Dark Thoughts and Blind Men

Somehow time gets away. (That leaves an image of me crazily chasing after time with a butterfly net – unsuccessfully!) It’s already three days since the last post. How does that happen?

Relatively speaking there was quite a response to my last post, and ALL of it was to tell me that prisons are not something to like. Funny – I don’t think I said I like or agree with the existence of prisons. My point is there IS stuff in the world I don’t agree with and wouldn’t create or actively support, yet, if I am honest about my feelings, fears or even about what I observe in life, I know that I am sometimes attracted to what I consider to be violent and also that I have sometimes seen good results emerge from what I consider to be “bad”.

Why am I writing about this? Mostly because I am faced with what seems to be a reality that I am limited by my own judgment of good/bad. I came to be an “inclusionist” out of my reaction at six years old to some information my Father gave me about doctors killing children with Down Syndrome and our subsequent conversation about why he was keeping me alive. It was one of the most pivotal moments in my life. But in my life long zeal to fix this problem in the world and to permanently impart value to the people who are labeled disabled I have become a sort of one trick pony, and on top of that, I don’t consider myself to be particularly successful. Doctors continue to kill children with Down Syndrome, albeit in a much more scientifically justified and sanitized way.

One thing I have come to understand in my life is that to attempt to fix something is to empower that thing to reoccur in a stronger form. Use of antibiotics kills off weaker bacteria leaving the stronger ones optimal space to thrive. Closing institutions for “the disabled” led to the proliferation of group homes so that now every town, large or small, in North America and Europe, has houses where the labeled ones are isolated and hidden in the name of “being cared for”.

Does this mean I never use an antibiotic or that I want a return to institutions? No, it means I want to “love my enemies” to use a Christian teaching, or in Landmartian terms, (I am a Landmark Education graduate and an avid participant in their programs), I seek the path to transformation, where my unique perspective on the opportunity that is made available by diversity becomes understood in our shared world as part of bigger conversations about peace, abundance and responsibility for a healthy planet.

Back at the Life Ministries church this evening I came to some peace for myself about my mixed background of values and interpretations, callings and missions, and musings and confusions about what I am doing and why I am doing it. I realized that I don’t have to figure it out – I don’t have to understand myself, at least not altogether. There is no necessity to neatly wrap up my rich life experience, my love for my labeled fellow travelers or my intense drive to impart a different vision of the possibility of diversity.

It is enough that I have lived and am living a blessed life, that I have been richly afforded occasions to see beyond the “normal” cast of perceptions that our societies call the way it is, and that I have deeply experienced and am now exploring the abundance that is made possible by welcoming diversities that challenge us into vital networks of relationship and opportunity.

I simply want to share it, build it and as much as possible secure this way of being into our everyday structures.

On a related note, at the gracious invitation of Tom and Betsy Kohler, Erin, David, David’s brother Jamie and I went to a concert of gospel and Christmas music performed by the Blind Boys of Alabama, at a cozy bar called the Café Loco on Tybee Island. Gabor had already agreed to DJ at the Sentient Bean, so he MISSED IT.

The four principal Grammy winning performers are men in their 80’s who were raised at the Negro School for Blind Boys, where they first performed together in 1939, ten years before I was born.

Let’s just say the place rocked. Quite literally at some points the group, the audience, the entire building were jumping!

At one point the main singer, (I think he said his name is Jim Carter), was led out into the middle of the rocking, dancing audience by the tour manager Chuck. People reached out to touch him as he sang, danced and reached out to them. At points Chuck would start to lead Jim back up the steep step to the stage, and Jim would get part way up and turn around and practically drag Chuck back down into the joyful jumping crowd.

Although it initially looked like Chuck was trying to make Jim stop and return to the safety of the stage to end the concert at a time appropriate for a nearly 90 year old man, it was soon obvious that the two were playing a game, likely well practiced, and designed to give Jim full contact with his unseen listeners and their exquisite pleasure in the group’s performance. The two men were having a lot of fun.

Beyond the memorable performance I reveled in this demonstration of personal assistance at it’s best. Chuck facilitated Jim’s joyful, humorous play, and his full quality performance while making it safe without minimizing the risk or making a big deal of the “extra” work he was called to take on. We all had the chance to see team work at it’s finest but I suspect few will appreciate as much as I do that this demonstration of superb facilitation was brought about by men, some of whom started their lives in the deepest dual segregation, both racist and ablist, and that they are people who started the creation of the dance called personal assistance decades before the Independent Living Movement started in Berkley, California in the mid-60’s.

Chuck took our card from Erin. I am hopeful that Chuck is as good as his word and that the Blind Boys of Alabama will do a gig with the World Peace through Inclusion Tour when the gentlemen return from their European tour.

Judith