. I was in England then. I find it extraordinary how they managed to keep it secret. But I have a more meaningful memory of the Canadian landing at Dieppe, in 1942, which was instead forgotten: that moved me. Finally, I admire the courage of the English in the Battle of Britain.
A gift from nature you would like to have: The feeling of being part of a whole, of being connected...
How you would like to die: In my bed! (laughs) Peacefully.
Your state of mind: Peaceful.
The sins that inspire you with most clemency: Those of addiction, linked to alcohol, drugs, sex… The people I have encountered have touched me deeply, because they do not know how to stop.
Your motto: "Live the present moment with gratitude".
Cyrill Douillet, 2018
Transl. by Rita Massi
