Thinking about disability
11/02/16 05:09
I don’t know how much fear of death is a part of people’s lives. What seems to be more prevalent is fear of talking about death. And then, I don’t know if it is fear. I often encounter people who are uncomfortable talking about death. The discomfort is revealed with silence and occasionally with joking and sometimes with a blatant move to change the subject.
Although yesterday was Ash Wednesday, a day to contemplate our mortality and be reminded of our own death, I was thinking of people’s discomfort with death in an entirely different context. I was noticing that some people in our community are made visibly uncomfortable when they are around people who live with disabilities. I wonder if there is something about another’s disability that makes us uneasy because we don’t like to think of the possibility of ourselves as disabled.
I suppose that had I been born in a different time, I might be considered disabled. I have nearsightedness and astigmatism. These days, those conditions are no big deal. A trip to the eye doctor and a set of glasses can be made that enable me to see well enough to engage in all of the activities I choose. In a hunter-gatherer society, without glasses, I wouldn’t have been much of a provider. I don’t see well enough to be able to hunt game. Of course in other epochs of time, my condition would be nearly invisible. Because I have reasonable close vision, I can read most text without my glasses. That isn’t much of an advantage in a preliterate society, which is the story of most of human history. I might have been forced to make more adaptations depending on the time in which I lived.
But I didn’t live in those times. My condition was recognized fairly early in my life and I’ve received excellent health care and have glasses and even a spare pair. It is hardly a disability.
Of course there are plenty of disabilities that are more obvious and evident in a person’s life. There are birth defects that result in skeletal and muscular abnormalities that give a person a different gate. Sometimes these conditions are addressed surgically or with adaptive devices such as shoes with lifts or braces that add rigidity to certain parts of the body. In times before such devices were invented those suffering from those conditions would be considered crippled and likely suffered social stigma as a result of their condition.
The Gospels are filled with people with disabilities that are described in the terms of the day, not in modern medical terms. We read about those who are blind or lame or possessed without knowing exactly what their conditions were. We know that some people healed by Jesus suffered from seizures, but whether or not the actual medical diagnosis would be epilepsy, for example, is speculation. What we do know from the Gospels and other independent sources is that those conditions often resulted in a person being excluded from a community, often forced to live outside the walls of the community. A hard life was made even more difficult by the reaction of the mainstream community.
I don’t know if such a reaction was caused by fear or not. I do know it happens with other animals. When a deer is injured, it will be picked on by other deer until it is separated from the clusters that stick together. Often we will see deer kicking another animal. In our neighborhood the injured animal usually leaves and we never know its story. I suppose some recover from their injuries and others die. I guess the process is a part of natural selection. By shoving the injured animal to the fringes of the community, those who are left are somehow less vulnerable to predators.
I am interested in how we react as humans because I feel called to remain engaged in forming community. I follow Jesus, but I do not have his ability to heal brokenness. My touch is no cure for blindness. So my role is to seek to understand the dynamics of the community in other ways. I watch our congregation. Many members are open and welcoming of those who live with disabilities. There is some discomfort when communication is strained by differences in speech patterns. There are some who don’t know exactly how to respond to some who have different ways of walking and talking. For the most part, however, I am proud of my congregation’s welcome for those who live with disabilities. We have invested resources in removing barriers from our physical building so that there is access for all. It is a relatively easy building to negotiate with a wheelchair or a walker.
Physical barriers, however, are only part of the story. Being a congregation that values education and has a strong tradition of clergy who have been academically successful, we don’t always know how to relate to those who have brain disorders or cognitive impairment. Most issues in our congregation are encountered with conversation. When someone doesn’t have language skills, we are a bit stymied about how to pursue that relationship.
Most of us, however, will one day experience disability. Some of those disabilities will result in isolation from the community. It isn’t at all uncommon for a church member who has been a dedicated and regular attender of church worship and functions, to lose the ability to be with the community when that person is no longer able to drive. Some physical limitations result in people needing to leave their homes for care centers and we often have a major shift in our relationship with them when that move occurs. Instead of them coming to us, we need to go to that person and our conversation becomes less frequent. We work hard to have a system of congregational connections with those who are homebound or shut in, but those connections aren’t the same as meting weekly for worship.
