Season 4 Episode 6: Disability, Dignity, and Faith Communities with Robbie Walker & Ty Ragan

🎙️ In this episode of the Mad & Crip Theology Podcast, we sit down with Robbie Walker and Ty Ragan to dive into their work and the larger conversations happening in our community around disability justice and faith.

Robbie reflects on the tensions between Pentecostal theology and disability justice, exploring how healing can be about dignity and agency rather than spectacle. Ty challenges the myth of normalcy in faith communities, pushing for accessibility not just in physical spaces but in leadership, theology, and cultural attitudes. Together, we talk about what it means for churches to move beyond inclusion toward true disability justice. And of course, we couldn't resist bringing Star Trek into the conversation. 🚀🖖

Watch on YouTube with captions here: https://youtu.be/xbH3f5-2zxg

✨ Plus, exciting news: the Mad & Crip Theology Podcast was just named one of FeedSpot’s Best Five Canadian Disability Podcasts! 🎉 Check out the full list here: https://podcast.feedspot.com/canada_disability_podcasts/

📖 Read Robbie’s piece: Is the Beautiful Gate Accessible? here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/44517
📖 Read Ty’s piece: What is Dignity? here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/44507

#MadAndCripTheologyPress #DisabilityJustice #FaithAndJustice #StarTrek #Podcast

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Transcript

Well welcome everyone to the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast it's so good to be back we had a bit of a hiatus as we were doing some things getting some work done and graduating and defending and writing and stuff so it's so wonderful to be back here with you um we do have a couple of announcements that we wanted to share uh so maybe I'll get started with that so we just want to celebrate together that Miriam is officially a doctor now! Uh Miriam defended her dissertation and everything went really well so huge congratulations to you Miriam YAY thank

you very cool um do you want to mention the feed spot one Mir would you like me to? The Feed Spot we were named in the top five disability podasts so thank you to Feedspot for finding us. Yeah that was so cool to see and um we can put the link to the feed spot list of the other really good Canadian Disability podcasts into the into the notes for the show as well today um we have a few other announcements related to the Mad Crip Theology Press today so we did put out a call for content recently for new anthology that we're hoping to put together so um for sustainability and longevity the Press is starting to release digital exclusives uh as a part of our offerings for folks and so one new digital exclusive that we're going to be that we're working on right now is called Growing Up Female and Evangelical Madness Faith and the Search for Community and so if that um interests you or if that's a part of your life journey and you want to write something for us we wouldd love to hear from you um and we just want to that's a working title it will probably change we just want to make sure that um everyone knows that we're we we want trans nonbinary queer and gender expansive voices in this anthology so um don't let the "female "throw you off um yeah so hopefully uh we'll we'll hear from you if you have anything any ideas or anything you've been working on um and the due date for those is the end of April of 2025 but if you need a little bit more time it's all good just uh just message us you can DM us on Instagram or you can send shoot us an email as well um and then we have one more announcement the journal will be back sometime this fall we're going to continue publishing once a year so our call for papers and creative content will

go out in the early spring  so if you are working on something this semester

keep us in

mind yes and we're we've been very it's been so nice to go to publishing once per year it feels like crip time has kicked in and it's been so good so um we're publishing kind of like bigger issues but um it's been better for everyone's bodyminds to be able to to slow down a little bit with the publishing schedule so we appreciate everyone's flexibilty understanding about the public oh yeah so that was a lot of announcements it feels like but we got through it um so now let's get to the good stuff so we're so happy today to be um joined by Ty and Robbie who are here to chat with us about their pieces in the Fall 24 2024 issue of the journal and so um what we decided to do is we're going to switch it up a little bit today and go one by one we usually go back and forth but we're going to go one by one as we're moving through so um Robbie would you mind introducing yourself for our dear listeners? Sure my name is Robbie Walker he/they pronouns today um well usually I have brownish hair gray eyes um toothy smile I like my teeth they're mostly okay um and I'm wearing a green v-neck shirt um I like the colour it reminds me of mint and uh I'm currently a PhD candidate at Trinity College in the Toronto School of Theology and I'll give you the cheeky elevator pitch for my dissertation how to get queer people and Pentecostals to talk without killing each other first if they do it afterwards it's technically none of my business. Love it we will definitely read that when it's published Robbie that sounds lovely thank you yeah so uh Robbie your um for the for this issue of the journal you wrote a um a sermon that you that we published of yours so um the first question Miriam and I wanted to ask you when we were thinking about questions was um so your sermon engages deeply with both disability justice and healing narratives so what drew you to this particular passage in Acts that you used and how do you see it speaking to contemporary conversations about accessibility in the church? Thanks for the question I I think the first time I had to consider the particular text so the text in the in the sermon was Acts chapter 3 where Peter and John uh heal a man sitting next to beautiful gate in the temple and the first time I engaged that text was in a class called prophetic preaching and I was really curious about it because I wanted I wanted a way of naming the holy spirit in the world while sort of grappling with the challenges I was getting uh from other classmates about you know how do you do social justice around disability when you're a Pentacostal Robbie? um you know and so I think um that was the first time that I uh considered it and then I was asked by uh my friend Beth Molina who's a pastor in Vancouver to uh become part of her Church's Disability Justice series and so I returned to it again and and gave it a second look uh just to see if I wanted to update what I said the first time so usually that happens when one is a preacher it's like you know you massage and you I would say that differently etc. etc. so yeah

