Resurrection in the world

In just a matter of days, we’ll come to the high point of the Christian tradition: the resurrection of Jesus. Pastors across the country will stand in the pulpit and use one of my favorite phrases–they’ll remind congregations that not just something has changed because of this resurrected Christ, everything has changed. The pastor I worked with started to talk about it last Sunday: because of the resurrection, “we are Easter people.”

Yet, I can’t help but wonder whether that resurrection life, in our current worldview, is really available to all people, not just in death, but in life.

There was an odd thread this semester connecting the two courses I taught, one on ministry with older adults and the other on young people, and it was the concept of “therapeutic culture.” For older people, this means we live in a culture that attempts to deny aging, because it smacks of weakness, failure, and bodily frailty. In our highly medicalized culture, we use therapeutic techniques to overcome these problems of the body, to fight against not just aging but also death. And we often prefer to live in the denial that we can win such a fight against time and mortality.

In contrast, in her book Chronic Youth, Julie Elman traces young people’s cultural evolution from “rebels” to “patients.” Today the same teenagers who were presumed innately rebellious and disruptive to society have become the object of therapeutic intervention and techniques. We are fascinated by the human brain, by young people’s ability to be conformed to the ideals of society and docile citizenship: the whole goal of adolescence becomes synonymous with young people being rehabilitated from their deficient youthful states to become obedient, accommodated citizens.

In theorizing adolescence through the lenses of therapeutic culture, rehabilitation, and conformity, Elman deftly shows how such a model leaves young people with disabilities behind. If they cannot be rehabilitated or conformed to suit or assimilate or accommodate to society, they cannot become capable, productive human beings.

Indeed, Elman’s work led me to puzzle through the concept and purpose of rehabilitation, which is something, as a parent of a child with multiple disabilities, that I’ve always felt uneasy about. When we constantly champion therapy as hope for young people with disabilities, how do we do so in such a way that maintains their integrity as unique and important human beings? When we stress the import of rehabilitation, especially for young people who are born with disabilities, I wonder what we think or hope they are being rehabilitated to? Because there is no prior state of health to often return to, perhaps rehabilitation is a never-ending, dehumanizing pursuit? Perhaps like those who are aging, young people with disabilities become victim to a spiral of therapeutic culture that champions a certain kind of person, a certain kind of life that they can never achieve?

I’ve struggled through this puzzle for so long, because my own child has been the recipient of meaningful, dignifying therapy–the kind that has appreciated who she is and at the same time spurred her on toward substantive goals of social interaction and self-expression. But that doesn’t mean I’m not fundamentally uncomfortable or unsatisfied with rehabilitation as one of the primary metaphors through which we instinctively interrogate the lives of people with disabilities. As anthropologist Gail H. Landsman points out in her study of mothers of children with disabilities, mothers clung to hope in therapy not because they really desired to change and alter their children, but because they thought it more plausible to change their children rather than change the way the world sees them. (A really poignant essay by Maria Rohan in Motherly discusses a similar challenge.)

But this has all got me thinking that if we truly are Easter people, if we truly are the church, we don’t have to buy into the gospel of rehabilitation, because we’ve got different, more transformative gospel at the heart of our faith. Rather than rehabilitation, especially for persons born with disabilities, surely resurrection, as a process of transformation, makes more sense in this world: people with disabilities, like all of us, live within the hope and promise and process of resurrection. They are not being rehabilitated or returned to some prior pure, whole, or able-bodied state, but they, too, are being transformed, made a new, dynamic, empowered, uplifted, exalted creation in Christ.

The problem, of course, is that too often a resurrection gospel has been far too therapeutic when it comes to people with disabilities. People with disabilities are implicitly told that resurrected life is either impossible because they can’t be rehabilitated as “normal,” or only narrowly possible in the hope of a miraculous overcoming or disappearance of their disability in life after death. But this is a false and human dichotomy, coopted by able-bodied imagination, hopes, and fears. This is why theologian Nancy Eiseland gave us such a powerful insight into resurrected life when she drew our attention to the scars and the wounds that Christ still possessed when he was raised from the dead. Christ’s body, imperfectly rehabilitated, yet fully resurrected in our midst, should remind us that signs of life among Easter people may look radically different than what therapeutic culture witnesses to.

And so here I am this morning, longing again, as one is wont to do in Lent, for resurrection in a fallen world. But what I continue to pray is that God would give me the wisdom to behold resurrection, in all its complexity, grace, and abundance. For when we preach of a mere gospel of rehabilitation as Christians we sell short the transformative, life-giving work God longs to do in this world in and through all of us as vessels.

But selling short people with disabilities is not just a problem for them, it’s a problem for all of us. For in a world in which we all grow old and die, therapeutic culture will never win the victory over death that has been won on the cross, a victory that doesn’t just involve the changing of a few lives, but the very world, the conditions, the parameters and limits in which we live. And living like Easter people, in light of that reality, means living with a promise that sees and uplifts and champions life among all people. It means we get to work in ministry that resurrects rather than rehabilitates, that points to who and where God is, even when the world may struggle to understand. And in so doing, that world, especially for people with disabilities, must and will be changed.

