Ideas for Action

Imagine you are pregnant for the first time. You are excited. You’ve been trying to have a baby for a while now. Overall, you just want a smooth, uncomplicated pregnancy, however, deep inside you hope that the baby is a girl or a boy. Why do you hope that she is a girl or hope that he is a boy? 

As I’ve said before on this blog, I’m a person with spastic cerebral palsy and other disabilities. That means that – like all people, let alone other folks with disabilities! – I require access to affordable housing. On one hand, I can happily report that as I write these words, I sit at my own kitchen table, in an apartment where I live by myself. Sometimes, I need a little help getting my groceries, but I can come and go when I please, and I don’t live with too many insects!

Lead Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Commissioner Murray Sinclair has the wonderful ability to speak important truths in great one liners.  Two of those one-liners have stuck with me for  the 7 years since the release of the final report of the TRC:  education got us into this mess and education will get us out and reconciliation is a generational project.  Both of these short-zingers have inspired our long-term work in the CRC in Canada to advocate for the implementation of TRC Calls to Action 7-10 that focus on justice and equity in First Nation K-12 education.

We’ve turned into a new calendar year, with all of its cultural energy around newness. And Christians carry on into the church year begun at Advent, and the newness brought into history in the incarnation. 

So it’s a good time to see afresh the entire world, object of God’s love, theater of God’s glory, and our miraculous home. And not only ours, but of the entire community of creation—human and ‘beyond human’ creation. 

While most Christmas adages point to the joy of the season (e.g. it’s the most wonderful time of the year), this year I have been once again reminded that November and December are two of the most difficult months for millions of people. Feelings of loneliness and anxiety, a fear of missing out, painful reflection and overwhelming sadness during the Christmas season are so common there’s a special term for it—the holiday blues.

I’m both a person with multiple disabilities, and a good worker. The problem with holding those two concepts in tension is my distinct lack of efficiency. I can do the things I’m skilled at regularly – in church contexts, I can pray, preach, receive and count offering, sing, and not only assist in but help to celebrate the Eucharist – but, when I do them, all those tasks are slower and more deliberate than they would be when done by able-bodied people. Moreover, all those tasks may have small pieces missing.