Season 4 Episode 5: Becky Jones - Imago Dei Belongs in Community

Today we talk with Becky Jones about her piece "Imago Dei Belongs in Community: A Classroom Project that Invites Disabled People to Reflect on Biblical Passages About Disability." 

You can view Becky's paintings here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/42978/32607

Watch on YouTube with closed captions here: https://youtu.be/zZb9rxK83Dw

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Transcript

Welcome to this episode of the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast with me Miriam Spies and Amy Panton we're delighted today to be joined by Becky Hewis Becky Jones holy cow sorry about that and I um Amy has an announcement before we get going. Yeah we just have one announcement for today uh and that is we just want everyone to know that we've decided based on how much stuff we have going on in our lives that we're going to be um reducing the amount of times we publish the journal to just once a year so we'll be having a new uh issue coming out every fall um so we're just preparing our next issue which knock on wood will be coming out in a couple of weeks uh for this fall and then if you're interested in submitting because we're always looking for for people in the community to submit um you could just know that uh it would be in in consideration for next fall that your piece would be um looked at so yes and it's so nice to be back we haven't recorded in a while so this is fun this is really fun. Great. So Becky Jones we invite you to introduce yourself and and your connection to the journal yes that would be great. Um so hi I'm Becky Jones um and yeah so I I work uh for import impartially part-time I work for the Christian Reformed Church in North America um and then I also um was taking a course at Martin Luther was a certificate program um in Disability uh Inclusive Ministry and Christian faith and actually that's how I got to um spend some time with both of you as as teachers and mentors and all all the rest um which was fantastic I'd seen your name multiple places but it was really great to have you um sharing a lot of your wisdom in the in that space um yeah and just from that course that I took I was given the opportunity to create a project and so that is what grew out of it was this project that I'm talking to you about which I'm very excited to

