Disability

Review: Blessed Are the Rest of Us

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Blessed Are the Rest of Us, Micha Boyett. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023.

Summary: A mother with a Down’s Syndrome child discovers in the Beatitudes a relationship with God based on God’s love rather than our accomplishments.

A message on Lazarus spoke personally to Micha Boyett. The speaker asked why for someone so greatly loved by Jesus, we never hear Lazarus speak. The speaker wondered if Lazarus couldn’t speak–and if that was why he was so greatly loved by Jesus. We do not know for sure, but this deeply touched Boyett as the mother of a Down’s Syndrome child with autism and not able to do more than vocalize a few sounds. Living in fast-paced San Francisco where people are valued for productivity and achievement, it opened her eyes to a Jesus with a very different set of values for things not valued by society. Values that assured her of hope for her son.

In Blessed Are the Rest of Us, Micha Boyett explores the meaning of each statement in the Beatitudes, interweaving this with the story of Ace, her son. She begins with discussing the translation of makarioi, usually appearing as “blessed” in our Bibles but can also mean “happy,” “favored,” or even “flourishing.” What is stunning is that the people of whom Jesus speaks as makarioi or the “weak, the weary, and the worn out.”

For the weak, they are the caretakers of the dream of God. Imagine a parent with a Down’s Syndrome child seeing her struggling work with her child in that light. She writes of the grief of the news of the child she was carrying, the grief even her children felt at Ace’s agonizingly slow progress and the hope of a divine banquet and the foretastes in the joys of their family. She writes of meekness as the release of power and the strange wonder that only in the setting aside of our striving are we free to receive what we cannot earn because it has always been ours from the Beloved.

Boyett writes of the Beatitudes not only re-orienting what we value; they speak of the value intrinsic as the Beloved of God when we feel valueless. It moves us to forgive and seek justice, and show mercy. And it moves us to serve peace. Boyett in the chapter on peacemaking describes what, to her was a failure in such efforts, motivated out of concern she, her pastor and elder board had that the LGBTQ+ part of their church community experience greater peace. It all blew up two weeks before Boyett’s due date, This all culminated in a hard evening with their closest friends, part of the same church, who didn’t share her and the elders convictions. They say hard things, including the poor way this was implemented where it seemed a small group decided made decisions for a whole church. And then they show up when Boyett has to go on full bed rest. Boyett writes movingly of a hard, painful process of pursuing peace both with each other and for LGBTQ+ people in their congregation, and a friendship sustained by nothing other than the peace of Christ.

Along the way, Boyett writes both of the love and wonder she has for Ace, love that makes her a fierce advocate for him and others with disabilities, and how much harder it is for many persons of color. Whether you agree or not with all of Boyett’s ideas in this book, this is a profoundly prolife book in which Ace’s value, and that of others on the margins, is grounded in the counter-cultural values of the Beatitudes and a God who loves in our weakness, poverty, failures, and suffering. Ace is all of us–we just don’t know it–and through Boyett’s work, we can learn what it means to be among the makarioi.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: My Body is Not a Prayer Request

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My Body is Not a Prayer Request, Amy Kenny. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2022.

Summary: A description of the physical, emotional, spiritual, and verbal barriers disabled people face generally, and especially in their encounter with churches and what can be done to make them welcoming and inclusive places to the disabled.

The title and opening chapter sets out one of the ways “ableism” expresses itself among Christians. We seem desperately fixated on cures and treatments to “fix” the disabled rather than beginning with accepting disabled persons as they are. Instead of taking time to learn how God has encountered the disabled person and how they may be a gift to God’s people, they are treated as a problem to be solved, a condition to be healed. And try to imagine for a moment that this is you (if it is not already you). Wouldn’t that make you more than a bit uncomfortable.

Amy Kenny, who is disabled, begins with this as one expression of a form of discrimination many of us may not be aware of, ableism. Even though upwards of one quarter of our population is disabled in some form, our society is constructed around the able. We question the accommodations the disabled ask for to accomplish the same tasks as others in educational and other settings. We wonder if the person is disabled or “faking it” for some perceived benefit. Our architecture assumes the abled, even though accommodations for the disabled often benefit others (ramps benefit parents with strollers as well as those using wheel chairs or other wheeled devices). Churches are the most egregious offenders, being exempted from ADA requirements. We post signs saying “everyone welcome” while erecting these barriers that exclude or make to feel unwelcome a significant population.

Kenny addresses the dubious theological assumptions that are unhelpful from discussions of the fall to discussions of the bodies we will have in heaven. All convey that God doesn’t love these bodies and neither should we. She also speaks of how ableism creeps into our vocabulary. When we use words like “blind,” “deaf,” and “lame” as metaphors (which I know I have done countless times!), we never mean something good in their use. Imagine what it must feel like to hear a steady stream of such words if one is disabled in one of these ways. Kenny calls these “disability mosquitoes.” One mosquito bite isn’t so bad. A host of bites is uncomfortable or could even be deadly.

Jacob as an example of the disabled is one we do not often think of, but his wrestling overnight, having his hip put out of joint, made him a different, humbler and more generous person in his encounter the next day with Esau. Disability can be spiritually transformative, teaching dependence upon God and bringing new perspectives on both ourselves and God. Kenny observes how Christ crucified is himself disabled. We worship a disabled God.