So I continue to think about these things and I continue to be aware that our response is less than perfect. I hope that I never become afraid to think and talk about disability and even death itself. After all, an organization dedicated to celebrating the resurrection shouldn’t be afraid to talk about death.
Although yesterday was Ash Wednesday, a day to contemplate our mortality and be reminded of our own death, I was thinking of people’s discomfort with death in an entirely different context. I was noticing that some people in our community are made visibly uncomfortable when they are around people who live with disabilities. I wonder if there is something about another’s disability that makes us uneasy because we don’t like to think of the possibility of ourselves as disabled.
I suppose that had I been born in a different time, I might be considered disabled. I have nearsightedness and astigmatism. These days, those conditions are no big deal. A trip to the eye doctor and a set of glasses can be made that enable me to see well enough to engage in all of the activities I choose. In a hunter-gatherer society, without glasses, I wouldn’t have been much of a provider. I don’t see well enough to be able to hunt game. Of course in other epochs of time, my condition would be nearly invisible. Because I have reasonable close vision, I can read most text without my glasses. That isn’t much of an advantage in a preliterate society, which is the story of most of human history. I might have been forced to make more adaptations depending on the time in which I lived.
But I didn’t live in those times. My condition was recognized fairly early in my life and I’ve received excellent health care and have glasses and even a spare pair. It is hardly a disability.
Of course there are plenty of disabilities that are more obvious and evident in a person’s life. There are birth defects that result in skeletal and muscular abnormalities that give a person a different gate. Sometimes these conditions are addressed surgically or with adaptive devices such as shoes with lifts or braces that add rigidity to certain parts of the body. In times before such devices were invented those suffering from those conditions would be considered crippled and likely suffered social stigma as a result of their condition.
The Gospels are filled with people with disabilities that are described in the terms of the day, not in modern medical terms. We read about those who are blind or lame or possessed without knowing exactly what their conditions were. We know that some people healed by Jesus suffered from seizures, but whether or not the actual medical diagnosis would be epilepsy, for example, is speculation. What we do know from the Gospels and other independent sources is that those conditions often resulted in a person being excluded from a community, often forced to live outside the walls of the community. A hard life was made even more difficult by the reaction of the mainstream community.
I don’t know if such a reaction was caused by fear or not. I do know it happens with other animals. When a deer is injured, it will be picked on by other deer until it is separated from the clusters that stick together. Often we will see deer kicking another animal. In our neighborhood the injured animal usually leaves and we never know its story. I suppose some recover from their injuries and others die. I guess the process is a part of natural selection. By shoving the injured animal to the fringes of the community, those who are left are somehow less vulnerable to predators.
I am interested in how we react as humans because I feel called to remain engaged in forming community. I follow Jesus, but I do not have his ability to heal brokenness. My touch is no cure for blindness. So my role is to seek to understand the dynamics of the community in other ways. I watch our congregation. Many members are open and welcoming of those who live with disabilities. There is some discomfort when communication is strained by differences in speech patterns. There are some who don’t know exactly how to respond to some who have different ways of walking and talking. For the most part, however, I am proud of my congregation’s welcome for those who live with disabilities. We have invested resources in removing barriers from our physical building so that there is access for all. It is a relatively easy building to negotiate with a wheelchair or a walker.
Physical barriers, however, are only part of the story. Being a congregation that values education and has a strong tradition of clergy who have been academically successful, we don’t always know how to relate to those who have brain disorders or cognitive impairment. Most issues in our congregation are encountered with conversation. When someone doesn’t have language skills, we are a bit stymied about how to pursue that relationship.
Most of us, however, will one day experience disability. Some of those disabilities will result in isolation from the community. It isn’t at all uncommon for a church member who has been a dedicated and regular attender of church worship and functions, to lose the ability to be with the community when that person is no longer able to drive. Some physical limitations result in people needing to leave their homes for care centers and we often have a major shift in our relationship with them when that move occurs. Instead of them coming to us, we need to go to that person and our conversation becomes less frequent. We work hard to have a system of congregational connections with those who are homebound or shut in, but those connections aren’t the same as meting weekly for worship.
So I continue to think about these things and I continue to be aware that our response is less than perfect. I hope that I never become afraid to think and talk about disability and even death itself. After all, an organization dedicated to celebrating the resurrection shouldn’t be afraid to talk about death.