BETHSAIDA TEAM MEMBERS SPEAK.
An article submitted to The Voice by David Cates (St. George’s, Maplewood)In 2002 Bishop Croneberger asked Jan Hardy (St. George’s, Maplewood) to form a team helping parishes toward awareness of disability in our midst, followed by planning for physical access. Thus was Bethsaida born! But even our farsighted bishop could not at that time imagine the degree of socio-spiritual inertia embedded at all levels of parish life, despite prayerful intent to be inclusive!
At the upcoming 2006 Diocesan Convention, the Bethsaida Team will present a report of its efforts and goals, anticipating mandate renewal, restated in light of our experience so far. As Team member Rick Fox puts it (see below for more on Rick’s thinking), the Bethsaida achievement since 2002 was to get our issues on the “back burner” of every parish in the diocese, and on the front burner of a few.
This article samples the thinking of five Bethsaida Team members (including myself) whose commitments illuminate large themes at the core of the Bethsaida mission. To start these conversations, I asked, “Why did you join the Team and what would you like to see Bethsaida do.” Co-chairs Jan Hardy and the Rev. Oscar Mockridge (St. Luke’s, Montclair) cheerfully endorsed this approach, adding that the wide range of interests and goals revealed here may attract others to join us as we further this large effort in social change whose time has come.
Carl Haefele (St. John the Divine, Hasbrouck Heights), a recent member, brings a background in construction to his interest in physical access. A prime concern of Carl’s is the inconsistent enforcement of state building codes from one township to another. His church (“substantially inaccessible,” in his words) stands ready to finance a two-stage project: an entry ramp, followed by accessible bathrooms on the same level. The town, however, will grant the permit only if both are done simultaneously! In Carl’s view, this deal-breaker demand is not evident in the underlying code. He’d like Bethsaida to work toward uniform enforcement of building codes.
Richard Fox (Christ Church, Bloomfield/Glen Ridge), blind since infancy, is astonishingly self-reliant, regularly flying (sometimes with Inky, his dog) to computer consulting engagements around the country. When asked why he joined the Team, he said he continues to be active in associations of the blind, but felt a need to understand and assist other disability cultures. At his church, Rick is not only the substitute organist and a former vestry member, but chairs the accessibility committee. They now have the funds (from an intra-parish grant) to renovate a large bathroom for wheelchair access.
But Rick asks, “What happens when we’re accessible? How do we seek out, invite and welcome the disabled of every stripe?” To illustrate the subtlety of the challenge, he cites experience at a former parish where, despite coffee-hour kindness, he didn’t feel comfortable. “People would raise their voices and talk more slowly to me than to others, which isolated me. I seek respite and fellowship at church, which I’ve found where I now worship. My weekdays are stressful enough.”
As for the challenge facing the church after accessibility, Rick makes two points. “To me, ‘outreach’ and ‘marketing’ are synonymous. The disabled tend to associate in communities. We need to seek them out, to offer our access. But we must also ask their help in teaching the behavioral clues that will let them feel accepted. Their gift to us can be how to experience mutual respect and affection.”
Like Rick, Dr. Sandra Ruth Pinkerton (Good Shepherd, Fort Lee) is self-reliant since infancy. Unlike Rick, Sandy is wheelchair-bound. After a few moments with her, my urge to pity was erased once and for all by the strength of her wide-ranging mind and long history at the forefront of civil rights for the handicapped. She was, for example, the youngest person helping to draft the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. Her long-range goal for Bethsaida is to supplement lay leadership with a paid professional staff person at the diocese. “The leadership opportunities for Bethsaida,” Sandy says, “are too vast for us to remain entirely lay-led.”
Speaking her mind gets her in trouble, she says, especially at churches! Kindly people seem able to relate to Sandy only by trying to help her, which she refuses, sometimes abruptly. She speaks of wheelchair hiking clubs where witty community is valued, and was amused to learn that the Appalachian Mountain Club, which operates a chain of overnight huts for serious hikers in the Presidential Range (NH), has decided to become wheelchair-accessible. That AMC leases Federal land (obliging it to be ADA-compliant) suddenly became relevant when fit hikers in trail-designed chairs asked for access!
Wendy Broadbent (St. Elizabeth’s, Ridgewood) is mother to a highly intelligent though neurally-disabled young son. Her love has led to a crusade for childhood Christian formation which teaches acceptance of the disabled. This interest is powered by a theology whose central principle is the brokenness of humankind. In a recent letter to the Rev. Lu-Anne Conner at St. Elizabeth’s, Ridgewood, where Bethsaida meets because of its accessibility, Wendy wrote, “You said that at every Eucharist we are breaking Jesus’ broken body. Nancy Eiseland in [her book] The Disabled God realized that God accepted her disabled body when He chose to resurrect His Son whose body had been disabled in death. I found her position enormously helpful to my understanding.”
I share Wendy’s theology, but come at it differently. If we are created in the image of God, what is that image? Does it imply physical perfection, as in Renaissance paintings of deities and heroes? And isn’t that culture-rooted image alive today, less beautifully, in an obsession with youth, fitness, beauty and a need to isolate the sick, the aged and the different? “Created in the image— ” is, however, so stark and compelling an idea that maybe we can draw attention to its ambiguities.
The image of God means to me spiritual and creative power. Mere physical appearance is irrelevant. The poet Yeats was surely thinking of this in “Sailing to Byzantium,” where he contrasted natural and creative wholeness, advising elderly artists to “--louder clap for every tatter in thy mortal dress.” Rick and Sandy both told me that when they meet their physical peers, they joke about the absurdities of disability. They’ll be happy when all of us are able to joke about brokenness – our common heritage -- together!
