Disability Concerns

I am so thankful for the discipleship of Jean Vanier, and I remain thankful for the people carrying on his ministry, those who are simply the latest to arrive.

I had the privilege of taking a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services. At the conclusion of our time together, each of us students wrote a "final evaluation". Here are some excerpts from mine.

As we held Dylan, we saw his face fully for the first time as he took his final breath. Our private drama has been repeated in hospitals around the world. So why has Charlie’s case caught the attention of the world?

But just what is “independence”? How much would I eat if I only ate the food I produce myself? Probably very little. Would I drive a car if I had to build it from scratch? 

What’s going on here? Surely marketing and sales, yet something else is afoot.

"What gives consistency to people is to know that they are loved. To love is not to do things for people, it’s not to tell people what to do, it’s to reveal. What do we reveal?"

Many of our congregation members these days must deal with health issues. Your church too may be struggling with ailments of various kinds. How might our being in Advent speak to all this?

I am the mother of a special needs child with a cognitive impairment. This presents various blessings and challenges for our family. One of the things that we have wrestled with for years, is whether or not our child would ever partake in communion.