June 21, 2009: WHEN WE CAN’T RECOGNIZE THE FAMILIAR 1 Samuel 16:14-23; 18:1-16; Mark 4:35-41; Psalm 9:9-20 Eileen Parfrey -- Springwater Presbyterian Church
Last week I mentioned the Franciscan Hermitage, one of the retreats I participated in during my recent study leave. The other retreat, sponsored by the Inter-Faith Disabilities Network of Oregon (IDNO), was called “Sharing the Spiritual Journey.” Its participants live with the full gamut of disability, from physical/ sensory-motor to medical fragility and chronic pain to mental illness. As we established “the safest room on the planet” during our first gathering, one of the ground rules we agreed to was to not deprive each other of the essential dignity to try. These folks are patronized and pitied. Many had not been allowed the dignity to fail and receive help on their own terms, because of well-meaning would-be rescuers. A safe place meant allowing each other to attempt things. It was tricky, because we never asked, “What disability brings you here?” Sure, some disabilities were obvious—the guide dog or the wheelchair—but even when we introduced ourselves the first night, sharing “one thing that, looking at me you wouldn’t guess,” no one self-identified with a disability.
The weekend was a first for most participants. Their first weekend away, the first time they didn’t have to self-define by their disabilities. It was a potentially volatile gathering, being both interfaith and inter-ability, but it was also a potentially mind-blowing gathering, with plenty of opportunity to learn and grow. Right away, participants discovered they held prejudices toward disabilities other than their own. People in wheelchairs looked down on people with mental illness. People with mental illness dismissed the medically fragile. Whether or not we had disabilities, we all discovered we reflected in some way the intolerant characteristics of society-at-large that have often been hurtful.
When they arrived, most participants only knew the members of the planning committee who had invited them. Rather than ask, the discrete assumption was made that “everyone is disabled,” and thus “disabled” became the norm. This was an unfamiliar mindset to most folks, to be considered “normal.” The people who gathered at Menucha on Pentecost weekend were people used to being excluded and rejected and not having hopes nor meeting expectations. And into this disability stew, we tossed the tensions of interfaith communication. As it turns out, there is no one more suited to engaging in the necessary and uncomfortable interfaith dialogues than people on the fringes. For people with nothing to lose, frankness isn’t a threat. They are outsiders, knowing their daily need of grace, because their bodies and brains and perceptual abilities fail them in concrete ways on a daily basis. Thrown in among strangers, these people who were so used to making accommodations for their own daily living, were then required to accommodate not the abilities of others, but their differing faith and practices.
Speaker Raphael Cushnir had a great line that was almost lost, because it seemed so unassuming at first. He said, “Expectation is pre-meditated resentment.” He said this to a room full of people with lifetimes full of unmet expectations. They had faced the decision to either live as bitter, angry people or let go of expectations. Cushnir’s comment supported what became the weekend’s richest point of interfaith dialogue. It began with the other speaker, Irish Catholic writer, Brian Doyle. Doyle shared several stories, including one about his experience with the Virgin Mary, which made me mentally get up and leave the room. I was offended by the overt Catholic-ness of this at an interfaith gathering, and would have been offended even at an ecumenical gathering, because it expressed something so exclusively Roman Catholic. I wasn’t alone in my feelings. Doyle ended his presentation by asking us to sing “Amazing Grace.” I was all set to be offended again, until I paid attention to the words. These are not words limited to Christian faith. And everyone knew them. Everyone. Even the people who later questioned the appropriateness of singing it.
Singing is where interfaith discussion got down to nuts and bolts. One woman, legally blind, offered a singing workshop three times, and three times no one came. At first she felt rejected, then she grieved, then she recognized that singing is often a place of deep wounding in people. Finally, she openly questioned the appropriateness of singing “Amazing Grace” at an interfaith gathering. Which precipitated many discussions over the course of the retreat. We all needed to face our prejudice about “other people’s disabilities,” which prepared us recognize that Doyle’s story of the Virgin Mary and his request that we sing this song were an authentic expression of his faith. As we examined the many levels of our own biases, we could see that we were called to accept the speaker’s authenticity and integrity in sharing what he did. If non-affiliated spirituality’s expressions are valid, surely the white male Christian point of view has its own authenticity and integrity, and therefore must be accorded the same respect as another’s “out-there” beliefs and practices.
I learned a lot. Primarily, I learned that the familiar can get so familiar that we can’t recognize it. This familiarity obscures a simple truth. People just want to be met where they’re at, loved for what and who they are. Never mind “what might have been” or what they will contribute in coming days. Because we witnessed the fragility of people’s bodies and minds, we became aware of the concrete likelihood that parts of each of us are liable to break without notice. The term is “temporarily-abled.” Given this witness, it became imperative to meet each other at “is.” Right now. The present condition. All my fancy contemplative practices, my interior support of spiritual disciplines designed to embrace the “sacrament of the present moment”—these are nonsense in comparison to the exercise of “now” for persons living with disabilities.
Thomas Merton wrote that “what you fear is an indication of what you seek.” As we look at today’s scripture lesson, we can label Saul’s situation “mental illness,” as some scholars do. Or we can take a literal reading and say he is being punished by God. Given the perspective I gained at the IDNO retreat, however, I would suggest Saul experiences what Walter Brueggemann calls “failing to understand his situation.” As my sermon title would have it, Saul cannot recognize the familiar. What is so “familiar” to Saul that it dominates his psyche and spirit, what he can no longer recognize, is his fear that he will not be big enough to lead Israel. He thinks it all depends on him, and that terrifies him. What makes him crazy about David, is that David does not fear that. David’s lack of fear on that point—of not being able to live up to expectations—both causes admiration in Saul and points to his own inability to trust God.
Maybe we could be more like my friends at the IDNO retreat and recognize that we each have a point of view, and that point of view is what obscures our ability to recognize the familiar. The IDNO retreat happened the week President Obama nominated a Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court. Sonia Sotomayor’s critics suggested she would not bring objectivity to the Court, because she has a particular point of view. She’s a woman! She’s Hispanic! What the experience of my IDNO friends pointed out so eloquently, is that even the white male WASP perspective is itself a perspective. It’s just that it’s so familiar we can’t recognize it. What is so utterly familiar to us as people of faith, what we can’t recognize, is this one, simple truth. People just want to be loved where they’re at. Labels do not work. Thank God, God does meet us where we’re at. And invites us to do the same for each other.