She invites us to listen to the disabled and to incorporate “Crip space” (her term) into the design of our spaces. When we do so “It makes the muffins with the blueberries in the batter instead of tossing them on top after the muffins are baked.” And, like properly baked blueberry muffins, such spaces communicate love, that the disabled are not an afterthought. She also reminds us that everything from bicycles to touch screens on our phones began as assistive technology. When we receive the gifts the disabled offer us, life can be better for all of us.

Kenny is both unsparing in helping us grasp how our unintentional “ableisms” hurt and yet the exuberance of her life, including her rhapsodies about her scooter, Diana and her cane, Eileen. These reveal a person with a strong sense of self, a disabled self who knows she is accepted by God as she is in all her messiness, and who would just like the rest of us to do likewise. All this shines through in the “Top tens” that conclude each chapter.

Like other forms of discrimination, we often may be unaware of our discrimination against the disabled. You won’t be able to say that after reading this book. The question is whether you will resist or open up your heart to what is written here. Will you and I love these who God loves? Will we take risks that will mean we get it wrong at times, continuing to allow our disabled friends to teach us? That is the invitation you will find in this book.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Living Gently in a Violent World

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Living Gently

Living Gently in a Violent World, Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018.

Summary: Essays by the two authors reflecting on the practice of gentleness in the L’Arche communities where assistants and the disabled live in community, and the theological and political significance of this witness in a violent world.

Stanley Hauerwas has been named “America’s best theologian” by Time magazine, known for his advocacy that the church embody its social ethic, that it be itself, in its communal life, and for his critique of liberal democracy, capitalism, and militarism, and the church’s often unthinking endorsement and adoption of these ideologies. Jean Vanier, deceased in 2019, was the founder of L’Arche, a network of communities where helpers and the disabled live and share life together in “houses” or communities. Until 2006, they had never met, although Hauerwas had commended the work of L’Arche. They were invited to a conference by the Center for Spirituality, Health, and Disability at the University of Aberdeen, where they spent two days conversing and speaking. This book, recently reissued in an expanded edition with study guide, reflects those conversations.

Other than introductory and concluding essays by John Swinton, this book consists of  four alternating essays by Vanier and Hauerwas. The first, by Vanier is a narrative of the beginnings and development of L’Arche. Drawn by the work of Father Thomas Philippe with the disabled in France, he moved there, began to live with two disabled men who had been institutionalized, and soon found himself leading the community. He describes L’Arche as fragile, subject to government regulations and the question of whether people will always choose to live with them. He also describes L’Arche as a place of transformation, both for assistants and the disabled, transformations that reflect the mystery of the Spirit’s work. He describes three crucial activities in their community, all requiring gentleness and patience: meals together, prayer and communion, and celebration of everything from birthdays and holidays to deaths of members. The message in all of this is, “You are a gift. You’re a gift to the community.”

Hauerwas responds by discussing how L’Arche is a “modest proposal” in a violent world that is a witness to the church of its call to gentleness and non-violence. It is a witness of care for those who cannot be cured, of patience in a particular place. For this reason, Hauerwas also believes that L’Arche needs the church as a reminder that they need to worship with the larger body that is not L’Arche. It is not only as a witness to the church, amplified through the church, but also support and sustenance from the church that makes its life possible.

Vanier then writes of L’Arche as a place that in a small way addresses the woundedness of the world by recognizing in weakness and wounds a way to God. He speaks of the connection of fear and violence, and the power of surrendering our fears to love–the love of God and the present love of the community, both the abled and the disabled. Grieving the sentiment that would abort all those with Down syndrome and the message that leaves the disabled feeling, “I am no good” Vanier writes:

“The heart of L’Arche is to say to people, ‘I am glad you exist.’ And the proof that we are glad that they exist is that we stay with them for a long time. We are together, we can have fun together. ‘I am glad you exist’ is translated into physical presence” (p. 69).

Hauerwas’s concluding essay explores the politics of gentleness in an extended engagement with the thought of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum, both who labored to articulate a rationale for the rights of the disabled to help. He summarizes how L’Arche went beyond this:

“Nussbaum wants to give Jean justifications for helping the disabled. What she can’t do is give him a reason to live with them. But that is exactly what Jean says he needed. He had to be taught how to be gentle. It is not easy to learn to be gentle with the mentally disabled. As Jean has already said, they also suffer from the wound of loneliness. They can ask for too much. Which means gentleness requires the slow and patient work necessary to create trust. Crucial for the development of trust is that assistants in L’Arche discover the darkness, brokenness, and selfishness shaped by their own loneliness…. According to Jean, through the struggle to discover we are wounded like the mentally disabled, we discover how much ‘we need Jesus and his Paraclete…” (p. 90).

There is a gentleness that flows out of this awareness before God of our mutual weakness, exemplified in the practice of mutually washing one another’s feet, transformative to assistants and disabled alike, that is a witness in a violent world.

This slim volume is an extraordinary testament, a witness as it were, to the power of gentleness that flows from weakness, both in its description of the quiet wonder taking place within L’Arche, and the record of the conversation between Vanier and Hauerwas, as they opened minds and hearts to each other to explore the significance of the “modest proposal” that is L’Arche in an impatient and violent world.