Have you ever experienced a paradigm shift? You thought you understood something, and then something happened that opened a completely different perspective? I have experienced such a paradigm shift in the way I view God. And because (whether we realize it or not) how we view God affects every part of our lives, this paradigm shift has changed the way I look at others, my life, and how I want to live.
The seeds of this paradigm shift were always right there in the Gospel, but it took a book and a place for those seeds to break through. Can I tell you about a book? And then I will tell you about a place.
MY BODY IS NOT A PRAYER REQUEST
The book is My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church, written by Amy Kenny, a disabled scholar.[1] Get the book and read it. Your paradigm about many things will change. Kenny is disabled and gets around in her mobility scooter. She wishes public places (including churches) had accessibility ramps. She is sometimes in physical pain, but she writes her real pain comes from well-meaning “able bodied” people who don’t know how to talk with her, who tell her they are praying for her to be “healed.” The book was a little uncomfortable for me, but it was a wake-up call. A wake-up call “for the church to value disabled people as image-bearers and learn from the prophetic witness”[2] of the numerous gifts of the disabled.
Disabled people make up about 25% of the US population, and yet a 2018 poll found that 67% of people feel “uncomfortable” talking to a disabled person. But Kenny points out that most of us, by age or accident, will ourselves be disabled in some fashion at some point in our lives. The book provides advice for us “able” bodied folks (including numerous lists of “Top Ten” things not to say to a disabled person), and is an excellent resource for churches in learning how ensure our disabled brothers and sisters are beloved and belong. But the book’s greatest impact for me was the paradigm shift that it is people with disabilities who have the most to offer us. Unfortunately, society (and often the church) is infected with ableism, the belief that disabled people are somehow less valuable, that their disability limits what they can offer. But just the opposite is true.
CRIP TIME
Kenny drives this home in a beautiful chapter entitled, “The Disabled God.” She notes how disability can open our souls to what God really wants to do in our lives. One way disability might do this is by what Kenny calls “crip time” (a reclaiming of the word “crippled” to describe a slower pace). The world we live in today creates “punishing schedules within demanding systems that show little concern for our well-being. Our mode of living is fast-paced, instant-gratification workaholism.”[3] But crip time is slow—it cannot rush. She writes that perhaps Jesus was on “crip time,” because he was never in a hurry. “Jesus’ patient pace invites people to journey alongside him at the speed of love. It is slow and sporadic, but it is worth it. The three-mile-an-hour God operates at the speed of love.”[4]
WE HAVE MUCH TO LEARN
In reading Kenny’s book, I was reminded of the writings of Henri Nouwen, a writer, priest, and well-respected teacher at Harvard, Yale, and other universities. At the age of 54, Nouwen gave up his “successful” career as university professor and went to live at Daybreak, a l’Arche community in Ontario, Canada for the severely handicapped. What surprised Nouwen from living at Daybreak were the incalculable lessons he learned from the disabled people he lived with. In a lecture given at Harvard in 1987, Nouwen describes the blessings he had received from those who had disabilities, like Adam. Adam was a 25-year-old man who couldn’t speak, dress himself, walk alone, or eat without much help. Every day, Nouwen woke Adam, bathed and shaved him, dressed him, fed him, put him in his wheelchair, and took him to his therapeutic exercise sessions. Although Adam couldn’t speak, a deep bond began to form between Adam and Nouwen that went beyond words: “Deep speaks to deep, spirit speaks to spirit, heart speaks to heart. The longer I stayed with Adam, the more clearly I started to see him as my gentle teacher, teaching me what no book, school, or professor could have ever taught me.”[5] Through his brokenness, Adam became to Nouwen the mediator of God’s love and peace. This peace is found in, and calls us deeper into, community, “a community that proclaims that God has chosen to descend among us in complete weakness and vulnerability and thus to reveal to us the glory of God.”[6]
GOD ON A CROSS
So often, God is only able to break through our encrusted hearts through weakness. A disruption, a hurt, a disability attunes us to God and to what is really important in life, both now and forever. God joins us in our “disability,” and as Kenny writes, God himself became “disabled” on the cross, showing all of us where true power lies. As Kenny writes:
Jesus disables himself on our behalf. This goes directly against our notions of self-preservation and victory by demonstrating how God’s power is self-emptying, radically forgiving, and displayed through disability. Jesus’ power is cruciform. Jesus’ power is in disability. To access God’s power, we don’t need prosperity prayers or militarized mantras. We need people to take up the cruciform power of emptying out for the sake of the least of these. God subverts our ideas of what power looks like. And it looks like disability.[7]
The disabled God is a paradigm shift for me, but is the “clearest depiction of a God who is love emptied out for us.”[8] In our fast world that prizes achievement and power, it is also the truest picture of what we need to be reminded of daily. The apostle Paul said he “boasted” in his weaknesses. Why? Because God’s love and power is made perfect in our weaknesses, and because it is “when I am weak that I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:7ff). As Kenny writes, “We are all called to share in the suffering and death of Christ by taking up our cross on behalf of others. We are called to share whatever power or privilege we have so everyone can flourish. We are called to be disabled.”[9]
I need to recognize the gifts the Spirit gives through those I encounter who have disabilities of some sort or another. I need to remember that, just like all of us, they want to belong, to feel beloved, and to share their unique and beautiful gifts. Our churches need to find ways to make sure all of our brothers and sisters in Christ feel beloved and that they not only belong, but have opportunities to share their gifts to us. The theologian Jurgen Moltmann said it well: “There is no good charitable ministry by the non-disabled to the disabled unless we first of all recognize and accept the charitable ministry of the disabled to the non-disabled. Congregations without disabled members are—to put it bluntly—disabled congregations.”[10]
THE PLACE WHERE YOU ARE BELOVED AND YOU BELONG
And now to the place. The place is a beautiful camp located in Rosebud, Texas, a camp where those with disabilities can have fun in a secure environment, where they feel they belong, are beloved, and can share their love with others. Fittingly, it is called “Beloved and Beyond” (www.belovedandbeyond.org). Here is the camp’s mission statement: “Beloved and Beyond exists to spread the hope and the love of Jesus Christ with people who have differing abilities through camps, socialization and on the job training while growing the community to embrace the same.” Here, those with intellectual or physical disabilities can enjoy “camp” just like their non-disabled siblings and friends. They laugh and sing. If campers want, activities are adapted to allow them to participate–they can swim, ride a horse, or cruise on a zip line—all firmly in the arms of a loving volunteer. Beloved and Beyond is fully equipped to care for its campers, so parents and families of campers can feel secure entrusting their children and enjoy a week of needed rest. The camp is not just for campers and their families, though. The camp also provides overwhelming blessings to those who volunteer (and the camp is always looking for volunteers). Every volunteer I have listened to has described how life-changing their time at camp was. Their paradigm shifted—it was they who were the ones who were blessed. Check out their website (and especially the videos). Beloved and Beyond is “where you can Be love to others, Be loved by others, and know God calls you Beloved.” here you can Be love to others, Be loved by others, and know God calls you Beloved.
[1] Amy Kenny, My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022).
[2] Id, xii.
[3] Id, 163.
[4] Id, 164.
[5] In Seeds of Hope: A Henri Nouwen Reader, ed. Robert Durback (New York: Image Books, 1989), 257.
[6] Id, 263.
[7] Kenny, 168-169.
[8] Id.
[9] Id, 170.
[10] Jurgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 68.