share well we were so excited when we saw it come in um because it's so creative and it combines so many different ways of thinking about and and doing sort of like revisioning for um Bible stories that a lot of us probably know and have encountered many times in our lives but I think this project really helped uh might help folks to rethink some things which is so important when it comes to thinking about disability so um Becky we we wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about it and um when you're ready we can also show some images and also describe some images because you Incorporated some beautiful paintings that you painted thank you yeah so um so basically this was considered um we were given a tasked with creating a Capstone project right for for this program um and so a little bit about myself is that um I grew up um in the church and so my first Bible was like a graphic novel sort of Bible and I have very uh beautiful memories of being a little kid and just looking at all the images within that Bible um so that's one part I kind of realized when you were asking to summarize it's like a vend diagram of my life right because I have like myself as a little child reading that um I have always loved art so actually my undergrad is in design and I um love to explore art did a lot of art history um and so that sort of uh came into a portion of this project and then my work um within the CRC for a long for some time I was working within disability and inclusion right and so just hearing the lived experience hearing the frustration and challenges of um people in the community that when they're um you know looking at a Bible I didn't think about as a kid as having challenges um just all of that started to surface a lot and I had um it it weighed heavily on me I think like all the stories and the the conversations that I had with a lot of people that I was working with um yeah it just made me upset and frustrated and I always think with that that sadness and frustration sometimes it's really great to get an opportunity to do something about it so um basically with this project um I decided to use sort of all the pieces of myself and put it into it and decided to create um now typically in the art world you talk about like a triptic of art this was actually like a tri- I don't even know how to say it well quadri triptic I've never even heard it said out loud but in a lot of um when you go to art galleries and you're looking at traditional Christian images there's a lot of artart that's like three panels or three combined and you'll see it in a lot of churches so probably now that I've said it to you you'll start noticing this um so I wanted to take that traditional idea of how and look at traditional ways of representing certain stories in the Bible um and create my own revisioning um of those stories and so uh I asked a few people um I asked a few specific people what stories like really bothered them basically what really hurt them um or were what they were really even sometimes had questions about within the disability community and that's when um I came up with four stories um so and each story is represented in one of these pieces of art so I have four stories one is Jacob wrestling with God the next one is the man born blind and I'm using what's what it's referred to in the Bible just so you know um man being lowered to see Jesus and the zakus so those are so the titles that you find within um mostly the NIV about these stories I took those stories and I wanted to look at how we looked at them traditionally um and so looking back at all my art history like traditional like 200 years ago um images and I wanted to find a different way of looking at them because I felt that often they pointed to like a curing discussion rather than a healing conversation so I wanted to look at that um and the other piece I wanted to look at was often when you look at those stories when they're represented in art you kind of you see it as sort of just looking at that one particular entrance point um rather than the whole community that might be surrounding the conversation um and it seems very narrow in focus often um so that was what I wanted to just kind of pull back look at the really sink into the story a lot and look at different ways where create um community is very present within the story and shift to that story so um so that was really the uh when I was doing it and throughout it was constantly I going back to my friends and being like does this make sense is this like a good am I am I is this settling better I think with you um so that was sort of another piece of it uh yeah so that sort of as a general summary of what I was doing for to create these four pieces of art and then the um written component that went along with it that's a wonderful of conversation and so like the the art work community too yeah that's wonderful we invite you to talk about some pieces um so you're watching on YouTube and me has has uh shown an image and we wondered if you might desp the image and then talk about how how you create did that yeah thank you um so I'm going to use this the first one that um that Amy put up is um the first one in the series about Jacob um but I'm going to take a step back and tell you elements of each one that you'll find so they're consistent within the four pieces so really that's what I wanted to do is I have four stories and then consistency between all the four stories right um so as you're looking at every Peach what I'd invite you to do is look at the background the background of the image um so for this particular one what we're seeing the background is I was trying to represent Dawn um so the color is sort of that um sort of pinkish like some beautiful mornings when you see it sort of pink still dark in this in the background stars are still sort of in the sky um so it's representing dawn and that particular location is uh my stylization of the um Jabbok River where Jac where Jacob was supposed to wrestled with either God or Angel depending on how you're interpreting the scripture um so I wanted to always have a background of sort of where it took place traditionally what you think of right so in the first one you'll see the river um the next we'll look at um don't worry about going through it yet Amy but like um it'll be the synagogue the another one is outside a house and then the final one is just a wooded path so you'll always look at the background to see sort of the placement of where it is in the historical um biblical text and then when you're looking at every piece um I wanted to have a circle which is a circle that has gold leaf I love playing around with gold leaf and that sort of is supposed to bring your eye to the new um revisioning of the story so where are we w wanting to actually place the conversation of the story so whereas in traditional art um for this piece um that we're look the first piece that we're looking at um traditionally when I looked at a lot of images of the story about Jacob it would be um always him wrestling with an angel like that was just typically what you'd be seeing as the central Focus what I wanted to do with this one is look for where Community existed in the story that was really the key component to it what did this story actually talk about coming um coming into community and for this one the whole focus is really um bringing Jacob and Esau back together right like they' spent years apart there's such a backstory of sadness and disagreement and um conflict between these two brothers but within the story uh after the dawn comes and after um Jacob wrestles then there's that reunion so that so the conversation on disability ends with a reunion of the families so that's really the component I want to look at in everyone is when you when you're looking at that piece look for that circle and that central component um in each one of the Artic of the images I also have the word imod day and we'll jump into that in a minute as to what that if you don't know what that reference is but I wanted to remind you about imod in each piece and then also in each um painting there's a key part of the verse uh like the element of the story that that I I felt was very important to right into the um painting as well so that you could really focus on that um so that's so that's what we're looking at so in this particular piece you're looking at Jacob and Esau coming together into community after he's wrestled with God or the angel and after he receives a wounding um and an element of disability um that's when we're looking at how the beauty of God is then showing um within community for this piece yeah do you want to go through and know so that was a longer interpret of this I can share the other ones a little faster since I can now share what to look do you want or do you want to go through okay yeah for sure for sure I'll I'll move forward to the next one here well she well Amy's finding that I'll tell you about the next one um the next one is um when you're looking at Jesus healing the blind that's the title of it and so again in the background I have the synagogue because really when the man received sight from Jesus the whole conversation is around really loses his community he's kicked out of the synagogue which was the central piece of community right um and because he stands up for saying like Jesus  like Jesus um not only cured me it healed me right like he's answering both those pieces and so he's thrown out of the synagogue and so that's in the background but um the central piece of this is Jesus going after him and bringing him into this beautiful community with Jesus right embracing him um and then also below that is also the disciples because this is a conjecture on my part but I feel like when you're with Jesus at that time I think you'd probably meet the disciples at a certain point in time right um so also I put them but also really they were also an integral piece of um the storyline in terms of just asking uh questioning about sin and disability and so that's another piece of the story that um has been really hard uh and for a lot of people I know is that question around sin and disability and holding the two together um and so I just I did want to bring the disciples in as sort of they were questioning this piece but also they were following Jesus and they and they're um having that conversation and ultimately Jesus is bringing him into a beautiful community and and that beautiful holistic healing that Jesus gives at that point which is so so incredible um do keep going go to the next one okay um the the third one um we are seeing so a a story that is um you know I think is very typical of thinking about disability within the Bible is uh you know it's typically C talked about the um in reference to the paralyzed man right like that's how they term it um and so it's this conversation around um so I was representing the house that we all think of where you know you go they went up to the roof and they lowered their their friend into to see Jesus and Jesus um physically cured his uh his his legs but also offered him um you know the uh healing from his sins so uh when I was looking at that it was also that thinking through the passage I was really thinking how did he get there you know and it was that conversation around a community that came together around him so in my mind I think it's a beautiful community that um you know were they just sitting around just kind of like we have like um church or something like that when we we talk about things is it sort of a similar conversation of a group of people that are chatting together as friends talking about this guy Jesus that's been coming around um and deciding to go together um to see him so I that was where I really wanted to refocus was on this community including the gentleman that we typically see as the singular person in this storyline with Jesus so um again that shift um and then in the final one um it's uh picture with the background is all trees because we don't have a lot of context really with Zacheus other than they were walking along and there were trees so um just a very stylized version of some trees in the background but then the beauty of Jesus saying come on come on like let's go to your house and chat right and so that refocus of you know we typically see in traditional images always Zacheus climbing in a tree right and this one is shifting the narrative away from that singular person up in the tree tree separate from the crowd and bringing him back into community a beautiful like I love this scene like it it took a I loved painting this particular one um of just Jesus and Zacheus just sitting I was trying to picture like how do you just sit at a table together and just like just it just struck me as just very beautiful and um simple like just sitting and talking to a friend um so I think in terms of painting this was probably one of my favorites when I was focusing on this particular element of it yeah I'd love it I'd love to just sit and chat like this with Jesus it'd be cool so yeah so I hope that um explains them well um yeah yeah that's so cool I I love I was so uh blown away that you painted these I was like when you told us I was like this is amazing so yeah they're incredible and I agree I I don't I don't think I think about just Jesus doing basic things sometimes like sitting and talking it's really cool like does he drink tea does he drink coffee maybe water I don't know like I was just like you're thinking about these things well at least there's one that say that he enjoyed some wine! That's true that's also

