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  • About
  • Mission Statement
  • Call to Ministry
  • Sermons
  • Religious Education
  • Things Theresa does
  • Theresa loves you photos
  • Ministerial roles and functions
  • Art | Stewardship | Theology
  • Contact Rev. Soto
REV. THERESA LOVES YOU.

February 20th, 2015

2/20/2015

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They Look Like Walking Trees. <shrug>

PictureI see people. They look like walking trees. The image is three palm trees against a blue sky and a fleecy cloud.
While being disabled has its challenges, one of the hidden gifts it offers is the opportunity to see how often people act in compassion. Sometimes people show their compassion in tiny, lovely ways. Not too long ago, I stopped at a coffee shop to get a latte, breve, three raw sugars. It had a lid on it, but as I held the coffee in one hand and drove my scooter away from the counter, the coffee splashed on me. There was a tiny, hot puddle on the arc between my thumb and forefinger. Another coffee shop customer crossed my path: brown corduroy blazer, blue tie, round, gold-rimmed glasses, and he stopped. I thought he was going to offer to carry my drink. Instead, he took a napkin and wiped my hand.

He reminded me of the difference between sympathy and empathy. He reminded me that acting from empathy can lead to lived compassion. Of course I can feel sorrow over someone else’s suffering. This is something like a quick review of it, like trying to read a billboard while your bus rushes by on the highway. Blurry.

There’s a story about something like this in the Christian Scripture. Jesus arrived at Bethsaida in the middle of a tough conversation with Their followers. “Do  you still not get it?” Jesus asked. Then some people came.

“Jesus, please,” they said, “our friend can’t see. Can you heal his eyes?”

Jesus went with the man outside of town. Then he spit in the man’s eyes. This is fair because a lot of times when we are called to act in compassion it is not neat and sanitized. It’s just a human situation, with humans in it. I’ve spilled coffee. I’ve made a mistake. I encounter someone struggling with poverty or illness or addiction. God doesn’t ask me to be perfect, but God does ask me to hold still long enough to be of use, to have the spit applied, to be the spit. To have my hand wiped off.

“Do you see anything?” Jesus asked.

The man said, “I see men. They look like walking trees.”

I think this part of the story is funny, mostly because it brings on what my friend Thea calls, “the laughter of recognition”. I am that person sometimes. I am covered in the miracle of humanity, surrounded by miracles, each of whom has a universe of life and experience inside them. And sometimes all I see is trees. I sum up their story in one line or less, the annoying one, the aloof one, the homeless one.

To actually feel the experience of another, to respond and act from that place is connecting more closely. It’s thinking of how life feels for another person. This allows them to be someone with whom we relate for who they really are.

One way to read healing stories in Scripture goes beyond disability being bad and healing being good. Rather, we ask of the story, “Where does transformation happen?”

So Jesus laid hands on his eyes again. The man looked hard and realized that he had recovered perfect sight, saw everything in bright, twenty-twenty focus. Jesus sent him straight home, telling him, “Don’t enter the village.”

The man realized his eyes were fine. Maybe the blurry moment was practice in really focusing. Maybe the transformation happened not in the person’s eyes, but in his heart, as he was able to consider, as are we, how it is that we really define and consider the people around us. Compassion calls us to consider them as human, which is to say, as particular miracles. We can respond and act in that way. #1000Speak



For more information:


http://yvonnespence.com/all/he-is-worthy-of-compassion/

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Challenging your own ableism: one simple, possible framework

2/4/2015

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Today I had a conversation about ableist language that went something like this:

Me: So using The Condition as a metaphor for something bad doesn’t really work out. Having The Condition is one of the legitimate ways of being human.

Them: I don’t agree with you.

Me: ….

Me: OK, well, you might want people to receive treatment and healing and that’s real. At the same time, it is not OK for you to use The Condition to express that they are worse and you are better.

They: Thanks for sharing.
-----------------------------------------------
Now, Beloveds, let’s just give this consideration.

Let’s acknowledge that while holy impatience is a real part of doing justice work, it can’t be the only way I do things. The ways I reach and work for justice have to be about love, relationships and possibility. So much is possible, so much is at stake that we can do nothing but move, however deliberately, however imperceptibly at times, toward new present-futures. So, as much as I might characterize this kind of conversation as negative, it is simply an opportunity to find out what’s real for another person, another person who has inside them entire universes and a lifetime of experience. 

I will take this opportunity to offer a simple framework for language that respects disabled persons, and, in fact, all bodies.

1. All bodies are human. This is what they have in common that makes them good.
This is the part that dominant culture tries to convince you to reject. Dominant culture tries to tell you that there are good bodies and bad ones. The function of a body is something to notice. After all, the person of the body has to deal with the challenges it presents.

Is the function the same as the value? Friends, the way a body functions is not the same as the person who inhabits it. I will write more about this sometime. But I feel that, instinctively, as you distinguish it, you know it to be true. Steven Hawking is not an athlete. It is actually his powers of mathlete that you respect. In that instance, you easily separate the function of his body from the person that he is. If you knew all the people in your path who are differently abled, if you had the chance, you would connect with their humanity in the same way. You would be grateful for the body that allows them to be present with you, even if it doesn’t function as you wish it would.

2. The conditions that people have are personal to them.
Someone may have a disabling condition. Please do not assume that their experience of it is negative. Assuming that their experience is negative is one way in which you can impose the meaning that you impose on someone else’s body. Consider that you have a clearer boundary around lots of other ways that people’s  bodies are. You don’t tell people how to dress or what tattoos they can sport. You operate within clear confines of consent when it comes to touching other’s bodies. How is it less significant to assign a meaning to someone else’s body or to judge the value of their physical lived experience? I believe that it is equally significant, perhaps more significant because the value we assign to people determines what we believe is possible for them. It shapes the spaciousness of the world in which they live and in which we participate with them.

3. Your words are one of the tools at your disposal to make justice.
It is not appropriate for you to use someone else’s condition as a metaphor for your own purposes.

All of the metaphors that we use have the possibility of creating more love and more liberation in the world. When we use metaphors of the bodies of others to say that the conditions they have signify inferiority and weakness, we have both transgressed the boundary of the body of another and have also used our words to devalue their physical home and lived experience. We hold the possibility of more: we may, through word, deed, welcome, and commitment to action affirm that each person, regardless of the nature of their ability belongs together with us. I wonder what is possible if we commit to this approach. I am open and excited to find out.

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Theresa smiles a little and holds up a piece of paper that says in block letters, "MY BODY IS MINE. THE BODIES OF OTHERS BELONG TO THEM." She has short, dark hair and orange glasses. She is wearing silver hoop earrings and red lip gloss. She has on a lavender shirt.
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    Candidate for Unitarian Universalist ministry.

    Intern Minister at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

    Chaplain Intern at Portland Veteran Affairs Medical Center

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