Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the CCDA podcast. I'm Alicia Edson and I am a member of CCDA as well as a co-facilitator with our AIM network, which is Accessibility in Ministry.
Speaker: And I am honored to have Dr. Amy Kinney joining us today. Thank you, Amy, so much for being here. It's great to be here. Thank you.
Speaker: So, Amy, do you mind introducing yourself to us? Hi everyone, I'm Amy. I'm disabled scholar practitioner. I am Australian by birth and US American by migration and a third culture of lived experience that is both and neither of these.
Speaker: I hate small talk, but I love big ideas. I'm more at home in the water than I am on land. And I've never met a pie that I didn't like.
Speaker: love Great. Thank you. Why did you want to write the book, My Disability is Divine? My last book, My Body's Not a Prayer Request, was a way for me to share some of the stories of growing up disabled in the church and folks trying to pray me away or telling me i was uniquely sinful because I'm disabled.
Speaker: As the title suggests, it's really inviting folks not to assume that my body-mind is a prayer request or invitation for people to change the way that I navigate the world.
Speaker: This book is a continuation of that work by inviting us to go beyond. It's not merely that my body-mind isn't a prayer request, but that my disability has invited me to explore and experience so many aspects of God.
Speaker: In the book, I talk about a robust emotional landscape of my faith experiences, including joy, lament, loneliness, community, and creativity, just to name a few.
Speaker: Wow, that's pretty amazing, actually. I get a lot of that growing up with no vision. I get that. So many people of faith have been taught to see disability as something to pray away, as you just mentioned.
Speaker: How does your book challenge that framework? Yes, I'm just one kale smoothie or essential oil away from being non-disabled, and it seems like you can relate to that as well.
Speaker: This idea that folks are constantly coming up to me and so many in our community and trying to pray for disability to be erased I've had folks try to exorcise my demons or tell me that if I just believed, I would be fixed. yeah I've had folks hold me down while praying me away. I've even been given home remedies to cure me and poems about how I'll be whole in heaven if I just have enough faith.
Speaker: yeah I'm disabled and all I got was this lousy lavender remedy. and this isn't one or two bad actors. It's a whole cost of Christians throughout my life and throughout the lives of so many of us in the disability community.
Speaker: yeah What we're missing is that throughout Scripture, we encounter disabled people at the forefront of the work that God chooses to do with humanity and the relationships that God cultivates with humanity.
Speaker: Isaac becomes blind. Jacob walks with a limp. Moses has a speech disability. Elijah deals with what we might now call depression or suicidal ideation.
Speaker: right Timothy is chronically ill. right Paul has the thorn in the flesh, which is scripture speak for disability. yeah yeah Disability is a place of encounter with the living God.
Speaker: And when we erase that, we're not telling the full story. That's a really good point. Yeah, and that's something that I actually have never even considered.
Speaker: We do read a lot about those people, but I never really looked at those people and their story as being an extension of my story, if you if you will.
Speaker: I loved reading your first book because i just got a totally different perspective from what you're saying. you know i remember getting and handkerchief that was supposed to be blessed by Pope or something, and it was going to heal me. so i So I get where you've been.
Speaker: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, and and thank you for your kind words about my book, My Hope Against Hope, is that the more that we share these stories with one another and the broader community, the more that we can understand disability yeah as a place where we get to experience and learn more about the divine.
Speaker: yes What does it mean to learn un-able-ism? That's a big one, isn't it? Ableism is a system that places value on people's body minds and often creates a hierarchy of humans.
Speaker: It is connected to ideas of intelligence, normalcy, whatever that might mean, productivity.
Speaker: it's connected to these ideas of an expected timeline and process and competency. And it is connected to other systems of oppression, of course, as well, because it is a system that is evaluating and creating a hierarchy amongst humans.
Speaker: ah Wow. If we want to dismantle ableism and other forms of oppression, think there are many ways that we can do that.
Speaker: One way is to start recognizing where ableism is part of the story. This might be in our communities, it might be in our churches, communities.
Speaker: in our own understanding of Scripture, the way that even unwittingly we have been taught to erase disability. It might be that we do an accessibility audit of our church and we learn about whether the church has physically accessible spaces, digitally accessible content, websites, and social media.
Speaker: And of course, a really big one, are the attitudes welcoming to disabled folks? So what would you say to the elder board or the deacon board or the or the senior pastors in a church where they're saying to you, well, Amy, how do we include better?
Speaker: How do we treat disability better? What's What would be the first steps that you would advise at a church setting?
Speaker: One of my favorite stories in Scripture is in Luke 14, where Jesus tells us about the great banquet. In this parable, Jesus is talking about what the kingdom of heaven is like.
