Today is my mother's birthday.
She died in 1997. In fact her death and the desolation I felt afterwards teaching in Cincinnati spurred me to leave this country and accept a Fulbright appointment to Romania.
I had created a highly demanding routine of teaching and publishing and I wanted to be somewhere where I was unknown and where much less would be expected of me.
My mother's life had centered around her three daughters --me, the middle one, and my older sister Janie and my younger sister Sheila, both of whom had Down Syndrome.
Our family life was shaped and blessed by their needs and special traits and difficulties. My mother came to understand the challenges they brought to our lives as gifts from God, and she often quoted to me the idea from the Bible that we sometimes entertain angels unawares. That is what she believed and she also warned me that we would be judged by the way we treated Janie and Sheila.
For me thinking that Janie was angelic was easy. I have written in other entries on this blog that she was an ideal older sister. She helped me in all my escapades. She stole pears with me and she never squealed.
On the other hand Sheila had a more emotionally difficult and volatile nature. Sheila died of leukemia when she was sixteen and I was twenty. Janie outlived my mother by just one year and died the summer after I returned from Romania. I was with her and my Aunt Anna for her last moments. I often think of Janie and miss her.
Recently Richard Rohr has reminded me of the experience of Tim Shriver with people with Down Syndrome.
He writes about Tim Shriver and his experience with people in the Special Olympics
She died in 1997. In fact her death and the desolation I felt afterwards teaching in Cincinnati spurred me to leave this country and accept a Fulbright appointment to Romania.
I had created a highly demanding routine of teaching and publishing and I wanted to be somewhere where I was unknown and where much less would be expected of me.
My mother's life had centered around her three daughters --me, the middle one, and my older sister Janie and my younger sister Sheila, both of whom had Down Syndrome.
Our family life was shaped and blessed by their needs and special traits and difficulties. My mother came to understand the challenges they brought to our lives as gifts from God, and she often quoted to me the idea from the Bible that we sometimes entertain angels unawares. That is what she believed and she also warned me that we would be judged by the way we treated Janie and Sheila.
For me thinking that Janie was angelic was easy. I have written in other entries on this blog that she was an ideal older sister. She helped me in all my escapades. She stole pears with me and she never squealed.
On the other hand Sheila had a more emotionally difficult and volatile nature. Sheila died of leukemia when she was sixteen and I was twenty. Janie outlived my mother by just one year and died the summer after I returned from Romania. I was with her and my Aunt Anna for her last moments. I often think of Janie and miss her.
Recently Richard Rohr has reminded me of the experience of Tim Shriver with people with Down Syndrome.
He writes about Tim Shriver and his experience with people in the Special Olympics
Tim Shriver, a friend and Chair of Special Olympics, works with many people whom our culture excludes or disregards. Through their eyes he has come to see God’s presence in every human being. As you read Tim’s words, imagine how you might stand in solidarity with someone “on the edge,” someone who has been excluded, and see that individual through God’s eyes.
You cannot believe in or practice unitive consciousness as long as you exclude and marginalize others—whether it is women or people of different sexual orientations or people of religious or ethnic minorities or, in my experience, people with intellectual disabilities. My work is largely with and in support of people who have significant vulnerabilities because of intellectual disability. In many cultures these people are excluded and oppressed, though often unconsciously, even more so than other marginalized groups. . . . They are thought to be hopeless. Mostly they are ignored and forgotten.
For twenty years I have been mentored by these same people. Some might not be the best-spoken, the most articulate writers, the most celebrated thinkers, the fastest runners. And yet, despite all of that, I have met person after person who emanates a kind of radiant light. After a while, even the densest of us may have our eyes opened to that something which transcends all superficial distractions of disability: the unimaginable beauty of every person. That beauty is ours for the seeing if only we have the eyes to see, if only we pay attention.
I try to maintain those eyes as I engage in this work. At times I will pull myself out of whatever I’m doing and try to remember that I’m united with all that is. I give myself license to step away and reconnect. I fail mostly, but once in a while I succeed, and when I do, I feel like I am touching a “sweet spot” of wonder and peace. It enables me to be present to people in a way that I can communicate to them that I love them unconditionally. There are no conditions to our unity, to our oneness.
Many times I’ve watched, for instance, as a person with Down syndrome stands with a gold medal around her neck, arms raised high to a cheering crowd. I can’t look at that child, at that human being, without slipping out of dualistic thinking. Those moments are a kind of sacrament of unitive consciousness. They are “both-and” moments where shadow and light coexist in the same experience. . . . Divine energy shoots vertically through me like a force, and says, “See! Look! Pay attention to what is right in front of you! That is all you need to know!”
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