“Attention,” Catherine Lord considers in Mary Oliver’s poem, “is not for the faint-hearted,”[1] for in lingering attention, one might be changed.
“Oh do you have time/to linger” your attention, Mary Oliver suggests, on small, 10-14cm sized goldfinches singing:
“believe us…
it is a serious thing
just to be alive”[2]
Have you paid attention to the way your great-aunt holds her cup at the nursing home? Or the way Jeremy, an autistic person who is non-speaking,[3] taps and sways to the music? Have you paid attention to the glances received when uncontrolled utterances break the usual patterns of sound and silence of a religious service? Or the way people look at a person who is having a breakdown in the middle of a shopping aisle? It is a serious thing, just to be alive.
Have you noticed that however healthy we might be at the moment, if we live long enough, we will one day acquire a disability or impairment?[4] Or that we are all yet-to-be-disabled? Moments of disability pierce into our fragile lives, penetrating the surface wrapping of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and individualism revealing our desire and need for interdependence, relationship, and others.[5] Our lives, in all their needy, depending, vulnerable, limitedness, are precious and, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore wrote, “where life is precious, life is precious.”[6] Vulnerability and limitedness is the reality of beloved human existence from Eden to Babylon and womb to tomb.[7] There is no graduation from vulnerability because there is no graduation from being human and being recipients of grace. It is a serious thing just to be alive.
Have you paid attention to how new housing is built, the hallways and corridors, floors and lifts? Have you paid attention to the slope of the disability ramp and, perhaps, the lack of a railing on the edge? Or a large print bible, the presence of a hearing loop, or the size and colour of font on the slides in church? Have you paid attention to the movement to adopt policies of inclusion without the movement to adopt friendship? Have you paid attention to whose presence is missing in your community, whose story is untold, and where the edges of difference have been smoothed? John Swinton reflects that “the law can legislate for inclusion, but it cannot help people to belong.”[8] It is a serious thing just to be alive.
Have you paid attention to how eyes customarily avert from disabilities?[9] Or how we glance over some people with ease, or our eyes are glued to others, staring at ‘abnormality?’[10] Or when people with disabilities engage in everyday, ordinary, and gifted activities there are pats on the back and raised pedestals for being “extraordinary inspirations” for the wider population?[11] Have you paid attention to the emotions of fear and wonder, repulsion and desire, discomfort and courage, and which of these emotions dehumanise and which ones recover humanity? Perhaps when the path of pity, charity, and veneration is re-paved by compassion, co-stewardship, and mutual service, the lives of those who are currently experiencing disability and those yet-to-be disabled will intersect with honour, dignity and respect. It is a serious thing to be alive.
Have you paid attention to how ‘giftedness’ is measured in cups of popularity, and has shifted from being something that is received to something that is achieved? Have you paid attention to the people we follow and those we ought to consider following but instead neglect? It is a serious thing just to be alive.
Have you paid attention to how small changes of prepositions can reform contexts and practices? Consider ministry to, ministry among, ministry with, ministry by people with disability. Have you paid attention to how the gifts of God, “apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,” could be embodied in brothers and sisters with a disability, autistic, Deaf, neurodiverse, having dementia, cerebral palsy, profound intellectual disability, Tourette’s, ADHD? Have you considered that “the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry and for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Eph 4:11) takes the whole breadth of human experience? It is a serious thing to be alive.
Perhaps our individual aspirations towards upward-mobility, our desire to be seen as productively worthy, and our performance of discipleship for the eyes of others , have eroded community. Instead of sustaining community, we have made faith a heavy (ableist) yoke for all to carry. Perhaps the aphorism is true, what’s good for a person with a disability is good for all; when we consider faith, discipleship, worship, church, evangelism, pastoral care, hospitality alongside the disabled experience, these things become good for the whole body of Christ. In so doing, we may allow ourselves to be shown hospitality by autistic friends, be guided by ushers who use wheelchairs, be led by singers in Sign language, be interceded for by the pray-er with Tourette’s, be ministered to by God’s word read in Braille – and pilgrim alongside all who rest in the “unforced rhythms of grace” (Matt 11:28-30, MSG)
It is a serious thing just to be alive.
Pay attention,
“In this broken world.
I beg of you…
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.”[12]
Sam Wan is the Dean of Academics at Robert Menzies College, researches in disability theology, and is a board member of Jesus Club Ministries, a ministry that supports discipleship of adults with intellectual disabilities. He has bipolar, which has helped shape his approach to pastoral care, academia, and growing in the fruit of the Spirit.
[1] C. Lord, “Hope in the Fractures: Mary Oliver’s Ecopoetics of Attention,” Comparative American Studies An International Journal 21.3-4 (2024): 185.
[2] Mary Oliver, Red Bird: Poems, 18-19.
[3] This piece deliberately moves between person-first and identity-first language with the hope of giving space for others to explore God’s calling in their lives and self-describe. See this previous article for more engagement in being neuro-affirming. For more in language consideration, see K. Best (2012); Grech, Koller, & Olley (2024); APA Style guide.
[4] See R. G. Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies, 12-15.
[5] “The poor, the deprived, the handicapped are not primarily a problem to be solved by the rich, the comfortable and the strong. They are the bearers of a witness without which the strong are lost in their own illusions… of the strong, the whole, the healthy to see themselves in the centre and to see the handicapped as those on the margin. The Church should be freed from that illusion by the presence in the centre of its life of the cross, and of him who suffered there.” From L. Newbigin, “Not Whole without the Handicapped,” in Partners in Life, ed. G. Muller-Fahrenholz, 25.
[6] “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind,” R. Kushner: The New York Times Magazine.
[7] See T. L. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality.
[8] J. Swinton, “From Inclusion to Belonging: A Practical Theology of Community, Disability and Humanness,” Journal of Religion, Disability & Health 16.2 (2012): 182.
[9] See K. K. S. Wan, “‘Lovely in [impaired] limbs, and lovely in [impaired] eyes all his,” Missiology: An International Review 52.4 (2024).
[10] “Staring at disability is considered illicit looking, the disabled body is at once the to-be-looked-at and not-to-be-looked-at, further dramatizing the staring encounter by making viewers furtive and the viewed defensive. Staring thus creates disability as a state of absolute difference rather than simply one more variation in human form. At the same time, staring constitutes disability identity by manifesting the power relations between the subject positions of disabled and able-bodied.” R. G. Thomson, “The Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetoric of Disability in Popular Photography,” in Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, eds. S. L. Snyder, B. J. Brueggeman, R. G. Thomson, 56-57.
[11] “Inspiration porn is an image of a person with a disability, often a kid, doing something completely ordinary – like playing, or talking, or running, or drawing a picture, or hitting a tennis ball – carrying a caption like “your excuse is invalid” or “before you quit, try”… it’s there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective.” “We’re not here for your inspiration,” Stella Young: The Drum, ABC. See also A. H. Burt and M. McCarty, “”The only disability in life is a bad attitude”: A quantitative exploration of the impacts of inspiration porn,” Modern Psychological Studies 30.1 (2024).
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