Speaker: And it's a feast. And there are poor and disabled people there. And there's enough for everyone. If only our chaches could be like the great banquet.
Speaker: mon There's no talk of cure or condemnation of the disabled folks or the poor folks. There's no sense that we'll make this the banquet accessible only when we have enough money or that accessibility is just for some people and not for others.
Speaker: There's no... argument about who gets in or no bouncer at the door checking that folks qualified to be part of this banquet.
Speaker: I think that if we really take that as an image of what the kingdom of heaven is like, we could start by making our churches a little bit more like a banquet where everyone gets to feast.
Speaker: and And that makes it so simple, doesn't it? Yeah. If they would only just see it that way. who It really is. i think so often we over-intellectualize or over-complicate, and it's as simple as setting out plates.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, I get that. So if someone asked you why should I read your book? What would you say? If someone asked me why they should read my book, I reply,
Speaker: i would reply This is an invitation, and it is an invitation to all of us to expand our notion of who God is and what faithful community can be.
Speaker: And this is pieces of my story that invite others to reflect on how so often we have limited where God is showing up because of our own ableism. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So is there anything that you can share maybe personally about how you've seen your thoughts change or make change or change other people's views? Or you have an example that you'd like to share?
Speaker: In response to my first book, My Body Is Not A Prayer Request, folks have often reached out to me to share what has resonated with them or to share that they'd never really considered this perspective before and that has been really meaningful.
Speaker: Folks have also reached out to call me a heretic, so I'm in good company. Yeah. Oh, I don't. Why? i mean, i mean, I don't get that.
Speaker: I think it's really difficult for people to expand their notion of what disability is because it often confronts some of the idols that we have and some of the ways that we're led to believe that we're independent.
Speaker: And all of us are interdependent, and it's really difficult for that to be pointed out in a book or any other medium. mas well The stories folks have shared with me in response to the book are their own, but I have really benefited from people sharing with me how this book has been one way that that has opened up discussion in their faith communities of some of the ableism of the liturgy or the worship music or the space itself, which
Speaker: that some folks have used the book as a study to invite people to rethink some assumptions or as a way to advocate for a ramp at their chat or for an ASL interpreter.
Speaker: So I'm really honored that people have shared that with me and that my story can be a small piece of creating the the community where we can all co-flourish.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And when or if a person didn't know or understand your disability, are you pretty open with sharing about that? Or do you think that's important for us to do?
Speaker: That's a really passional decision for each passen. And some folks don't disclose their disabilities. Others do. And i welcome and honor the way that each passen interacts with questions about our disabled body minds.
Speaker: one It can be really overwhelming, as I'm sure you know as well, for folks to ask questions about things that are quite private and sometimes about trauma that we've had in encounters with the medical system or faith communities or the educational system. yeah And not every time I'm at the library or at the park, am I in a mode where I want to suddenly just divulge all pieces of my medical trauma?
Speaker: yeah Something that I do frequently when folks ask me if they can pray for me is i ask if I can pray for them fast. And and I think that has a way of changing the temperature of the conversation and of creating an inter interdependence instead of casting me as an object of pity just because I'm disabled. yes And sometimes I will pray for God to heal their ableism.
Speaker: And that works every time. i love it. Oh my goodness. Okay, so... A question that we ask every episode is, how do you see the CCD philosophy work in your community.
Speaker: We've spoken together about this value of learning from the community or learning from the most impacted and how so often disabled folks have been erased from the discussion in so many ways. The CCD philosophy knows that too often communities are ah developed by folks who are outside of that community bringing in resources without taking into account the people who live in the communities.
Speaker: And CCDA is committed to learning from our neighbors and with our neighbors about our dreams, ideas, thoughts, hopes for the world.
Speaker: Identifying together what the community assets are, what the opportunities are, and how we can cultivate and implement these dreams into reality.
Speaker: That's really similar to our disability rights slogan, which is nothing about us without us, which encourages folks to learn from us and with us instead of merely deciding what we need without community input.
Speaker: Right. Of course, this is part of a holistic approach that empowers disabled people to become leaders we are one-fourth of U.S. population.
Speaker: Are we one-fourth your church leadership? Are we one-fourth of your life, your trusted confidants, community, um folks that you turn to when you need advice?
Speaker: i And if the answer to that is no, it's never too late to change that. Good point. Yeah, good point. That's great.
Speaker: Well, you definitely fit right in let's see with CCD, and i I wish that we could have you come and join our network and our workshops and stuff. That would be awesome.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for listening to the CCDA podcast. Thank you, Amy, for being here. And if you want to learn more about Amy's new book,
Speaker: you can check out the show notes of this episode. And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker: This episode is produced by Sarah Collin in association with Christina Fore. And we will be back with another episode And we'll see you next time.
