9 posts tagged “disabled”
From the article, "Opening minds, and Congregation Doors, to the Disabled" by Audrey Dutton :
We were really trying to find a vehicle that would be helpful in making positive changes in the community in the area of having congregations be more welcoming and more inclusive,” said Lenore Layman, special needs and disability services director at the partnership.
The partnership’s goal was to ‘‘create a culture of inclusiveness” for disabled people and their families — a culture that many synagogues are now adopting, according to Layman.
‘‘There’s been so much in the secular world” that regulates disabled access on a physical level, Layman said.
Layman said the ‘‘culture” of inclusion — how to speak to someone who is disabled, include them and accommodate their needs — is something all houses of worship should work to create.
From the Joni and Friends' radio progam on 11/19/07.
The man who has the blog I have mentioned a few times on here, Disabled Christianity, and who helps lead a Sunday school class for adults with and without developmental disabilities has a video out about his class.
UPDATE:
I have found a video.
She is the same person who did In My Language.
All the hoopla about what's-her-face using the word f****t. It's such an evil word, really. Unlike the term homosexual which describes a person's current same-sex attractions, the word is used to hate the person with same-sex attractions.
Oh, and there's a bunch of fun other words, like the 'b' word for women, for instance, as well as all the hate-filled ways we refer to Jews, Hispanics, Aisians, and on and on and on.
Vox blogger Emancipator, referring to the vile word that begins with an 'n', stated that it is not a word, but a created image. That's just it, really. The word is an ingrained image in our head of what people of a certain race should be and can only be, as 'less than', as sub-human.
Think then about the word 'cripple' for those with physical disabilities. Doesn't an image of a burdoness beggar come to mind?
What about the way we use 'crazy'? Nut job? Looney?
When we say, 'that Anna Nicole Smith, she was one crazy lady'... What do we even mean? Do we mean her actions were smptomatic of mental illness and because of that mental illness she is worthy of judgment? No, I think we mean many of her actions were bizarre and immoral, so why do we use the word crazy? Because we still think the symptoms of mental illness are bizarre and immoral, and therefore so are the people who suffer from it.
Although they sometimes embrace the word 'crazy' in an attempt to own the hurtful word, in general people with mental illness don't like to be called crazy. Because of the created image of crazy.
People with mental retardation don't embrace the word retard. Ever. It's hurtful to them. Some of the older people I've know with mental retardation may refer themselves as 'retarded' in the clinical sense, and may even use it as an identity. I wish they wouldn't use it as an identity, but as some people choose to use their sexual orientation as their identity, it's their perogative. But I digress.
My point is, no one ever uses the word 'retard' in an affectionate way.
For those with mental retardation, it's a word that's been used to label them their entire lives. They may or may not cognitively understand the dictionary or medical definition of the words 'retard' or 'retarded', but they know what it means when people call them that. It means the person using the word hates them. Doesn't think they are as good as s/he is. It means that the person using the word 'retard' is separating him/herself from the person with mental retardation, calling him 'different', 'less than', 'sub-human'.
So, every couple of decades or so, probably in attempt to be more PC, those who care about people with metnal retardation have the clinical terms changed. From feebleminded and moron to retarded to mental retardation (still technically today's medical term) to developmentaly disabled (a more politically correct umbrella term which includes a viariety of disabilities, not just mental retardation) and the brand new one, which I personally happen to hate, intellectual disability.
But I fear society is always going to take those clinical definitions, as now we do with 'retard' and 'retarded', and throw them back at those with mental retardation, using them to clearly define them as different, scary, and worthy of being hated. Actually hated. And to draw the line of separation.
We may not throw it at the actual person, though every person with mental retardation has heard the word 'retard'. What we do is use it in our everday language to describe things that are comical or ridiculous or things we hate. Just as how many of us may feel about those with mental retardation. We've done it with the old terms like idiot, moron, and so on. Now, we do it with the words retarded and retard. My brother calls his dog a retard. Friends, good people as they are, use the word retarded to describe ideas or a lousy meal.
If we had a choice to be thought of as rich or retarded, as selfish or stupid, how many of us would choose rich and selfish over retarded and stupid? Why are we, me included, afraid of not being as intelligent as other people, when there so many other gifts people have other than intelligence? There are, come to think of it, so many other kinds of intelligences other than 'book smarts'.
But what if a person is just not smart at all? If s/he has no common sense, does everything wrong or cannot do anything at all. Has no gifts (although I have yet to meet such a person). As Martin Luther King saw things, shouldn't we all want to be judged by character, not our abilities, race, or gender? For we can control our character.
I have totally rambled on. I am challenging myself not to go back and correct spelling, grammer, structure. I don't want to appear smart. I want to appear of good character.
Those who can speak up and say, 'do not call me f****t, n****r, or b***h' do stand up and should do so. There should be hoopla when people use words like f****t. They've not always been allowed to, but most people who've been hated with words have had the ability to stand up for themselves, did so, and eventually they were heard. Or at least they are being heard.
Those with mental illness or mental retardation not only haven't been allowed to stand up for themselves but many of us have never even been able to. People have had to do it for us. Hence my challange on behalf of those who have mental illnes or mental retardation:
As you would never use the word f****t, n****r, or b***h, do not use the words 'retard' or 'retarded' or 'crazy'. That's it. Use them in their literal sense, perhaps, (retard means to slow down, etc.), but don't use them at people. Don't use them to describe ideas or a lousy meal or whatever. DON'T use them.
