How Do We Talk Deeper And Wider About Disability, Dignity, And Hope?
I have always felt that the conversation of Disability, Dignity, and Hope needs to go deeper and wider to really impact and transform my local community. With issues and understandings often glanced over or left to an assumed norm, the disabled seem largely invisible and left to the margins of neighbourly awareness. As a Well Dweller, I deeply desire to see this change and for the conversation not just to be had within my community, but recognized as important to understanding who we are as people living together — creating, developing, participating, growing, and evolving interdependently.
But I have also known for this to happen, and for it to be more then just a conversation, it needs participating others — both individuals and organizations. It needs sponsorship and resources. And it needs people who are willing to amplify and expand on the relating issues, subjects, and needs.
In a couple weeks I will be joining a small few who will begin asking those questions as they relate to a local context here in my city and maybe Province — How do we talk deeper & wider about disability, dignity, & hope? While only being a small voice in such a fellowship, I have been pondering some of the questions I have for such a gathering of affiliates.
How might we connect with and amplify the voices & life stories of the disabled in our community?
What are the important issues we need to explore, talk about, and be active in?
How & are we able to organize, resource, and bring events to our community that will benefit the disabled and widen their relationships with neighbours and others? What event/s and activities might those be?
Where are the needs of the disabled in our community? And, how might we address them?
I'm sure more questions may come to my mind as I contemplate before our meeting in a few weeks. But as a beginning of thought... perhaps you, my readers, might think of other questions to also bring to the table. Or, perhaps you might like to respond to one of my questions. Please do drop me a comment below.
We are your witnesses: We tell gladly what we have seen and heard, what we have remembered and been told, what we trust and on which we stake our lives. We tell gladly of your mighty rescues and your great gifts of justice and well-being. We tell joyously of your guarantees of creation, seedtime and harvest, day and night, cold and heat. We tell bravely that all is well and all is well and all will be well. Caught up short in mid-doxology by the reality of our lives: We know about loss and failure, We have heard tell about poverty and violence, We inhale daily war and rumors of war. And so we bear witness as well, that we yearn for your assurance and find silence; we hope for your presence and meet dread absence; we watch for newness and notice the dry smell of what is old. We tell what we know of you, And in moments of daring praise, we tell more than we ought, Ready to risk our truth-telling about you, still unverified, yet invisible, but in trust and confidence and gratitude for gifts you yet promise. Amen.
— Brueggemann, Walter. Following into Risky Obedience: Prayers along the Journey (pp. 99-100). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.