good the images are gorgeous oh thank you um and yeah if you're listening and you you want to go and take a peek at them you can just go to our journal page if you just Google uh the Canadian Journal of Theology Mental Health and Disability you'll be able to see them uh and the images are in the most recent issue the the spring issue uh the trauma issue so um all right so Becky you used the term aod day a few times when uh today already in the episode so we are just wondering if you could tell us what does that term mean maybe some people who are listening haven't heard of that before so um and we wanted to also know how did you place aod day in community so we briefly touched on community a bit so yeah so um aod basically is Latin for image of God right um but the interesting piece about the term is that it's very unique to humans right and it just really highlights that God created us solely like in His image to reflect reflect him right and so we're it's that connection between us and God which is very beautiful um and so and I just pull like for the for um I I referenced Genesis 1:27-31 and I wanted to read that so it says um God created human beings in his own image in the image of God he created them male and female he created them then God looked over all he made and saw that it was very good so it's that beautiful he looked over everyone and said this is good that's that's a beautiful like just that one statement I love right um but I think as we've gone through the world especially like you know we're looking at um 21st century Western perspectives of being very individual and being very separate from our community um and it's brought up a lot of us and Them conversations and separating from people and I think um it again it was again that heaviness on my heart of um image of God is in everybody and yet not everybody is invited into that conversation I often see that in my work I was seeing it constantly like we're not creating spaces for everybody we're not opening up conversations for everybody there was a lot of really heavy uh one to1 stories that I used to have of um people hearing that people were praying for them for their sin because they had a disability and that to me is so ugly and terrible um because we are all created in the image of God so that means you know when you were born that is that is how God created you it's beautiful it's it's perfect in God's eyes right and so but I think um and I would also hear of people being very separated from community um based on their disability right like other it's just being limited because they can't access churches in the same way that I just take for granted or like there's so many liony pieces that the more I spent time in in conversation the more I realized how limiting we are as a society right um and I think it it just the more you sit in it the more it's sad but I think also a piece of that sadness is the decision to shift right like what are you going to do about it are you gon to just sit there be frustrated um so I think it's opening up these conversations like and so looking at no like first of all the image of God applies to everything body but then also it's our responsibility to create Community right to to respect the beauty that God has given us and each person and then look at how we are building community so that everybody is invited into that like when I think of like the body of Christ like we are the body of Christ that means all of us right and how do we really look at that so I think it's um having to really be careful with our language and look at like um I don't like I'm sure many people listening to your podcast like know like the ableism of just like you know are we looking at it from more of um discriminatory oppressive perspective or are we looking at it from the beauty of God's perspective right and so um so that's why I was really wanting to look at first of all imod day is we are created in the image of God but yet how are we actually doing that how are we like it's an invitation right I think that's what it boils down to I'm inviting you to think about this and think about how are we creating community so yeah that's how the you kind kind of for me felt they needed to go together yeah thank you we we wanted to jump into some more deeper conversation about two of your images so first we wondered if you could say some more

