Monthly Archives: March 2019

Crippology exploring a wheely woke theology of disability from the margins .
I spend much of my time near the sea shore watching wind and storm , tide and time .
Fishing boats and fishing folk .
I am a priest / artist cripple .
Waiting to be told to leave my nets .
Waiting to have breakfast on the beach with Jesus .
I want to cross the sand .
I long to enter the water .
But wheels don’t like deep sand .
I’m interested that male able bodied church people
have never offered to carry me over the sand .
Carry me to the shore .
Lead me to the waters of baptism .
Each time I’m near a beach with my wife , she goes and gets some sea water
We splash this on each other’s foreheads in the name of the trinity .
From here my journey starts .
A large conference takes place this week , developing a missiology of disability .
It’s hosted by the supposedly able and few with any complex disability combined with theological training will be in attendance.
Christ’s great commission is to go to every people group / every ethnos with the gospel . To baptise people as Christ’s followers and give them dual citizenship of their ethnic identity and Gods eternal kingdom in the now and all eternity.
Disability is not a community it’s an intersectionality between many communities . It becomes a rut and an obsession because of the high price tags on treatment and equipment , access and attitude . I am a priest and artist . I am a person living on a small island in the Thames estuary .
I am spasticus autisticus but much more besides .
In the uk at the moment the identity of our ancestors can lead to the stripping of our citizenship.
How does that apply metaphorically to hereditary disability / acquired disability and a place in gods kingdom .
Even if we receive our daily bread via the Nhs as a fresubin shake our access to God’s kingdom / heaven in the now and in eternity must be equitable .
A missiology of disability must have disabled practitioners at its heart . It must not assume a perceived intellectual or physical difference as being less than and needing ministering to . It may well be more than , informing and need listening too .
Yes practically to arrange equipment / care etc etc at a conference is complex .
But not to receive the wedding invite is worse !