“[C]an we accept that we cut ourselves off from seeing and experiencing how the works of God are manifest if we choose not to engage with our brothers and sisters with disabilities?” (Jennie Weiss Block, Copious Hosting: A Theology of Access for People with Disabilities (New York: Continuum, 2002), p. 113.)

On March 6th and 7th (Monday and Tuesday) our entire community is invited to an exciting opportunity to talk frankly about living with disabilities in this community, our congregations, and our church. The forum, which will be both scholarly and practical, will run twice, from 8-10:50 a.m. on Monday morning, and from 6:30-9:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening in the Common Room. Light refreshments on Monday and Tuesday will be provided. However, I promise there are many reasons for engaging this experience, in addition to the free food and the opportunity to learn with Dr. Satterlee.

Practically speaking, all of us in this community live with and/or will live with disabilities, either our own or those of others—as family and community members, and as religious leaders. None of us will be able to avoid the challenge and gift of experiencing the works of God manifest in persons who negotiate life with a disability. As someone called to ministry, I need to know how to manage my own discomfort, challenge my presuppositions about power and “ability,” and celebrate the gifts that all God’s people have to offer to the ministry of Jesus Christ. For that, I need at least two practical things: Resources, and opportunities for frank conversation with people with disabilities. This forum will provide both.

We will hear at least preliminary answers to the question: Where do I go, or what do I say, when I am faced with the opportunity and challenge of ministry with a person with a disability? This is a vital question, because the place where most of us turn first, the Bible, is ambiguous, often even harmful, when engaging illness and/or disability.

Mostly, however, this will allow us the opportunity, in a safe space, to engage honestly with a servant of Jesus Christ who is blind. Dr. Satterlee is not offering expertise in the area of ministry and pastoral care with disabled persons. He is, instead, giving us the gift of his story, his questions, his challenges and his discoveries as he has lived a life of faith as a person with a disability in a church and a world that is constructed by and for the non-disabled.

For those more theoretically inclined, conversation and reading around disability is challenging theological work. It requires a re-examination of assumptions about the body, particularly doctrines of creation and resurrection of the body, from the critical perspective of the pervasive brokenness of bodies themselves. We cannot bury our hope for returning theology from its disembodied Platonic exile in a romanticized notion of bodies, when we are reminded of the actual struggles we all face when negotiating life in and as a perishable, fallible, imperfect and aging body. Theologies emerging from persons with disabilities are offering powerful insights into the necessity and the challenge of a more honest embodiment, a realistic assessment of brokenness, and the power of God to be revealed in and among those whom our commercialized “bodied” world would label weak, broken, or practically dead.

Block’s Copious Hosting argues: “The social location of disability is the body. Nothing is more fundamental to disability theology than an inclusive theology of embodiment. Just as feminist theology must interpret reproduction, disability theology must interpret physicality” (87). As this work happens, our theological world can, if we are listening, experience a fundamental shift to a more honest—and potentially liberating—re-imagining of the creating and redeeming God-made-flesh. This will, for Lutherans especially, undoubtedly call us ever more powerfully back into the mystery of the cross.

In addition, disability theology is one of many genres of contemporary reflection that offer a crucial re-evaluation of diversity and difference. In a culture whose response to persons of color increasingly appeals to “colorblindness,” many persons with disabilities are joining their voices with other critically distinct communities to remind us of the gifts of particularity and actual difference. “Diversity” cannot be a slogan that covers over distance and difference with a blanket of sameness. In this community, outwardly committed to diversity, this voice—so often ignored in appeals for liberation and inclusivity—offers a crucial perspective on the gifts and challenges of difference in a world obsessed with the same.

This forum will not address all of these questions head on, except perhaps in discussion. But they are questions that under gird this conversation and flow through many of the resources available for further study. To that end, Dr. Kadi Billman’s pastoral care class is reading Copious Hosting to prepare for attending this forum, and I highly encourage anyone else in the community to pick up a copy of this both practical/accessible and theoretical/philosophical book, recommended to me by a scholar whose child lives with multiple disabilities.

Mostly, however, the theoretical and practical value of this event culminate in the same gift: An opportunity to examine our selves and our assumptions about living with disabilities, to ask all our “dumb” questions in a safe space, and to listen intently to a man who does not spend his days praying for sight, but rather loving his family and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.

All are welcome and encouraged to join us for either Monday morning or Tuesday evening (3/6 and 3/7) in the Common Room.

For more information about Community Life at LSTC contact:

Rev. Linda Johnson Seyenkulo
Dean of Community
Office: Room 325
Phone: (773) 256-0756
Email: ljseyenk@lstc.edu

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