Inside Notre Dame, 2013. Photo by Evan Schneider.

Waiting with joy in Advent

They are the social media forums that are the windows to our souls–an article about the lack of services for young adults with disabilities making the transition from school to work and out of the home is bookended by a comment from a mother whose daughter is only two and a half, but she says these are the very challenges that already keep her up at night.  Another post in a Facebook group is from a mother who’s just given birth by emergency c-section but less than 24 hours later she’s writing to ask if there are other parents whose children had similar births.  How were they affected? she asks.  What did their futures hold?

A few weeks later I sit in the pews in the second week in Advent and the pastor up front tells us about a question put to her at the beginning of this school year that she’s still pondering in this season, over four months later, and she asks it of all of us:

“What are you waiting for?”

I am not waiting for my daughter to die, speaks a still, small voice inside of me.

It’s a statement that feels so foreign to my being that I’m altogether startled by it, as if I brushed up against it and now I’m disoriented and dizzied.  No one waits for their child to die, I ponder…and yet we all do, in a way.  In fact, how many of us really live our lives longing for, with an expectation for life, rather than death?

I think back to those message boards and I see people for whom the future is tyranny and agony and for whom waiting is shot through with worrying and fear, one might say even death and despair.  As a parent of a child with a terminal disease I know that I would not be able to live with the tyranny of the future looming like that.  I’m not saying that I do not have moments where I blink back tears, so starkly aware for just a moment that life without my daughter seems altogether bleak or meaningless.  I have also had moments where her suffering seemed to be costing her too much in the land of the living.

And that thought didn’t come from nowhere.  Clearly, I am not immune, as anyone who lives in this world, to the reality of the pain of death.

But I realized relatively early on that while embracing Lucia for who she was would mean embracing death, it would also mean living an extraordinary life quite impossible without her.

My photo.  Our family at Christmas.

A few weeks ago as I preached that first week of Advent, ruminating on John the Baptist’s birth, a friend of mine pointed out that Zechariah and Elizabeth, like Mary and Joseph, would have their greatest longings for life granted in this child, only to find their greatest heartbreak in his death.  Another friend of mine pointed out recently, and I’d never thought about it this way before, that these parents were living with children who had terminal diagnoses.  Jesus was predestined to die a premature death.

But there’s so much more to the story, as we know.  And Jesus’s story, even as it is often overshadowed by his bloody, violent crucifixion, was all about overcoming death–it was all about radiant, redeeming, everlasting–life.

What are you waiting for?

What are you waiting for??!

The question begins to scream at me.  Because I can plainly see how the story of Jesus’s life, his parents’ lives, all our lives, are not so much about death, but about living life with abandon, with reckless, heartfelt love that bleeds out all over those around us who are suffering here on earth.  What if that kind of all of us-all on love, is what life, not just death, is really about?

As she closed her sermon, the pastor talked about how so much of ministry is about waiting with people.  And suddenly it occurred to me that when people wait with me, they’re often assuming we’re waiting for Lucia’s death–they tiptoe, they want to walk with us gently and patiently toward an inevitable tragedy, an inevitable heartache.  But I just don’t think that’s how God sees Lucia and her life.  And that isn’t how God is with us, how God has waited with us all these years.

Photo credit.

It strikes me that in this third week in Advent, as we light the candle of joy and we celebrate joy in Jesus’s birth, as well as Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection that the tyranny of the future really threatens to rob us of the joy of the present.  That how we wait is as crucial as what we are waiting for.

So as for my family and I, the tyranny of the future can wait.  We will go on living, looking for signs of life, not just in this season, but in every season.  And we will wait with joy.

Welcome to the world, my daughter

As I write this, my daughter is asleep in the other room.

And as I write them, the words feel so deliciously surreal.

She was born this past week  in the wee hours of the morning as the snow came down.  I was so looking forward to the surprise of whether she’d come out a boy or a girl.  We’d waited so patiently for her, through days and days of painful prelabor, during which we’d walked in endless circles around our apartment complex, through the snow, and waded through sleepless nights.  But I’ll always remember how when they finally held her up for me to see, it never even occurred to me to think whether she was a boy or a girl.

She was a gift.  She was my child.  She is our joy.

As the three of us settle into our new life of feedings, changings, and lots of sleeping (for her not necessarily, us!), I’m so touched by husband’s strong desire to be with his daughter during every waking and sleeping moment.  As I banged out some last minute work on my dissertation this weekend and he held her, it occurred to me that his requests for me to put her in his arms signal his willingness to adjust his life to her, while I had been merely trying to fit her into my already existing one.