This is an interview with Henry Nouwen, found at the bottom of the page here on the website of 30 Good Minutes. Nouwen was a priest who after two decades of teaching at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas and at the Universities of Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard, left to share his life with people with developmental disabilities at the L'Arche community of Daybreak in Toronto, Canada. I don't know what has become of his retreat idea, of which I would like to find out more, but I was intrigued by his experiences living with those with cognitive disabilities. I like what he says about God blessing this community of very poor people right in the midst of their vulnerabliity.
Also on this page, Henri Nouwen speaks about "Solitude, Community & Ministry: Three Ways to Create Space for God"
Interview with Henri Nouwen
Interviewed by Dave Hardin
Hardin: Henri, we were talking before the program that you are involved in building a retreat center which will hold retreats for all of God's people, including the mentally handicapped that you are so involved with. Tell us about that idea.
Nouwen: Well, Dave, I've been living at the Daybreak Community now for seven years. What I have discovered there is that our people, the weakest among us, have incredible gifts. Maybe not talents, you know, like playing the piano or writing, but gifts, spiritual gifts, like the gift of welcome, the gift of friendship, the gift of a smile. They are really beautiful gifts.
Hardin: Harder gifts to see, maybe.
Nouwen: Yes and I discovered that. Then I started to give retreats, small retreats, to groups of people in our community. I invited some of our most handicapped people to be with me and, in a way, to give the retreat with me. What I discovered is that when the people went home, they may have forgotten most of what I said, but they have never forgotten the handicapped people who were there. Quite often, they were the ones who moved them most deeply and, in a way, created a renewal in their hearts. Then I discovered that if it is true that mentally handicapped people have spiritual gifts to offer, I should build a little center where they can do that more and more.
Hardin: When you talk about handicapped people being part of retreats, would they just act as normal participants? What do they do?
Nouwen: Some talk; some cannot speak at all; some cannot walk and they lay on a cushion right there with me in a circle of people. Their incredible vulnerability is amazing. They are so vulnerable; they are so weak. In a way, you know, their weakness makes people aware who God really is. God is a God who became weak, who became vulnerable, who was born in a manger, who died on the cross.
It is not so much what they say -- most of them cannot speak at all -- but their presence is like the presence of God in their midst. They have a very concrete experience of the way of God's vulnerability just by these people who are with us.
Hardin: We don't see these people as fitting in, do we? We have a misconception about them that is very sad.
Nouwen: It is very true. Quite often people with handicaps, whatever their handicaps, are considered marginal in our society. They don't make money; they are not productive and all of that, but they are the real poor. Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor." Jesus doesn't say, "Blessed are those who care for the poor." Jesus doesn't say, "Blessed are those who help the poor." He says, "Blessed are the poor." That means the blessing of God is right there in their vulnerability, in their weakness, and that is what I experience. God gives enormous gifts to people who come to our community through those who are most weak and handicapped.
Hardin: These people who come and are, let's say, more average people, what happens to them? How do they benefit from these handicapped people? What is the process?
Nouwen: They live with us for a week and sometimes they are also invited to help the people themselves a little bit. They have a meal with them, but when they go home, they write us and say, "What I lived with you has opened my heart in a way that it would have never been opened unless these very big people were there. In a way, they changed my heart. They have encouraged me to become vulnerable myself. I am always trying to be so together. I am always trying to perform well and now I have discovered that God loves me in my brokenness."
Hardin: It is sort of magic, isn't it? We have got to end, but thank you. That's a marvelous process. We should try more of it. Thank you for being with us.
Check out Jeff McNair's blog. He was a facilitator of a workshop I attended at the conference for disability ministry. He's been a part of disability ministry for a long time, and he's got a lot of wise things to say.
Watch the video from The Castle on the Hill.
The creeps. I drive by a still operating state mental hospital every day on the way to work. It gives me the creeps.
The idea of institutionalization. It's not a Christian one, I judge.
Since the beginning of the fall, I imagine, there have been people who've had disabilities, and they've all had a turn at outcast. None more so than those with mental illness and developmental disability.
As an attempt to care for these individuals, what genuinely began as an attempt at kindness, for the alternatives before institutions included jails, town cages, 'ships of fools', and death, came institutionalization. If we who claimed to follow Scripture, would have cared for our loved ones and neighbors ourselves in our homes or at least found a way to keep these fellow members of the Body in our communities, there never would have been a need for such an audacious idea to separate and hide, in the name of care, those of whom we don't speak.
I am not saying that no good thing has ever come from institutions. Many have found treatment and safety from the attacking world and from their own demons.
But institutionalization is just not normal. It is not normal to live with hundreds of other people, nor to live in a community separated by 'staff' and 'patient', a unique form of a class system.
Nor is it normal to work in such a setting, where one is given the title of 'well' and given assumed power and authority over other human beings. Certainly not all staff, but many who had never had such power in their own human and broken lives, well, they abused their new power.
I could go on. But I'm not in the mood for a rant.
Of course, downsizing hospitals and state schools and mainstreaming individuals into the community was and is a good idea. However, just because we 'let them out' of the institutions, doesn't mean we don't have responsibilities for them anymore. I don't know the statistics, but how many homeless people have mental illness? How many neighborhoods have protested group homes moving in next door?
For those of us who would prefer less government, this means we have to step up ourselves. Either give up our time or give up our money to private charities. For those who prefer more government involvement, well, I'm sure there's something you can do, too.
I don't know how what was supposed to have been one sentence turned into several paragraphs. I don't have all the answers. I don't know what to do about it all. Wish I did. Driving by that hospital (not the one linked above) on the way to work everyday hurts.
