Last Day of November

The Tour is down to five more months. Or maybe not! It has been emerging that a number of opportunities are possible toward August and later. Clearly I need to be in Toronto in May and July, and I want to spend lots of time with Camphill in Barrie and Angus during the summer months. Just the same the future of the Tour is unfolding and I am loath to push it or cut it off.

Right now it looks like we can do good things if we stick around Tybee and Savannah until mid or end of April, head back to Toronto picking up Madison and/or Chicago and/or Indianapolis along the way, then head west picking up Denver and others, spend quality time in and near Duncan and BC, etc. I hope to have made these decisions in the next three weeks.

By the end of Thanksgiving weekend we have leads but no commitments. Conversations are underway about working at two conferences, doing several meetings, fulfilling two or three writing projects, starting and/or demonstrating Laser Eagles in two areas, doing some support around advocates who face life and death crises with their labeled friends, and working with two to four youth groups. It would be impossible to do much deep work if we left by the end of February but, on the other hand, there are as of yet no firm commitments and all of the initial could still easily dissipate.

Erin has sequestered herself for rest, reflection and writing at Kristin’ and Brad’s Tybee house. Gabor and I attended service at First Presbyterian on Washington this morning. This is the church where Gloria, Jean, Franziska, Paula and I started our January sojourn in Savannah earlier this year. Neel Foster is chair of the social concerns committee there, and we have been to dinner at the church twice since we got here. It seemed important to show up as a way of indicating our seriousness about deepening possibilities to get the Peace through Inclusion vision on the table in this well established network of Savannahians.

Today is the first day of the Christian church year, the first Sunday of advent, the time when the church prepares for the incarnation of God through the birth of the baby Jesus. Advent has always been my favourite season. However you find the Christian message, it seems powerful to me, and very much in line with Inclusion. It is awesome to reflect on the message that the powerful and organized oppressors were utterly turned upside down, and that the discontinuities in our human natures can be reconciled by the utter vulnerability of an infant. The “authentic” Christian message is that ultimately power lies not in strength, ability, resources or organization but in love, intimacy and forgiveness.

The service was powerful, bringing me once again to question how much of my desire to take on this Tour comes out of my political commitment to Inclusion, and how much out of my Christian-shaped spirituality. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter, but it leaves me with questions about what to write, what to say and how to approach people with what I believe will inspire them.

Tonight the rain stopped and it was warm enough to go for a walk. I am stiff and uncomfortable from sitting still too long, in front of the computer, in the close quarters of Avalanche or Bronte, or even in church. There is a brand new moon and so not much light, and even though I was wearing Gabor’s head lamp and my eyes are trained to see in the dark of the country roads after two months of living at Camphill Nottawasaga, I noticed how nervous and tentative I was as I rolled along.

I reflected on how similar this is to my approach to this Tour. If I were out in broad daylight I would zip down the bike path, avoiding the sidewalk which is generally sound but has occasional gaps and drops. I would easily notice large vistas of marsh or artists’ displays, and generally enjoy the intriguing and sometimes humorous landscape of Tybee.

In the dark, the shadow of a large tree makes me lose sight of the road’s edge, I stick to the sidewalk when possible because drivers do not necessarily pay much attention to my white coat and head lamp, and a barking dog on a balcony makes me cautious. In fact I turned back when I dropped a few inches between some uneven sidewalk sections, and on the way back mistook another trailer for ours and was disoriented for awhile.

It’s the same space, there is just as much beauty and the same compelling reasons to be out exploring and taking it all in exist in the day or by night. The risks are pretty much the same. However the lack of capacity to see clearly beyond a few centimeters changes everything - curiousity into timidity, grace into creeping, accomplishment into survival.

I know that it is always important to approach the future with a certainty based on nothing but faith – whether it be faith in dream or Holy Spirit, however you see it. It is easy to know that but not so easy to do it when there is no way to know what’s in the future. And mostly there is no way to know what will be in the future and so faith – especially my faith right now - must stand on nothing.

It seems that I chose to spend my life, my resources, my relationships and my reputation traveling and creating the World Peace through Inclusion Tour based on the faith that my life and the richness of the blessings I have received are not for nothing and won’t be wasted. I continue to believe that, in some manner that remains too dark for me to see yet, we who are called disabled have a rightful and important role in history and that we can take a full place in every community.

I just can’t see how – yet.
Judith