From the website for the documentary, Praying with Lior:

From Krista Tippett on Speaking of Faith two more wonderful episode titled Being Autistic, Being Human and The Body's Grace, the Matthew Sanford Story.

First, from the mother of a child with autism in the Being Autistic, Being Human story:

The caption to this story begins with this:

Robin McCarthy, who uses a wheelchair, is to be consecrated into the Sisters for a Christian Community in the spring. Five other religious communities had rejected her.

Robin McCarthy wanted to be a nun from the time she was 7 years old. Robin says:

Another outstanding program from Krista Tippett on Speaking of Faith. The program discusses the experiences of Jean Vanier and how L'Arche began. This description is from the front page:

In this "radio pilgrimage," we take listeners into a radically different faith community that confronts our assumptions about service and diversity, and the worth of individuals.

L'Arche: A Community of Brokenness and Beauty

Liz Grossman writes about her brother's experience with church in the My Turn feature of Newsweek. Her brother Tim has Asperger syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder with "savant characteristics of autism." From the article:

I had no idea what Tim did on those Sunday afternoons, but I knew that it filled him with a kind of peace no medication or doctor ever had. After church, he'd come over to our parents' house for family dinners with a sense of calm, his eyes settled, his body slightly less rigid. He even began making a habit, one of his thousands, of giving our mom a quick hug before he'd head home.

Seeing a Smile I Had Not Known Existed

Jon Will's Aptitudes is an essay by George Will about his oldest child who was born with Down syndrome.

Jon has Down syndrome, a chromosomal defect involving varying degrees of mental retardation and physical abnormalities. Jon lost, at the instant he was conceived, one of life's lotteries, but he also was lucky: His physical abnormalities do not impede his vitality and his retardation is not so severe that it interferes with life's essential joys--receiving love, returning it, and reading baseball box scores.

While interfaith dialogue and sharing of resources is wonderful, when it comes right down to it many people are looking for disability resources that have already been tailored to their specific faith community. To that end, the largest section of the Faithability Religion and Disability Directory is the collection of faith group specific resources. Tonight I focused on identifying a few more Baptist disability resources. Here are a couple of resources that I found especially valuable:

Commentary on Jesus and his interaction with a man who was deaf from Mark 7:32-35

Jesus took him to a private place. Why? Jesus wanted to focus on the deaf man alone. Also Jesus knew that deaf people don’t like hearing people staring at them. Jesus was

Jesus Healed a Deaf Man

Tags: disability, deaf, Bible

A. Taylor Newton, a graduate student at the University of Denver is "investigating the role of religion in responding to potential stressors associated with parenting a child with a disability." As part of his research he is conducting a 15-20 minute survey for parents of children with disabilities. If you have a few minutes, your input would be greatly appreciated.

Religion and Perceptions: Parenting a Child with a Disability Survey

From the opening page of the survey:

Parenting a child with a disability is likely to be experienced differently by different people. Many of the experiences will be shared by parents who do not have a child with a disability, and some may be unique. In the following questionnaires, we ask about beliefs and behaviors that some parents of children with disabilities say they have. We also ask about beliefs and behaviors that people who are not parents of children with disabilities may believe parents of children with disabilities have, but that you or others do not. We ask these questions so we can hear about the variety of responses directly from those who know best: the parents. Of course, no two people will feel exactly the same, so there is no right or wrong way to answer any of the questions.

The Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability from the University of Aberdeen is a wonderful resource on a variety of spirituality, health disability topics. From their About Page:

The centre has a dual focus on:

• The relationship between spirituality, health and healing and the significance of the spiritual dimension for contemporary healthcare practices
• The theology of disability

The centre aims to enable academics, researchers, practitioners and educators to work together to develop innovative and creative research projects and teaching initiatives.