Faith Ability Religion and Disability News

From the website for the documentary, Praying with Lior:

An engrossing, wrenching and tender documentary film, PRAYING WITH LIOR introduces Lior Liebling, also called "the little rebbe." Lior has Down syndrome, and has spent his entire life praying with utter abandon. Is he a "spiritual genius" as many around him say? Or simply the vessel that contains everyone’s unfulfilled wishes and expectations? Lior – whose name means "my light" — lost his mother at age six, and her words and spirit hover over the film. While everyone agrees Lior is closer to God, he’s also a burden, a best friend, an inspiration, and an embarrassment, depending on which family member is speaking. As Lior approaches Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony different characters provides a window into life spent "praying with Lior." The movie poses difficult questions such as what is "disability" and who really talks to God? Told with intimacy and humor, PRAYING WITH LIOR is a family story, a triumph story, a grief story, a divinely-inspired story.

Check the list for upcoming screenings or read about ways to help.

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:

I feel that we all come into this world with a sort of immediate natural relationship with God. And so that for Morgan, he has that, you know, that's just the way it's always been for him. He has that relationship and it's unaffected by whatever society has to say about it. But I think that we have to introduce ideas of ethics to him, because this sort of thing just simply doesn't occur to him. He's certainly not cruel.

Then, from Matthew in The Body's Grace, the Matthew Sanford Story:

A...I also specialize in adapting yoga to people with disabilities. And one of my — it makes me love yoga so much more. Yoga can travel through any body. It's not about the perfect pose, it's not that. It's like literally it's a phenomenon that occurs at your mind's intent and your body's limits. I thought when I first started teaching adaptive yoga — that's what I started teaching first. I thought, 'Wow'…

Be sure to visit the sites above to learn more and listen to the full shows.

• Being Autistic, Being Human
• The Body's Grace, the Matthew Sanford 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:

"I am way more connected to the Catholic side of myself than I am the disability," says McCarthy. "It's not the overriding concern of my life. I was born with it, which sounds awful, but frankly, because I've never known any other way of life, you sort of can't miss what you never possessed."

Congratulations to Robin.

A Ministry of Prayer, Study, and Writing from the Boston Globe.

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:

• The Bethlehem Baptist Church Disability Ministry with a vision to "value and display the supremacy of God in disability and suffering." Their resources include an in-depth presentation on their disability ministry (PDF) and some specific tips on welcoming persons with different disabilities.
• An article titled Helping Deaf Hear the Gospel by Donnie Wiltshire of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina Special Ministries wherein he briefly describes their ministries for the Deaf, blind as well as persons with developmental disabilities.

There are a lots of other good resources that you can check out from the Baptist Disability Resources page. Also, please contact me if you know of any resources that I have missed.

Tags: disability, religion, Baptist

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.

There are sections on the research they are doing, their PhD program, publications and resources. The Centre is directed by Professor John Swinton.