theology | Please Be Retarded

Here is Facebook discussion that I'm reproducing here. In the wake of Rahm Emanuel use of 'retarded,' many in the disabled community had something to say. The Facebook group for L'Arche Greater Washington, D.C. posted the following link:

Mentally disabled 'self-advocates' oppose use of word 'retarded'

Here's the beginning of that article by Michael Alison Chandler of the Washington Post:

A national movement to purge the word "retarded" from lawbooks and medical terminology is nearing success, gaining support this week from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who apologized to advocates for the disabled for using the term during a private meeting last summer.

The campaign is led in part by the mentally disabled themselves, who are increasingly politically organized and eager to escape the stigma associated with the term.

"It's a time of change," said Jill Eglé, co-executive director of the Arc of Northern Virginia, a support group for the disabled, who spearheaded a campaign to change the state code in Virginia.

The words "retarded" and "retard" feel threatening, she said. Eglé identifies herself this way: "I am a powerful leader with an intellectual disability."

In Maryland, lawmakers voted last year to replace the term "mental retardation" throughout much of the legal code, and in the District and 48 states, including Virginia, elected officials have acted to remove the words from the names of human services agencies. Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would replace the words in all federal education, health and labor laws.

The 2010 professional manual that psychologists use for diagnosis makes the change in the medical label official: "Mental retardation" is out. "Intellectual disability" is in.

In response, I wrote the following:

AYT: L'Arche, at its best, embodies a politics which makes these conversations sound trite and peripheral . While I'm no more happy with people using 'gay' to mean bad than with people using 'retarded' to mean stupid, the word itself is not the problem and dismissing it from lawbooks and medical terminology is not the answer. Rehabilitating the term may be, in the long-term, more helpful than banning it. Also, and more importantly, the kind of community that L'Arche attempts to foster is at the heart of organically making certain kinds of linguistic formulation unintelligible and allowing people to see that perhaps it is their love and compassion for those around them that is retarded. This issue seems perhaps marginally beneficial, but not of great consequence.

When invited to check out the following link (See: John Franklin Stephens' piece on the use of 'retard') about why words matter, I had the chance to expound a bit further:

AYT: ...thanks for the links. I completely agree that words matter. That's never a question. Mine has always been: Can we treat language, or words, with the same generosity or hospitality with which we would treat those in our lives with overt disabilities? And is there a connection between our in/ability to hold and use correctly a word like 'retarded' which has so often been seen as ugly and our in/abilities to hold those who have had that word applied to them? I'll admit I have less of a desire to rehabilitate 'retard' than I do 'retarded,' which is in a sense just me following the logic of "people first" language, which I take to be a flawed improvement of how we so often speak, an opening up of our overly-condensed use of labels.

So here is a thought experiment. What if what is at the heart of L'Arche, what makes L'Arche prophetic, is a different temporality, a necessarily slowed existence which allows us to meet one another and see beyond labels (labels which only become necessary in a world that moves too quickly for love)? Maybe to love anyone we need to move and interact more slowly. Maybe this is why L'Arche has the potential to transform. Perhaps we must become a retard, one who has been slowed, to have our love quickened. Perhaps 'retard' could become a high compliment and something akin to 'human' in our usage. Maybe that is the Gospel.

I, of course, realize that my pursuit of other linguistic possibilities may even offend those who have been offended by such unimaginative and ugly speech. Rahm Emanuel's use of words was ugly. It is likely, that he may need to be 'retarded,' or slowed, in order to become a person who can speak more lovingly. I'm just not sure that taking away specific words helps him or any of us. I am open to the possibility of that need, but if needed, we should recognize that it is only needed for a time.

Lastly, I'm grateful for L'Arche, for being the kind of place where, at its best, things move slowly enough to have a conversation about how to speak lovingly.

theology | On Theft, Abundance and the Poor

There was a news story recently about a British priest that said that shoplifting by the poor is sometimes okay.

LONDON (AP) -- For a priest in northern England, the commandment that dictates "thou shalt not steal" isn't exactly written in stone.

The Rev. Tim Jones caused an uproar by telling his congregation that it is sometimes acceptable for desperate people to shoplift - as long as they do it at large national chain stores, rather than small, family businesses.

