It’s likely no secret to you that we can struggle with our view of self and our views of others. How do we judge in terms of success, worth, value, and humanity?
Evangelically Departed aims to point towards, and at times to articulate, a hopeful theological vision. In the work that I have been engaged in over the last number of years, one of the places in which I have seen this hopeful vision is in the context of what is sometimes referred to as disability work and research.
John Swinton, practical theologian at the University of Aberdeen, has become a friend as I have repeatedly referenced his work and been pleased to interview him on a few occasions. Swinton’s theology, worked out in the practical context of the fields of mental health, degenerative neurological conditions, and disability, has enlivened my hopeful theological vision. That is, the questions that Swinton asks about how we view God, self, and others, in light of physical, mental, and intellectual disability, offer both challenge and healing in how we see everyone, including ourselves.
The lives of people with profound intellectual disabilities seem to mirror central aspects of what it means to reside with God’s time - slowness, gentleness, dependence, vulnerability, uncompetitiveness, trustfulness, restfulness, and so on …
If you read through that list again you might see that each of those things might be something that we long for in our lives of busyness, accomplishment, significance, success, and productivity.
The quote above is in Swinton’s book, Becoming Friends of Time. From a theological perspective, a central gift that the book has to offer the reader is the awareness that much of our struggle in judging ourselves and others comes from how we perceive what time is and what time is for. In summing up Swinton’s book I usually simply say, “It shows how we often presume that time is for productivity when what time is really for is love.”
Here is another quote from the book;
Time sits at the very heart of discipleship, vocation and call. It is only within a vision that is driven by God’s time and God’s purposes that any of what has been argued thus far makes sense. In God’s time people with profound and complex intellectual disabilities are called by Jesus and have a vocation that is both beautiful and challenging. Such a vocation is also deeply timefull.
I was thinking of Swinton’s work as I recently re-read the fantastic book What Can a Body Do? by Sara Hendren. Hendren’s book speaks about the “built world” and how design is impacted by our view of others. She winds up speaking as well about how our view of others is impacted by design and offers many hopeful examples that help us see beyond simplistic definitions of ability and disability.
Hendren had been engaged in work and writing in areas of disability and design for some time before her son was born. Her son, Graham, has Down’s Syndrome and Hendren writes well about how her personal experience and her interaction with her son has informed her vision. She points out that the medical field often describes illness and disability with reference to time. “Frequency”, “duration”, “incidence”, “relapse”, and “occurrence” are terms used over and over again. More complex work and analysis brings out words such as “acquired”, “congenital”, and “developmental”, all time related concepts.
Hendren goes on to point out that parents often view their young children in terms of the time at which various milestones were achieved. Diagnosis of illness or condition might be based on these observations. Perhaps the child is “just a little behind”, or maybe there is something really “wrong”. You are familiar with this way of thinking.
Hendren’s observations bring to mind Swinton’s work. Once her son was diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome, Hendren says the standard judgments did not work anymore. While this might be seen as curse, she shows how it was also blessing.
She speaks about a crass but common term called crip-time, “Among disabled people there’s a much bigger catch-all term, a slang for this particular mismatch: it’s called ‘crip-time’. Crip is short for cripple, a name that disabled people have repurposed in an act of political reincarnation dropping degradation attached to a word and investing it with group pride.”
People who use the term in such ways understand that they cannot do most things as quickly as many other people.
Now, think about how you sometimes judge yourself and others. It has to do with time. Have you achieved what you wanted to by a particular age? How do you compare with others of your demographic co-hort? Are your young adult children keeping up with the young adult children of your friends?
Hendren points out that her son, Graham, showed her a freedom from a productivity obsessed view of time,
“He’s a recognizable teenager, doing lots of teenager things, but he’s not playing the comparison game. His enjoyment in school is enhanced, not threatened, by the faster-paced skills of others.”
Can you imagine?
Read the above quote again and consider the freedom such a way of seeing things might bring to how you view yourself and others.
It is likely the case that you will be able to see yourself and others, even members of your own family, in more life-giving ways if you can escape the demands of time as we often see it. Hendren says in relation to her son, “The insistent, clock-driven measuring of his childhood comes from others, not from him. Those assessments arrive by others about him, the terms and gradations uttered in the theatre of the doctor’s office and the classroom teacher conference. Still - we didn’t have the solace of hindsight when he was so young. We have lost countless, possibly needless hours of worry asking when.”
Hopeful theological vision does entail healing. There is opportunity that our view of self and others and even God, might be healed. Our view of time could use some healing as well and that might help in healing those other views.
We can be thankful that guides such as John Swinton and Sara Hendren offer a better, hopeful, more humane vision.
I can’t help but recall the promise of Jesus; “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”