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Re-Imagining Gathering, 2000

Kathy Black

"Reflections from the Produce Aisle"

a report from the Re-Imagining Gathering
by Doug King
posted 11-1-00

Kathy Black, Ph.D., holds the Gerald Kennedy Chair of Homiletics and Liturgics at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California, and is an ordained United Methodist minister. She has worked as the chaplain at Gallaudet University, pastored two churches for deaf persons, and taught classes in deaf ministry and ministry with persons with disabilities at Wesley Theological Seminary, Pacific School of Religion, and the School of Theology at Claremont. Kathy authored A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disabilities; her writing has been included in several books, and she does many workshops and presentations both in the United States and internationally.

(From the Gathering program book)





Black began by sharing -- with some wry humor and not a trace of self-pity -- a bit of her own life story. She grew up in New Jersey, in a community built near a farm that had long been used as a dumping ground for toxic waste. As a Girl Scout she spent many hours each summer at a camp whose lake contained the 21 toxic substances carried by run-off from the nearby waste storage.

As she grew older she began suffering from "spells" which came on without warning, and left her unable to control any of her muscles. She couldn't stand, move a hand, speak, or even control her own breathing. The disease is progressive and incurable, and has taught her to be pitied, stared at, regarded as an object (as in "Oh, that poor thing!").

These spells have given her time to reflect on life -- "My time of forced meditation," she calls it -- and she shared some of those reflections. She was in a supermarket once when a "spell" came on, and found herself sitting on the floor in the produce section, in the middle of a large puddle of milk from a jug that had fallen from her cart. She waiting, immobilized, for someone to offer any help, or even concern. She heard two sets of footsteps go by, with no action. A third pair of feet approached. A women spoke quietly: "There but for the grace of God go I." And she moved on.

What does that say about God, she wondered. About God's relationship with us? People try to make meaning out of suffering, but they end up implying either that God is capricious, or that we deserve our troubles, perhaps because of our sin, perhaps because of our lack of faith. So we perform the neat trick of making God both the source and the (possible?) cure of our suffering. Conservative or liberal, Christian or New Age or whatever -- everyone seems to offer some variation of the same answers.

Black went on: "Now, I don't believe I am cursed by God. I don't believe God has anything to do with it -- cursing or blessing or testing or using me. I do believe God can use it -- but the cause is a farmer with stored toxic waste on his land."

So how can our disabilities be reconciled with our understanding of God? Her answer is that "the notion of an all-powerful God has be to re-imagined." If God is "the great puppeteer in the sky, and everything is in God's control," then "God's power becomes more important than God's presence, more important than God's love and compassion."

In contrast, she suggests, we need to learn from the last fifty years that everything in life is interconnected. So disability can happen for all sorts of reasons, including poverty and accidents and bad judgment.

"But in the midst of it all we are confident that God is with us, and wills our well-being." That is part of our Christian affirmation of the resurrection, of life overcoming death. But, she added, that well-being is different for each of us, and God knows what it is for each of us.

"For me," she added, "adapting to the unexpected is a given," but she had learned to stop hiding that, for instance by getting a walker, which is "an absolute liberation for me." Yes, it is a kind of dependence that she was reluctant to accept, but it frees her to move around with a new sense of security.

So, she added, God works to transform all our lives, in all our own unique circumstances. From her years of experience as chaplain and teacher for deaf persons, she suggested that we try "hearing" a Mozart symphony not with our ears, but through the vibrations felt by holding a tightly inflated balloon. So, she said, God takes the lives that we have and provides transforming opportunities that move us ahead.

What's the role of the Church in all this? God calls the faith community, said Black, "to bind up the broken-hearted," comforting and healing their wounds. But too often they merely bind the broken hearted instead -- by attitudes, by lack of access, by excluding them in ways both blatant and subtle from full participation in the life of the community.

The trouble comes, she said, "when we've bound up the wound. Then we remove the bandages and the wound is still there, the healing hasn't happened." Too often, then, we don't know what to do or what to say, "so after a while we just withdraw."

This happens partly, she suggested, because we fail to see the difference between healing and curing. She does not deny the possibility of miraculous divine intervention, which may effect a "cure" -- the lifting of the disability or illness. But that is not within our control or understanding, and doesn't always happen. But healing can happen, when people are accepted for who they are. "When people can be with you and not freak out or take over your life -- that's healing," she said.

For herself, she added, "Just let me get on with my life. Being paralyzed now and then is normal for me. But I am whole." So urged that as we pray in our faith communities for healing, we find ways to do that without implying that people are not already whole, whatever their disabilities or diseases, as they are. We need to "stop defining wholeness (or holiness!) for others."

Prayer and transformation enable all of us to become more while, she concluded, and interdependence is a vital part of this. But we live in a culture that demands independence. The church should be the place where dependency is acknowledged and interdependence is furthered. So we need a theology which sees that "God is dependent on us, to create the vision and to be the vessels of God's compassion in the world."

 

 
 

A major
Ghost Ranch event this summer!

July 28 - August 3, 2008

Paths toward Peace and Justice:

Spirituality, Earth-Care, and the Prophetic Word in a time of Violence

More info >>

 

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An index of our reports from

 

 

 

BECOMING NEIGHBORS:
An Invitation
to Global Discipleship

A Witherspoon conference
on global mission and justice

September 16 - 19, 2007
Louisville, Kentucky

 

Check out our report from the Conference
on
Terror, Torture,
and Security

 

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© 2007 by The Witherspoon Society.  All material on this site is the responsibility of the WebWeaver unless other sources are acknowledged.  Unless otherwise noted, material on this site may be copied for personal use and sharing in small groups.  For permission to reproduce material for wider publication, please contact the WebWeaver, Doug King.  Any material reached by links on this site is outside the control and responsibility of the WebWeaver and The Witherspoon Society.  Questions or comments?  Please send a note!