‘I find disability throughout the New Testament.’ Photo: By Hans Moerman on Unsplash.
Access all areas: Erica Thomas finds Truth and Integrity in our minds and bodies
‘I get freedom and liberation from my wheels.’
‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’ Psalm 139
‘What’s wrong with you?’, ‘It must be so awful for you, being in a wheelchair’, ‘You don’t behave like a disabled person’, ‘I’d understand if you killed yourself’, ‘I’m going to pray for your healing and salvation’.
Most of these things have been said to me by Quakers. Is this how we experience the Truth and Integrity of our minds and bodies as disabled people? Is disability a reason to want to kill oneself? What about those of us whose minds work differently because we are neurodivergent, live with dementia, mental health issues, additional learning needs? Do you try to understand us, or do you come with an assumption about how we should behave? And if we are deaf, hard of hearing, partially sighted, blind, do you accommodate our communication needs?
Very often it is the failure of society to include us, to be open to our voices and experiences, to let us in through the doors, literal or metaphorical, that causes the exclusions and misunderstandings we meet, and the incidents that lead to rejection and loneliness. It is tiring, frustrating, irritating.
What is the Truth that I experience in my mind and body? My Truth is founded in the lived experience of my body – at times in pain, exhaustion, frustration, a body that doesn’t do what I want it to – but also in the joy of what I do achieve. My Truth lives in disability activism, in removing disabling barriers; my Truth lives with my ‘tribe’ of disabled Friends, Christians from other denominations, and those of no faith; my Truth lives in the Bible, in how it may be interpreted and understood through disability theology.
In Genesis God said: ‘Let us create humankind in our image, to be like us.’ If we are all created in some way as a representation of God’s image, then God comes in all shapes and colours, of limb arrangements, of mental capacity, of ways of thinking, of differences in sight and hearing. It helps me to understand ‘that of God in everyone’. It embodies God in my bones, flesh and mind. I love the thought of being ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ – what more could I ask, than to be fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image?
When I read the Bible, I find disability: Isaac losing his sight; Jacob developing a limp as a result of combat (surely one of the greatest creators of preventable disability is war, and I will forever be a pacifist as a result); Moses needs another to speak God’s words; even God needs someone else to speak their words, a classic example of personal assistance.
‘I find disability throughout the New Testament.’
The Jewish theologian Julia Watts Belser’s book Loving Our Own Bones uses Ezekiel’s vision to present the image of ‘God on wheels’. Ezekiel sees a huge cloud, flashing fire, in the centre, a gleam as of amber. From within the fire four angels appear – their strange appearance resonant with disability. Beside each of these creatures was a wheel; Watts Belser describes it as if a chariot is bearing a sense of God as radiant fire. As she sat in Synagogue reading, it suddenly hit her: God has wheels! I get freedom and liberation from my wheels, they enable me to be part of society, not left sitting on the outside. If God also has wheels, then I am seen and included, I too can go where my spirit leads.
But when I get to the Meeting house, I cannot go in the front door. I go in a side entrance, and when I first arrived, the instruction was that the door would be closed, so ‘bang hard and with luck someone will hear you and let you in’. That is not inclusion. The door could be open and welcoming, and although I can now let myself in, a newcomer cannot. Quakers are no better than anyone else when it comes to putting barriers in the way. Can we get in, do we need to ask permission to be admitted? Is all we see the barrier of steps?
I find disability throughout the New Testament. Many of the parables are about healing the sick, raising from the dead, giving sight. So often they have been used to depict the disabled life as a negative, with particular issues for blind people and the way that sight, or lack of sight, is regarded. All too often disability is seen as the result of sin, of evil that needs to be healed or removed. How many of us have had that experience of a stranger putting their hands on our heads and announcing that they will pray for our healing? Maybe we are as healed and healthy as you, just different. Jesus chose to spend time among the disenfranchised, the poor, the shunned, the sick and disabled people, he actively sought us out. I do not find negativity in Jesus’ attitude to disabled people, rather there is empathy and understanding, a walking alongside.
In The Disabled God, Nancy Eiesland describes waiting for a mighty revelation of God. But what she found was not what she had expected. Instead, God came to her in a sip-and-puff wheelchair – the kind of chair used by those, mostly quadriplegic, who need to manoeuvre by sucking or blowing through a straw-like device. This is not an image of an omnipotent, all mighty God as she had anticipated, instead a survivor God, not a pitiable figure. My Christian friends talk of the disabled Christ – the risen Jesus who still bore the wounds to his hands and feet, the gash in his side. It is an image that makes it entirely acceptable to come as a scarred, disfigured being, yet whole and complete.
When I listen to neurodivergent Friends, I hear of the pain and exclusion some have experienced – the failure of hearts and minds to come together. I wonder where Advices & queries 17 has gone: ‘Do you respect that of God in everyone though it may be expressed in unfamiliar ways or be difficult to discern? Each of us has a particular experience of God and each must find the way to be true to it. When words are strange or disturbing to you, try to sense where they come from and what has nourished the lives of others. Listen patiently and seek the truth.’
My experience of my mind/body has led me to hold that the Truth of my existence is of an embodied God. I sense it through my bones, blood, flesh and mind. In order to live a life of Integrity I have to acknowledge the history and images from the Bible, from disability theology, from disability activism and the lived experiences of deaf, disabled and neurodivergent Ffriends. May Friends enable us all to come and be just exactly the way we are made to be, without judgement, respecting that we may need to do and be in different ways, in accordance with the ways in which we are individually fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.
Erica is from the Quaker Disability Equality Group (QDEG). Her article is part of our coverage of the Yearly Meeting preparatory sessions, in which QDEG ran a session.
Comments
Thank you for this wonderful and humbling article.
By Lucy P on 31st August 2024 - 12:30
I am very disappointed that the Friend has chosen to erase the Deaf cultural community from my article. I deliberately capitalised Deaf as this is the chosen way that this community of British Sign Language users is recognised. To find that the same removal of capitalised ‘D’ occurred twice reminds me powerfully of how ableist Quakers can be at times.
By Ericafrances on 1st September 2024 - 15:19
Hi Erica. Would you care to make this point in a letter to the editor (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address))? My feeling was that the capitalisation would need a bit of explaining, using up scarce space, but I do understand the point of view, and you’d reach more readers with this if you had something on the letters page. I think it’s a position worth outlining there.
By The Friend editor on 4th September 2024 - 16:25
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