I wanted to share this post as an invitation to you to the upcoming Deep & Wide Conference this May 10th & 11th. Their theme is going to be 'Ecclesial Engagement With Disability Across Canada' and I am both excited and honored to be able to share some of my own thoughts there.
Let me start by saying my wife and I have some incredible caregivers who care greatly for us and are immeasurably skilled in knowledge and experience for looking after our health needs as quadreplegics here in the city of Calgary. We could not survive out here in the community without them! But, it seems as though this community of caregiving has been drastically shrinking the past several years and culturally changing with fewer skilled employees who seem to only care about receiving a paycheck rather then bringing dignity and care to those with disabilities. Last June, AHS announced they would be canceling their community caregiving contract with CBI Home Health and renewing it with a new company here in Calgary called Caregivers Home Health Care...
It seems inescapable these days. Images and news about war and gun violence is everywhere. A few weeks ago I was watching as pictures of children in the middle east, bloody and crying in pain, were being carried frantically to any place of refuge that might be found. With horror flooding the pit of my stomach, I began asking myself the question; what happens with the disabled in places of violent war?
It seems lately that I keep climbing out of one crises into another. It is exhausting! I'm not sure if it was a gallstone attack or I caught some kind of a intestinal virus; but two weeks ago for 4 days I was in a complete nightmare. If you are in a wheelchair, you know... Continue Reading →
A little over a week ago, I had the opportunity to give a TED Talk or 'Spark' Talk at the Rochester U's Live Stream Conference. It felt good to be back in the Zoom world of social gathering and seeing some of my old academic prof's like Dr. Mark Love and Dr. Richard Beck. Beck's... Continue Reading →
This post is part of a series that starts here. Most times when we approach the subject of understanding our deeper selves, I think our first thoughts go to the question of, "Are we religious?" From there we then move towards our inner beliefs and struggles between religion and spirituality. The problem is, by polarizing... Continue Reading →
Not that long ago, I read an article on The Mighty that drew from two polarized understandings of disability. The first was the medical model of disability -- "that when something is wrong with the body or mind it is an impairment or pathology, therefore, it is not functional, the ideal state is non-disabled, and an outside force should help work to 'fix' or cure the 'broken' state of the disabled person." In a sense, this becomes a highly individualized diagnosis leading to bias prejudice, labels, and often exclusionary isolation from society (Ableism). The second is what it calls the social model of disability -- "that yes, impairments in the body and mind do occur but that disability occurs because of the external disadvantages society creates in the management or handling of a person’s impairments through attitudes, systems, structures, and beliefs." What I often think is that we create a sort of pendulum structure between these two spheres; swaying back and forth while weighing the measures of truth between the two understandings. Do they both present certain truths? Yes, I think they do. And rather then swinging between the two while...
It feels as though lately I have been doing a whole lot of nothing. Not really by choice, but by the dictations of the slow life of disability. Truth be told, doing nothing is hard on me. I am my own worst critic! My mind is on fire with things I'd like to do and creative possibilities to pursue during these times. But day in and day out it seems like all I manage to accomplish is the struggle to get house chores done, workouts completed, and health requirements finished that take way to much time out of my life. It feels like a never ending perpetuation of liminality! Whenever these seasons seem to hit me, I begin the internal struggle of judging my failures in self expectations. No matter how hard I try to keep up the workout routine, my gut keeps sticking out like a basketball waiting to give birth. The collection of writing projects and ideas still sitting in my draft folder reminding me why I will never be able to publish a book despite...
Several years ago, I was having coffee with a friend at a local coffee shop. As always, we started our conversation with some laughter before he began sharing about a resent encounter he had while going about his daily activities in the community. It seems he had struck up a dialogue with someone on the subject of disabilities and they thought to ask him, "Wouldn't you want to be normal?" That's when my friend revealed something that I had never really contemplated before in the deeper sense. He told the person, "I am normal. This is the way I was born and have always been." Born with Cerebral Palsy, my friend had no other life experience other than the mobility differences he grew up with since his birth. As far as he was concerned, this was his normal and the way he was meant to be. For him, God had created him in this body and he wouldn't want to be like any-body else...
I wasn't sure I was going to really get into it. But after two episodes of 'The Big Door Prize' I was hooked. There really was something magical about the way each character wrestled with identity and meaning. It was like the telling of an old fable -- while the story was entertaining and fictional,... Continue Reading →
At The Bottom Of The Well 