about or if Jacob you you said how you inter re interpret that but um maybe why you chose that and also your your um conversation part in that words Amy Kenny so we wondered how she helped shap that yeah I mean yeah for sure thank you like um I think Amy Kenny like played such a huge part in this conversation right so um we had read her book uh in a group like a couple times in book studies that we were doing um within my work right and just really um had very good deep conversations and just sometimes very challenging conversations right like I think uh if you have a chance to read her book here if you haven't like I would highly recommend it it really um it makes you think have like it makes you think right and um and so she was really that was one of the when I was reading her book I just stopped when I was reading the the story around Jacob because it's such a different way of looking at the story story um and so she was actually like we had a book club where she actually came in for the last session and she chatted with all of us which was such a gift of her time but then um so afterwards I reached out to her and said um you know I'm working on this project and I I just have some questions and we have a conversation and and she gave me free R to like you know use elements of it like you know within the book and talk about her perspective which was really amazing um but she yeah I would say she was really the impetus for uh for this as well was really um just and then it ALS made me think well this is her perspective and then that's when I was also thinking of what other friends like what are my other friends perspectives like can we have some really good conversations about this so um so with Jacob wrestling you know like I was saying the traditional images you see everywhere are always Jacob wrestling with the angel um and and that's really the the pivotal piece of it but it doesn't really get at the heart of um what it really meant right and so um so when and it so it was really interesting reading what what Amy's talk what Amy Kenny's talking about because for her it's key that God um God reached out and and touched his hip and at that point it became a disability because that sort of for her um for her that's the the beauty is um in that relationship together that they're they're so struck with in that conversation of wrestling wrestling he reaches out and then there's that total interdependence between the two right um and there's that beauty and that's when he receives the blessing of moving forward and going into the land and he can start reconnecting with his brother with his brother with his family um but it's sort of when you look at it you think of um it limited that when he reached out like that it limited Jacob's capacity to what he had before and it means that he has to lean on God in probably a much different way than he had thought of before right and I just see that like and so then it becomes that rest peace is it becomes very almost metaphorical to me of like wrestling to lean into the interdependence peace of God um so yeah does that clar does that help a little bit like I yeah okay um yeah I just found it very beautiful that because I had not um I I guess that we always look at the conversation around disability as with the other stories that we have are Jesus curing the disability right and so this is the exact opposite of Jes of God handing him that disability to strengthen the interdependence and the leaning on peace right so it's there's so much Beauty in in seeing that and raising it up to the level of Consciousness I guess for people to understand that right and what does that open up for Jacob and the beauty of it opens up like a whole nation it's gorgeous right um but that that piece needed to happen between him and God so