With all the parenting buzz and blogs (and no, this isn’t about to become another one of them, don’t worry!), not to mention our time in China, we’re acutely aware of the missteps one can take by making their child the center of the universe.  But there is a shift in the orbit it seems.  And that’s not a bad thing.  Perhaps, and at best, I think, we’re all adjusting to one another, learning to yield and depend and be graceful with one another, and it’s making us stronger and better along the way.  We’re stumbling a bit in the newness of it all, but I want to welcome my daughter into new life, not just my life, but a shared, God-given, grace-filled one.

Welcome to the world, Lucia Jayne.  Your name means light, and suddenly everything feels new.  The cliche is true: things will never be the same again.

10 Things I Learned from 2013

I admit that I sometimes go back and read my blog posts.

I don’t think it’s because I’m a narcissist(?), but more because I’m woefully forgetful!

Rolling hills over Merrill Creek Reservoir, NJ. Photo by Evan Schneider.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that I often have to revisit the same lessons many times to make sense of who God is and where God is calling me, and thank God, God stays faithfully the same.  So with November waning, December looming, and 2014 on the horizon, I wanted to take a moment to revisit some of those lessons.  

Perhaps you’re like me, and it takes a few times for something to stick.  Perhaps you’re like me, and reminders of God’s grace and provision, can never be too frequent or too poignant.  So I invite you to revisit some of these posts from 2013, and share your lessons in the comments.  What have you learned?  Where are you growing?  And where are you headed?

1.  “Called to this life.”  Jan. 25, 2013.

I’m reminded that it is in God that the multifaceted call I’ve received finds its unity.  This gives me confidence and reassurance when others question, or I begin to question the integration or the practicalness of my own call.  It is we who often put limits on God, not the other way around!

2.  “Cracks are all there is.”  Feb. 1, 2013.

I’m reminded that there are really only two ways to live in this world–the one in which we try to prevent others from seeing our imperfections, and the other in which we lay them bare and resolve to love others and ourselves just as God made us.  How liberating it is to live into the second truth and to let God shine through the cracks.

Evan and I buying lamps in old Cairo. Photo by Ben Robinson.

3.  “I’m not busy.”  Mar. 15, 2013.

I think this may have been one of the greatest revelations of my year, and I’m so glad it came relatively early!  I find myself repeating these words to others and myself when I am tempted to let the competitive, swimming upstream tendencies in my career or my life to get the best of me.  And I find deep wisdom and comfort in never being too busy to listen to those in front of me.

4.  “Holy everything”  April 6, 2013.

Thanks to yet another excellent sermon at my church, I began to reflect on what it means to be Easter people, to undergo profound internal change, and yet to still experience great brokenness, pain, and death in this world.  For me, holy everything amounts to witnessing and testifying to the holiness of the cross, and the holiness in you and me, in the triumphant and the everyday.

5.  “Outside the walls” May 9, 2013.

Yong River. Guangxi, Nanning.

I wrote: “Perhaps this is where my anthropology meets my theology so nearly, neatly, and dearly–in the enmeshing of the sacred and the profane in the everyday lives of people in culture, relationship, and meaning-making.  Real salvation is transcendent in that it seeps out of our pores to touch everyone we meet and everything we do.  And so I think theological education has to change to respond to not only this reality, but this Truth.  It has to equip all these people who are going to be outside the walls of the Church institution, and who will be ambassadors of faith and hope and love in this world.”

6.  “On community” June 4, 2013.

I reflected on how deeply our new church community had ministered to me despite the lines I’d been trying to draw between experiences of God in China and back in the United States during our transition.  

7.  “Each other’s miracles” July 13, 2013.

I wrote: “What if instead of contemplating the origins of disease, asking how the bus driver got lung cancer, or quibbling with the details of disaster, wondering why people bother to live in Oklahoma which is so prone to tornados, we contemplated the length that Christ went for us on the cross, the underservedness of our own grace, and the abundance of grace in a world that’s often so graceless?  And then what if we committed to being not the one who speaks, but the one who prays, not the one who solves or fixes or even heals, but the one who recognizes, beholds, and reveres deep need?  What if we found a way to acknowledge great hurt, but live with great hope?  What if we were one another’s comfort, one another’s grace, each other’s miracles?”

8.  “The God of all of us” Aug. 3, 2013.

A mosque in Cairo, Egypt. Photo by Ben Robinson.

I realized that I often give up on those closest to me, friends and family who have been burned by the church and believe that God is not for them.  If I believe that God truly is the God of all of us and doesn’t give up on any of us, how do I reflect that with my life?

9.  “Learning contentment” Sept. 10, 2013.

I reflected on what it truly means to be content in all circumstances, to find a deep acceptance of what God has given and an even deeper praise for all that God has gone, no matter the ups, downs, or delays in life.

The D & R Canal in Princeton at the height of summer. Photo by Evan Schneider.

10.  “Redefining Success” Oct. 17, 2013.

Along those lines of learning contentment, I thought about how empowering, meaningful, and important it is to redefine success in a world in which its often bound up with pride, trampling others, and being number one.  I believe that even in academia, it’s possible to live with the sense that being a child of God and doing one’s best constitute the ultimate contentment and satisfaction.