Need I say more? It seems to me as if the past couple weeks had a whole month rolled into them--never mind. I'm just grousing a little. Who knows, perhaps I will shovel myself out and begin posting regularly in the next couple days.
There are days when being a teacher at a giant school and being a deacon at a humongous parish have a lot in common. The two combined are often more than many people would care to accept. It's not that I would ever want to stop serving in either capacity. Both are what I consider to be a directive given from on high.
Actually, I think something interesting is that I get a sense of anonymity, both at the parish and the school. I can take my child to religious education, myself dressed in jeans, t-shirt and sunglasses and often no one knows me! My religious education name badge just says "Dan Wright." There's no "Deacon" in front of it. When I show up on Monday nights to teach religious education for cognitively disabled kids I'm just Mr. Wright, or Dan.
"Mr. Wright," the voice on the phone in my room says, "please come get your child--he's being disruptive."
I get the same sense of anonymity walking through the halls at the school--I'm new there so many people don't know me, excluding some of the folks in my wing, and two or three who are from my parish.
What I'm trying to get at tonight--beyond rambling--has to do with disability. I find myself being acutely aware of situations where I feel anonymous, but what about having a sense or feeling of invisibility? I have to admit that as an able-bodied and able-minded (mostly) person I have rarely felt invisible--low key, yes, but rarely not seen by others.
Something I notice about disability in our society is that people would often rather look the other way. It comes from when we were kids ourselves and our mothers taught us that it was not polite to stare at people who were "crippled" or "mentally retarded." We carry it right into our adult lives and find ourselves preferring not to see people with disabilities. We are blind often to a world that demands to be addressed and recognized--and certainly included in everything.
Funny enough, looking out from underneath my snowstorm of paperwork (forget answering emails), I notice quite a bit. Maybe it's because I'm a parent too, and there's just something about getting that call from my own child's school--or even the parish--that gets to me. "Mr. Wright, your child is being disruptive" translates into "Mr. Wright, your child is becoming visible."
Part of the reason my wife and I decided to start a program at the parish for the religious education of children with cognitive disabilities was because it wasn't being offered anywhere else--the other part of the reason had to do with our own child. However, beyond simply providing a class at the church for kids with disabilities, we wanted to get the kids into the regular classrooms. We wanted other people to see them--to see these kids as just kids. Yet it will always be a fight, or so it seems. However, if we lose the fight, or if our program fails because we just weren't willing to go to the trouble, it's more than just an ugly black eye in the end. What we do for the one's who get the least consideration in this life reveals our true attitude about the whole. It reveals the depth of the Holy in us.
It's more than a bit disappointing to get a call from the parish and hear that several RE teachers had problems with kids being a little bit too...out of the ordinary, less than normal, or maybe just too visible. "The teachers are just volunteers after all," I am told, "and they don't have any special training." Still, I've got to wonder...what special training is necessary to be patient and maybe tolerant of a kid that gets up and walks around or perhaps sings a song to himself or herself? If it is truly a matter of disruption, I've found that a stern "sit down," or "please be quiet" will do the trick most of the time. However, it's a little hard to address someone you can't see.
There are a lot of days as a public school special education teacher when I feel like special training only counts for ten minutes of the day. The rest of it is being open and tolerant, and the reason why I consider what I do at the public school to be part of my ministry as a deacon is because it requires the acceptance of my students--and every single thing about them--as being made in the same image of God that everyone else is.
Now, one final question, and this one really is a test that counts: who is it really that we are rejecting when we send away or refuse to see these little ones?
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