Rita Fiero, RN, is immediate past co chair of the UCCDM board.
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Jeremiah 29:11
People with difficult speech, twisted bodies, or damaged brains have an authentic voice much of which is prophetic. From within experiences of disability and chronic illness, we offer the insight that God enters our being at the point of pain and vulnerability. We can model the transcendence of limitations of body or mind as the most powerful way to survive and grow toward wholeness.
Hope for disabilities ministries flourishes in many places because we believe God in Christ, the Indiscriminate Host. The church has a committed group of wounded healers. For more than 25 years, UCC Disabilities Ministries has striven to honor Jesus’ teaching of the inclusion of society’s marginal, children and adults with disabilities and chronic illness. For more than ten years, the Mental Illness Network has educated the church about the plight of people with brain disorders.
Inclusion is our right as children of God, also made in God’s image, and as members of a faith tradition of servanthood. We need a new and revolutionary, an extravagant and radical, an extreme and uncompromising hospitality in the church if we are to remain faithful to the message of the Indiscriminate Host.
We must admit to not recognizing the justice issues that impress the experience of disability euthanasia, genetic engineering, community based care alternatives to institutionalization and insurance parity for brain disorders on equal par with other medical conditions. We need to take seriously Christian education for children with disabilities and a seminary certificate program in Disability Ministry. Let us reach beyond an all inclusive view of disabilities ministry. God still gives us hope through improbable people.
From UCC DM Newsletter Archive
