From: bcsabha.kal...@gmail.com
To:
GOOD MORNING
I see clearly that the
thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to
warm the hearts of the faithful ... I see the church as a field hospital
after battle.
Pope Francis, September 30, 2013, interview, America magazine
Disability and Belonging
John Swinton
The task of disability theology is not to transform the world through
politics, economics and worldly power, but to be faithful to the task
that is given to it…. And the task that is given to the disability
theologian is to help us to see properly what it means to be a human
being; to help us to understand that many of the things that we are
taught by culture are false; that to be human is much more interesting
and much more complicated than the simplistic way that culture tells us
it should be.
One of the problems in the conversation around disability is that we
mis-name things, and when we mis-name things, we end up with stigma,
alienation and false names…. The problem is that once you have a
diagnosis, that becomes your name. And as soon as you’re schizophrenic,
you’re on a really strange social tangent, not because of your illness,
but because of the way that people see and understand that particular
name. So if we begin our journey as lay people with diagnosis, and all
of the social stigma that surrounds that, then we’re beginning in the
wrong place.
What does it mean to be a human being who lives within a human body?
Genesis shows us that human beings are created by matter but inspired
and brought into existence by the very breath of God. So we are our
bodies and we are our souls. And there’s something important and
beautiful about that.
If that’s right, then every moment that we have together is in a real
sense, a holy moment. Every encounter we have with one another is an
encounter that is inspired by the spirit of God. So, animated by the
breath of God, human beings are seen to be holy creatures, living among
other holy creatures in a world that is holy. That means that your body
is holy. Your very bodyliness is sustained by God. Every-body is holy.
And, when we attend to one another properly, when we recognise one
another as holy creatures, and these bodies that we inhabit as holy
places, then beautiful things begin to emerge. Because we begin to
realise that the diversity of bodies within creation isn’t a stigmatic
mark of something negative. It’s actually a beautiful thing that draws
us together….
We talk a lot about inclusion and there’s a very strong political
movement towards including people with disabilities within our
community, which is now enshrined in law. So from a legal point of view,
people with disabilities have to be in the room. But once you get in
the room, nothing changes, nobody talks to you. To be included within
the community but to not feel accepted, well, you may as well not be
included.
To be included, you simply have to be there, but to belong, you need
to be missed. You need to have a space within your community that is for
you, so that when you’re not there, people miss you, people long for
you in the same way as the father longs for the prodigal son. And in
order to do that you have to have a particular kind of community, which
is not simply an inclusive community … but a community within which
people know the different shapes and forms and beautiful bodily shapes
and accept them, exactly as they are.
I would suggest that the task of the church is not necessarily world
transformation. That’s God’s task…. The task of the church is signalling
the Kingdom through small gestures, and these small gestures involve
naming things properly, understanding the nature of hospitality,
accepting the beauty of all bodies, all different shapes and forms, and
indeed the holiness of all bodies in their different shapes and forms,
and working together to create communities of belonging within which you
can be proud to be both a guest and a host.
>From Catholic Communications Sydney (2014)
