Theology as Disabled Learning: Rambles and Rough Drafts
Had a great talk with my students Thursday night (i am Lutheran/Anglican Chaplin Assistant at SFU). Im doing some research into Disability Theology. Small field. Basically says: when Jesus healed the sick he was not returning them to a state of normality but abnormality. This was a society with no high tech surgery, medical plans, medical insurance etc. ‘Whole bodies’ would have been rare, or the domain of children alone. To be healed was to be returned to a state of abnormality!!!! Add to that the Learning Disabled – those bodies who disrupt and disable what and how we learn and our assumptions of wisdom and knowing. Then, in Disability Theology, the roal of the Christain/Person of Faith/Spiritual Person/Politically Conscious is disrupt our knowing, disrupt our assumptions of peace and justice and reveal trampled bodies etc.
Im also looking ad Disabled Learners and Learning Disablers in the bible. Moses and his stutter, David the Sheppard boy who became king (unconventional wisdom if ever) and the disciples who were philosophers but not (in the rabbi system, that is a total disruption of the usual way of things) and Jesus who disrupted the learning and learning assumptions of those around him.
Ive talked to Anita Fast, former VST student and the VST register briefly and she is going to let me bounce ideas off of her as im working closely with a way of doing things present in her presentation at AQR (Affirming Queered Religion).
Disability Theology asks that we turn to the bodies that have been broken for and buy us as the place of Gods revelation in the world. We turn to the broken bodies of the dead,the war dead and the victims of crime and injustice and see there the revelation of God: be shocked by it, and make a world of justice and mercy and non-violence without breaking more bodies by violence.
Theology and Spirituality as Disabled Learning asks that we view ourselves as disalbers of learning in society. That we view our task as being to disable forms and ways of learning that say violence solves violence, that looks for those who are trampled by ‘conventioinal wisdom’ and to create a world where multiple voices are given space to speak and think in society.
Jason
