A few months back, when asked by the staff of the high school what I hoped for in his high school experience, I told them: "I want Jameson to finish his senior year having gone to prom. And not one of those Tim Tebow night…
Tomorrow starts the 2019 Summer Institute of Theology and Disability. Last year was the first SITD I went to, in North Carolina, and it was a great experience. This one is closer to home over in Holland, MI. The full program for this week can…
A mutual friend made sure I say what Darren Wood wrote on FB. Darren is autistic and rightly sees that the Church fails in its mission when it fails to welcome autistics in. I have a message for the church.If you know me, you know…
Today was the last day of the theology and disability course I've been teaching this semester at Calvin Seminary. (I know I'm behind in my posting on Clifton's book, which my students and I walked through. We finished the book, but I've been swamped and…
A friend of mine who's a pastor is going to preach, as part of a larger sermon series, on what it looks like to minister with (his emphasis, which I appreciate) and welcome those with disabilities into our churches, homes, and communities. Below is an…
The Michigan Disabilities Rights Coalition and Her Power are hosting a Disability Pride weekend for parents* of children with disabilities 26-28 April in Rothbury, MI (about an hour west of Grand Rapids.) Full information on the event can be found HERE. The facilitators for the…
I was invited to consult at local elementary school this morning. It's a school that was founded to be racially and economically diverse (not always the norm for here in Grand Rapids). The past few years, they've sought to also do better with respect to…
I'm teaching a course this semester on the theology of disability. We just wrapped up the part of the course where we look at historical figures (our primary text here was this wonderful collection). Yesterday we discussed the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I did an…
One of the things I talk about in Disability and Inclusive Communities is the demands on time that can come from disability: Another way that our communities are not welcoming to those with disabilities is time. This is particularly true given the frantic pace that…
As an academic, the publication of a book is sometimes anticlimactic. It's great to hold a physical copy, as it's a distillation of so much work. But other than that, there's often not much of a change once the book comes out. It can take…
I’ve been thinking a fair bit about justice and disability lately, both because of my scholarly work and because it is concerns about justice that motivate much of my advocacy work. Justice, most broadly, is the virtue that governs interpersonal interaction in terms of giving…
(This past week, I flew down to OKC to, among other things, record some short videos about disability and the Church. Here's the text of one of those videos.)----- Just over 55 years ago, Martin Luther King remarked that “the most segregated hour of Christian…
Some of the most common questions I’m asked are based versions of the following: I’m told that since our child isn’t on grade level, they can’t be in the general education setting. Is this true? The school equates having an IEP with pull-out instruction. Since…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIE1kYqfKhE A film by Glass Darkly Films & Produced by The Center for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame.
This post was originally published on Claire Crisp's blog. I confess that I'm conflicted. Now, this isn't a new phenomenon for me; I'm actually conflicted quite a lot. But today I find myself especially conflicted as the parent of a disabled child. In particular, I…
version 2; last modified 23 Nov 2015 1 You Cannot Simply Trust the School to Do What is Best It pains me to have to say this right up front, but I think it’s true. I’m not saying that the people at your child’s school…
This post was originally published on Claire Crisp's blog. I'm sitting in the waiting room while my seven-year-old son is in OT. My five-year-old daughter is sitting beside me, trying to learn to read. She’s sad because she doesn’t get to have therapy. Her reaction…
So looking out I noticed there's a lot of NNU folks here, which is not a bad thing. But I'm going to probably surprise you in three ways. I will have to do first off. I'm not going to be the person up here screaming…