yeah yeah well thank you so much for that that there's a lot of richness there for us to to think about and reflect on um and the the other story we were hoping you could um talk to us a little bit about is your revisioning of the man who is being lowered down to see Jesus and how Jenna Hoff became uh important to that story I love Jenna Jenna and I are friends we um I'm met her through um the Christian Reform Church because she um does a lot of writing for the Banner and she was um doing a lot of work which is a magazine for the CRC and then she also um did an extensive amount of writing for um the disability Community as well and she's just such a strong advocate and she will just jump in the middle and say hold on like wait a minute right and so that's what I just appreciate about her um personality um but there's also um just a just a calm beauty like it's just she just holds life so well um and so I reached out to her because I because I was trying to um find um people that would connect to like the lived experience um of the story uh so for Jenna at that that time she was in a motorized um wheelchair and she would often on her on her Facebook share just stories of ablest encounters with the community and the frustrations she had um around people seeing her for her dis ability versus seeing her um as a complete person right um and so she often shares and speaks from a position um of advocacy uh related to that and so I so when I was looking at this story I thought I really want to use this story it seems to be a very common one that we think of within the as a disability story within the Bible and when I reached out to her she was she was hilarious like she had a a deep frustration with this story um and so I was very careful withholding that um and and revisioning the story because for me as I explained earlier I looked at the beauty of a community of friends coming together right and what was the conversation before how did they decide let's go see Jesus right like what was all that for her she looked at it from a lens of did they actually ask him did they just presume that he wanted to go find Jesus and hopefully be cured like she had a lot of this like was there a lot of ableist intent within their conversation right and that's something we'll never know um but it just does make you consider like holding both pieces like I was looking at the hopeful beauty of a group of people coming together supporting each other wanting to find out more about Jesus she was also raising the challenges of it right and just the for her like the lowering in front of Jesus like there's a lot of the pieces of that story she does not appreciate right um and so yes we had a a very good conversation about it and I realized like these stories are so hurtful for some people like for people right like it's just I didn't realize the deep hurt until we we spent time talking about it right um so yeah so I just that one in particular I just tried to hold in the hope that there was beauty within that community that there wasn't an aess perspective that they were coming from but she's right it could be that right so it's I think we always had to be very aware of that piece um however I I think the the one story I wanted to share with you about that piece is that when I was um I was at a conference and I was sharing this these works of art and I had a mom come up to me and just say you know my my son he was younger same kind of thing like I talked about having a kid's Bible and she said yeah like all those stories like he he's in a wheelchair he hates them like he just is so frustrated with it right so she's like I really want to show him this so he can think of a different way of how to look at these stories like you know so I just thought okay like there's I hope that other people receive it that way and just like like let's let's look for the beauty in this and let's look for the community um in it rather than just the harmful narrative that often happens so yeah and that's so important to see to see ourselves yeah in enoy when kind of um I'm but you mentioned that you shared these at a conference I wondered if you had sh them around more pres churches and how how have those conversations been and maybe where the art pieces live I was I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that question currently live in my basement I am I have you just move I

did they are in my basement but they're well protected so I'm not too worried but I have actually um sent an ask to like a university to see if um if I could actually put them up um and I'm just waiting to hear back um because I know I have a couple of the professors um hoping that we can um install them so that's sort of my goal I just have to you know send a couple other emails to say yeah will this work because uh we we had talked about um so like within my work um we actually broke down um it into like so we have a regular newsletter that goes out for um disability and access within uh the CRC and so we had we actually created like um broke it into four so it could be a series that would pop up in every newsletter for um for basically four quarters uh so the year um and so that's been really exciting to see that it's going out further within the community um and then it's being picked up by um another um another that I'm not saying it yet because they haven't put it in yet published it yet but there is another one that it's going out in um similar I think it's going to be like broken into the four as well uh because I I do like it broken down like that because I think it gives you it's long like it's a long uh article and so I think when you're just uh reading it like shortening it like that you'll you'll get more um people connecting to it in little snippets so so that's coming out um in the next little bit as well so it's sort of just I'm just seeing where the life of it is going but um we had talked about putting the art pieces up in our offices um but I'm I'm hoping it goes into uh the university just because I I just want the conversation to be a bit broader right yeah yeah so that's really my goal for it so wonderful let just know when that happens delighted to share the news yeah that's I'm I'm I'm really hoping it comes to fruition so yeah I will share if it does yeah great uh thank you so much thank you for for your work for your beauty for your tips and for your time today to yeah and I think just for both of you like you too were integral parts of the conversation right like when I because I you both raised a lot of questions in the in the courses that I was taking and just like made me sit and think in in corners that can sometimes be a little uncomfortable to sit in so yeah so I just really appreciate your voice your voices in these conversations as well it was amazing so yeah great and look forward to more episodes and work down the road I hope so too thank you thanks yeah thank you very much!