Editor’s note: The following article by Rev. Donna Schaper, Association Minister, Massachusetts Conference, originally appeared in Colleague, September, 1999.
I took an unexpected class trip last month when I pulled a tendon playing tennis. I found myself at a national convention of my church for a full week rooming with and in a wheelchair. When the tendon insisted that I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t imagine not going to the Synod, and I couldn’t imagine going. Thus the compromise of the wheelchair and the non-stop joke from old, good friends about how “long they had wanted to push me around.”
The wheelchair was the equivalent of a college degree. I have done “plunges” before to poor communities or broken hearted places, the South Side of Chicago, Bosnia, Beijing. I have taken trips from privilege to non-privilege and had my eyes forced open. The wheelchair was a whole new voyage. It showed me a world I never even wanted to go to; now that I have been, I am astonished at the number of other people already living waist high. They/we are everywhere.
I have to confess that I used to think there were too many handicapped parking places, too many large stall toilets. Now I wonder if there are enough. From my erect position, I simply didn’t see all the wheels. They were invisible to me — the same way many other people remain invisible until we walk or wheel in their moccasins.
The wheelchair was a class trip because it moved me from the world of able status to the world of disabled status. I never got to that much coveted “differently able” status because I was in shock when I wasn’t in denial: I couldn’t walk but wouldn’t really admit it to myself I found my temporary paralysis so threatening that I denied it in full for three days, thereby increasing my injury substantially. I did learn some different abilities but only by the brute force of curb cuts not being where they should have been.
Why curb cuts as higher education? One curb cut can send you home if you can’t walk. The city of our convention (Providence, Rhode Island) had curb cuts everywhere around the convention center — except for one, two blocks downhill and two blocks uphill from my hotel, depending on one’s direction. That one meant getting out of the chair, which I could do with serious pain. I wonder what those who can’t hobble do. I wonder how they feel about cities that miss cutting certain curbs. Why deny injury? Because some of us always want to be in charge, that’s why. We want to push others around, not be pushed around. We want to help, not be helped.
For those who have spent longer than a week in a wheelchair, perhaps a life, I apologize. My week was short, and the whole time I knew I would move again. Others’ experience is much different: wheelchairs are home. It was amazing to see who had manners and who didn’t when they approached my chair. Many people knew me and had not seen me for the two years since our last convention. Some asked accusingly, “What are you doing in a wheelchair?” I told one I had AIDS, just to silence her accusation. Others approached more gently, “Do you mind if I ask what happened?” I was grateful to these; the latter frightened me. What if 76 40925 76 31416 0 0 59163 0 0:00:00 0:00:00 0:00:00 92129I had developed MS or AIDS? How could I tell them with that edge in their voice?
Christ’s body was broken. Is it a sin to be broken? Is it a shame to be Un-able? Must we be able, always? Is not broken the prelude to open? Are we not broken, open? A little of me opened because of my recent voyage. I got to know how deeply embarrassed I, and many, are at weakness. How much I want to be a controlling giver, not a vulnerable receiver.
I also got to know floors and ledges and curb cuts, stairs, elevators, and what happens if you ram your chair into a duck taped group of wires on a floor. (You flip out.)
I now love ramps. But a ramp is not enough to provide dignity to people who can’t walk: the broken part of them needs affirmation by the broken part in those of us who can walk. There are barriers of architecture, communication, and attitude which also need ramping. I didn’t know that till I spent a week in a wheelchair; now I know.
From UCC DM Newsletter Archive
