“Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. The main question is not ‘How can we hide our wounds? so that we don’t have to be embarrassed,’ but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.”
An inclusive ministry with persons with disabilities, chronic illness, and their families can be summed up in this excerpt from the writings of Henri Nouwen (Bread for the Journey). Nouwen, priest and scholar, shared his life with people with mental retardation as pastor of the L’Arche Daybreak community in Toronto, Canada. L’Arche is a Christian community in which people with disabilities and their assistants strive to live together in the spirit of interdependence and shared vulnerability. “Vulnerability is our seed to experiencing wholeness,” Nouwen had said. His experience in the L’Arche community brought him this insight and is one upon which we need to meditate.
The church has limited experience with the realities of people with disabilities living in society. Life within institutional settings has also changed, particularly in the last two decades. People with disabilities have become self-determining, educated, and responsible consumers. They do not want to be defined as passive recipients of care and discretionary charity. Religious leaders can no longer only minister to the spiritual and temporal needs of people with disabilities. They must also be cognizant of and make their presence felt in the disability movement itself. In 1971, The United Church of Christ, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Harold Wilke and Rev. Virginia Kreyer, early pioneers in Ministry of Disability, developed the model of interactional ministry of and with people with disabilities. The United Church of Christ has much of which to be proud. For example, Harold Wilke, a man who was born without arms, was present at the
signing ceremony of The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. He is forever immortalized in the historical portrait as he accepted, with his foot, the pen used by President Bush in the ceremony. The early efforts of these pioneers evolved into the UCC National Committee on Persons with Disabilities. The Bylaws of this Committee call for seven active members and others (associate members). The Bylaws also require that the majority of the members on the Active Committee be persons with disabilities, family members of a person with a disability, and/or an expert on disability issues.
Despite this history, matters of Social Justice for persons with disabilities are only beginning to become an issue and do not gain the respect often paid to other minority ministries in the UCC. The term Diversity seldom is used to include disability. There are more than 48 million people with disabilities in the United States. People with Disabilities are the nation’s largest minority group and the only one that any person can join at any time. People with disabilities cross all racial, gender, educational, socioeconomic, and organizational lines. The fact that the disability movement in the United States has been fighting for recognition as a valid minority group has been met with more than indifference by most denominations and faith traditions.
As the Americans with Disabilities Act made its way through Congress, a coalition of churches, backed by the White House, lobbied for a blanket exclusion on the grounds that to include religious institutions would violate the doctrine of the separation of church and state. Further, some denominations worried about the law’s costs. Some fundamentalists were concerned that because the law covers people infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, they might be forced to hire homosexuals. This was the ultimate pain of exclusion. We may overcome architectural barriers to our churches, but ministry with people with disabilities involves more than building a ramp. For example, the realities for a 22-year-old young man with traumatic quadriplegia are difficult ones. Jim was a handsome football player in high school and college and loved his motorcycle until the day he was forced off the road by a drunk driver.
He had attended church every week with his fiancée. His church has a Caring Ministry group and a member visits with the best of intentions and for all denominations and faith the best reasons. Who is the member making this visit to the hospital? What will he/she say to this young man in the face of such a catastrophic experience? Those of us who have share 100 39829 100 39829 0 0 68670 0 0:00:00 0:00:00 0:00:00 99k d these experiences know that this initial contact will remain with him the rest of his life. It will have been the first contact with his church community after his trauma – an event of profound importance. The church’s Caring Ministry can not indiscriminately choose just to “send anybody available” for such an important pastoral call. Basic ignorance of the circumstances of disability and the consequences of uninformed words and actions can be devastating.
Those of us with disabilities tell our truths to others who share our reality. We do not share our truths with others who will misunderstand. We do not share stories of thoughtless and, what we perceive to be, spiritual abuse with them. We are embarrassed to say, “You hurt me deeply when you told me if I had more faith I would walk again.” We fear our personal stories of exclusion will be minimized, or not believed at all, and dismissed with comments such as, “I’m sure she didn’t mean that, Honey.”
As a community and a culture of persons with disabilities we have shared these stories with each other, but have too often remained isolated and alienated from both the church and, ultimately, from God. Ministry with persons with disabilities is one for which very few, including ordained chaplains and pastors, are sufficiently prepared.
Editor’s Note: The above is excerpted from a presentation by Rita Fiero at the Convocation on Health and Human Service Ministry, March, 1999.
From UCC DM Newsletter Archive