An article submitted to The Voice by David Cates (St. George’s, Maplewood)
In 2002 Bishop Croneberger asked Jan Hardy (St. George’s, Maplewood) to form a team helping parishes toward awareness of disability in our midst, followed by planning for physical access. Thus was Bethsaida born! But even our farsighted bishop could not at that time imagine the degree of socio-spiritual inertia embedded at all levels of parish life, despite prayerful intent to be inclusive!
At the upcoming 2006 Diocesan Convention, the Bethsaida Team will present a report of its efforts and goals, anticipating mandate renewal, restated in light of our experience so far. As Team member Rick Fox puts it (see below for more on Rick’s thinking), the Bethsaida achievement since 2002 was to get our issues on the “back burner” of every parish in the diocese, and on the front burner of a few.
This article samples the thinking of five Bethsaida Team members (including myself) whose commitments illuminate large themes at the core of the Bethsaida mission. To start these conversations, I asked, “Why did you join the Team and what would you like to see Bethsaida do.” Co-chairs Jan Hardy and the Rev. Oscar Mockridge (St. Luke’s, Montclair) cheerfully endorsed this approach, adding that the wide range of interests and goals revealed here may attract others to join us as we further this large effort in social change whose time has come.
Carl Haefele (St. John the Divine, Hasbrouck Heights), a recent member, brings a background in construction to his interest in physical access. A prime concern of Carl’s is the inconsistent enforcement of state building codes from one township to another. His church (“substantially inaccessible,” in his words) stands ready to finance a two-stage project: an entry ramp, followed by accessible bathrooms on the same level. The town, however, will grant the permit only if both are done simultaneously! In Carl’s view, this deal-breaker demand is not evident in the underlying code. He’d like Bethsaida to work toward uniform enforcement of building codes.
Richard Fox (Christ Church, Bloomfield/Glen Ridge), blind since infancy, is astonishingly self-reliant, regularly flying (sometimes with Inky, his dog) to computer consulting engagements around the country. When asked why he joined the Team, he said he continues to be active in associations of the blind, but felt a need to understand and assist other disability cultures. At his church, Rick is not only the substitute organist and a former vestry member, but chairs the accessibility committee. They now have the funds (from an intra-parish grant) to renovate a large bathroom for wheelchair access.
But Rick asks, “What happens when we’re accessible? How do we seek out, invite and welcome the disabled of every stripe?” To illustrate the subtlety of the challenge, he cites experience at a former parish where, despite coffee-hour kindness, he didn’t feel comfortable. “People would raise their voices and talk more slowly to me than to others, which isolated me. I seek respite and fellowship at church, which I’ve found where I now worship. My weekdays are stressful enough.”
As for the challenge facing the church after accessibility, Rick makes two points. “To me, ‘outreach’ and ‘marketing’ are synonymous. The disabled tend to associate in communities. We need to seek them out, to offer our access. But we must also ask their help in teaching the behavioral clues that will let them feel accepted. Their gift to us can be how to experience mutual respect and affection.”
Like Rick, Dr. Sandra Ruth Pinkerton (Good Shepherd, Fort Lee) is self-reliant since infancy. Unlike Rick, Sandy is wheelchair-bound. After a few moments with her, my urge to pity was erased once and for all by the strength of her wide-ranging mind and long history at the forefront of civil rights for the handicapped. She was, for example, the youngest person helping to draft the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. Her long-range goal for Bethsaida is to supplement lay leadership with a paid professional staff person at the diocese. “The leadership opportunities for Bethsaida,” Sandy says, “are too vast for us to remain entirely lay-led.”
Speaking her mind gets her in trouble, she says, especially at churches! Kindly people seem able to relate to Sandy only by trying to help her, which she refuses, sometimes abruptly. She speaks of wheelchair hiking clubs where witty community is valued, and was amused to learn that the Appalachian Mountain Club, which operates a chain of overnight huts for serious hikers in the Presidential Range (NH), has decided to become wheelchair-accessible. That AMC leases Federal land (obliging it to be ADA-compliant) suddenly became relevant when fit hikers in trail-designed chairs asked for access!
Wendy Broadbent (St. Elizabeth’s, Ridgewood) is mother to a highly intelligent though neurally-disabled young son. Her love has led to a crusade for childhood Christian formation which teaches acceptance of the disabled. This interest is powered by a theology whose central principle is the brokenness of humankind. In a recent letter to the Rev. Lu-Anne Conner at St. Elizabeth’s, Ridgewood, where Bethsaida meets because of its accessibility, Wendy wrote, “You said that at every Eucharist we are breaking Jesus’ broken body. Nancy Eiseland in [her book] The Disabled God realized that God accepted her disabled body when He chose to resurrect His Son whose body had been disabled in death. I found her position enormously helpful to my understanding.”
I share Wendy’s theology, but come at it differently. If we are created in the image of God, what is that image? Does it imply physical perfection, as in Renaissance paintings of deities and heroes? And isn’t that culture-rooted image alive today, less beautifully, in an obsession with youth, fitness, beauty and a need to isolate the sick, the aged and the different? “Created in the image— ” is, however, so stark and compelling an idea that maybe we can draw attention to its ambiguities.
The image of God means to me spiritual and creative power. Mere physical appearance is irrelevant. The poet Yeats was surely thinking of this in “Sailing to Byzantium,” where he contrasted natural and creative wholeness, advising elderly artists to “--louder clap for every tatter in thy mortal dress.” Rick and Sandy both told me that when they meet their physical peers, they joke about the absurdities of disability. They’ll be happy when all of us are able to joke about brokenness – our common heritage -- together!
