It is now three years since I realised that I was ‘disabled’,
i.e. physically when I tried to run for a bus I just stopped still, completely.
It sounds funny, and I guess it was, at first. But up until that point I had
been a very active person cycling, running and walking. My main love being
walking, of which I aimed to do at least 25 miles per week, OK a little
excessive I know! And so I always took full ‘mobility’ for granted.
Until a fluke accident I had never contemplated
‘disability’ or as I would much rather describe it; ‘becoming differently abled’.
But here I am, now having to mobilise with two walking sticks. Though this I
can only do for a for short distances as standing is so very painful, and so
using an electric wheelchair (no not an electric chair) and a mobility scooter are
my preferred modes of getting around.
On a matter of discipleship and carrying the Gospel
to the people, I think that the good folk of north Wolverhampton perhaps see something
many others would not, a priest in black shirt and ‘Dog Collar’ tootling around
on his mobility scooter sharing many a good day with the people he meets. I do
think it a great shame that we do not see many priests out and about in their
clerical wear, for some reason it does not seem vogue anymore to dress like a ‘vicar’,
or is it too ‘Roman’. All nonsense, it is like the stole, the yoke a priest and
deacon bears from the time of ordination, it becomes a symbol that we are the Church
right there in the midst of the people. Oops, getting off track … back to
disability …
But
what is ‘disability’? Well it is only when we really think about it, I mean; ‘Really’ think about it do we realise
that it is a ‘dis’ word. Dis means
less than, and when coupled with ‘ability’ it means less then abled. OK we may
say that sounds reasonable as a definition; but No there is so much more to a person than whatever it is that has
created an impairment of sight, mobility, hearing or any other functionality. So
for example when I am in my wheelchair out with my wife why do people insist on
talking across me and asking my wife, ‘would he like coffee or tea?’, ‘is he
ready to come through and see the doctor?’, help me I think, it my back that
has stopped working not everything else. Anyway, there is no such thing as the
perfect human being, let’s face it even Jesus cannot claim that; because He was
also of God and it would be cheating a little in this context anyway, so
theologians hold on to your ink. But if we are to take Genesis as read then God
created us, and we were ‘Good’ – not perfect, but good. We are in His image but
that is the Spirit the glorious self that loves, has faith in God and hopes for
a better tomorrow. But today we live in bodies that are good and so are likely
at times to change, to break, to age to wear out. Not only may they change but
some of us may be born in a way that some would describe as ‘different’.
What is this
difference? Difference is that which humans ascribe to that which falls outside
of the average, or perhaps we might use a mathematical term and say the ‘mean
average’. The mean average would be made up of the majority of people, and
those who are ‘different’ would fall outside of this mean average. Well of
course this is a man-made construct and allows for total nastiness towards
those who do not fit into this ‘average’ and this is where we as a race get ‘mean’
from.
Unfortunately we end up using the term disability because
it is the word used in law. But this should not stop us using it with great care.
But it is society that decides if a person is disabled, because it is society
in the form of our churches, shops, schools, theatres, sports stadia, etc. that
create the facilities for people to get in and out and around. Also to use the
facilities fully, or at least experience as much as can be within ‘real’
physical constraints. Now I say real. Two years ago my wife and I made it to
the top of the Acropolis in Athens with the help of some wonderful guides; now
if that can happen, well go figure.
So many of our places of worship need to stop and think
long and hard. I am a husband and father, and son and brother, I am a priest;
and oh by the way did I mention I am also mobility impaired. The last bit does
not define me at all I only mention it in case I come to visit your church
because sometimes we do have to move
things around a little, that’s fine.
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