Jones' Robin Hood-like sermon drew rebukes Tuesday from fellow clergy, shop owners and police.

From his pulpit at the Church of St. Lawrence in York, about 220 miles (355 kilometers) north of London, Jones said in his sermon Sunday that shoplifting can be justified if a person in real need is not greedy and does not take more than he or she really needs to get by.

The remarks drew a summons from Archdeacon Richard Seed, who said on his Web site that the church rejects the view that shoplifting can be acceptable.

"The Church of England does not advise anyone to shoplift, or break the law in any way," he said.

"Father Tim Jones is raising important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming, but shoplifting is not the way to overcome these difficulties. There are many organizations and charities working with people in need, and the Citizens' Advice Bureau is a good first place to call," Seed's statement said.

Eleanor Course, a spokeswoman for Seed, said the archdeacon wants to meet with Jones to discuss the "appropriateness" of his sermon.

"The point we are most concerned about is that shoplifting is simply not a blameless, victimless crime," she said. "We want to make clear that it simply doesn't help people. And the last thing a desperate person wants is to be caught for shoplifting, so we feel this advice is very unwise."

Jones told The Associated Press that he stands by his comments. He said he regretted only that the media is focusing on his view on shoplifting rather than the underlying problem he wanted to address.

While Jones' statement might seem foreign to our modern ears, I thought it was worth noting that we have voices in Christian tradition that would back Jones up.

For example, Thomas Aquinas asks, in the secunda secundæ of the Summa Theologica (q.66 a.5), whether theft is always a sin. The short answer is yes. But then (two articles later - a.7) he asks whether it is lawful to steal because of the stress of need. His answer:

Nevertheless, if the need be so manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be remedied by whatever means be at hand...then it is lawful for a man to sustain his own need by means of another's property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery.

You can read all of II.2.q.66.a.7, here. So, while Eleanor Course, Seed's spokeswoman, may be correct when she says "the last thing a desperate person wants is to be caught for shoplifting," there may also be the possibility that from the Church's perspective shoplifting out of need isn't even theft. Said differently, one may get arrested for shoplifting, but in the case of need might have nothing to confess.

For the rest of us, those with computers and few worries about food (unlike 35 million Americans who are food insecure), perhaps we need to hear Ambrose - whom Aquinas quotes - in relation to the purpose of our abundance:

"It is the hungry man's bread that you withhold, the naked man's cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man's ransom and freedom."

Maybe Jones, in the end, has a point, maybe Aquinas is right, "in cases of need all things are common property." That's a radical notion but perhaps important to imagining a more just world.

Merry Christmas.

quote | West on Accountability

"for me, the priority is a democratization of the state, which has to do with the substantive accountability and answerability of corporate elites and financial oligarchs, who are running amok in terms of might, status, and reshaping the nation, and much of the world, in their image. That’s very dangerous. It is very dangerous. It is as dangerous as kings and queens running amok in the 17th and 18th centuries—unaccountable elites." - Cornel West

Thanks to the editors at The Immanent Frame for posting this and DD for bringing it to my attention.

blogging | Home for Christmas

I didn't spend Christmas last year with family, but with housemates and friends in NC. This year I'll be with my parents, but will be headed to NC for New Year's. I'll try to have a book give-a-way before the end of the year for my faithful readers.

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Lots of Love.

poem | For Those Blessed Enough to Have a Fireplace

I'm in Illinois for the winter months and though I seem a month behind on sharing this, I will anyway. Last time I took this book off a shelf was 2005. I was in Germany that summer.

November

The Snow
began slowly,
a soft and easy
sprinkling

of flakes, then clouds of flakes
in the baskets of the wind
and the branches
of the trees--

oh, so pretty.
We walked
through the growing stillness,
as the flakes

prickled the path,
then covered it,
then deepened
as in curds and drifts,

as the wind grew stronger,
shaping its work
less delicately,
talking greater steps

over the hills
and through the trees
until, finally,
we were cold,

and far from home.
We turned
and followed our long shadows back
to the house,

stamped our feet,
went inside, and shut the door.
Through the window
we could see

how far away it was to the gates of April.
Let the fire now
put on its red hat
and sing to us.

--Mary Oliver

The line "how far away it was to the gates of April" expresses many of feelings of late, perhaps that is the feeling of Advent...waiting.