Sorry my my mouse isn't working today yeah and along with the intro you gave us Robbie

you reflected a bit about the tension between being um

Pentecostal theologian the and also engaging

with disability justice and we wondered how you navigated these tensions especially given Pentecostal's historical maybe lesson but historical focus on the healing narratives that happen to people like us.

Yeah it's a good it's a good question uh its a big one

No it's okay that you know it's um sometimes I when someone uh especially when they use the word navigate I'm like I navigate that? Really? You know um because you know it's it's huge and I I don't know about you Mir but I'm but I'm like I usually find myself spectacularly uncomfortable in almost any new room that I go into the because of those intersections and and so I sort of um quote unquote "spoil the space" anytime I I roll in for the first time um because it's like oh like you know my body self immediately brings people up short and then you add in the intersections and people go what the F is going on uh so um how do I navigate the tensions very carefully because the conviction that I currently have is that I am not interested in colonizing anybody else's experience so um if one is interested in physical healing as as I am um that is mine that is not for me to impose on anyone who disagrees with me or you know be uh Jesus is a big girl she chooses her own friends um you know that that's a conversation between that person and their community and and God um and so my job is to respect uh the people that I encounter where they are and their theological integrity in their prayer lives and their Journeys with god um and if there are people that they say you know I look at the gospels and people like me were cured or healed um can you pray for me that way I'll be like yeah sure um now what what will you do or how can we serve you if what you are looking for doesn't happen automatically you know how can how can we serve you and how do you how will you know that you are still loved and that you still belong and that you're still accepted even if the outcome that you want doesn't occur um so I think balancing those tensions is important for

me. Thank you Robbie I really appreciate what you're what you're saying today and um I'm teaching a course on disability this semester and you know I've heard some of my students raised the point that they feel like if um if they want healing especially folks who have chronic pain they the students said I really I don't want to feel like this anymore it's really hard and the meds don't they're not working and um they said that they were really shunned in another disability class that they had taken because they felt they said this they felt this way and so I agree there needs to be space that we need to be able to hold space for for these conversations for everybody to be a part of the disability community um yeah so I I I really appreciate that and I also like that you spoil the space like that just made me so happy and I think that's going to be like my new life

mantra honestly that's I'm here for it right yeah disrupt the spaces not in a not in a rude way um yeah but if but if people who want to be there and who should be there are not there spoil the space go ahead yeah love that so um okay so the next question we wanted to chat with you about Robbie is um you talk about the way that healing should be about conferring dignity and agency rather than flashy displays of power so can you expand on what a truly justice oriented healing ministry could look like?

Uh I hope I hope that uh Ty hears some resonances um but one of the points that I make in for the last several years since about 2018 especially before pandemic is that accessibility and Universal Universal Design are Healing Ministry uh and so this idea that you know you have to have the flash and bang in order to do justice um is half the picture and if you don't include both if you don't include you know the Holy Spirit can do genuinely weird things and even if the weird you're looking for doesn't quite happen there's still stuff that's up to us um and so you know Universal Design uh people people with visible and invisible disabilities are on your leadership team in key roles and they uh and what I mean by that is it's equitable in terms of if they're present they can change the rules if you can't change the rules by your presence it's not equitable right um because I have the responsibility I think if I'm in a community who genuinely wants to love me as the CP uh you know ADHD neuroatypical on on the autism spectrum all the things queer um and something harms me or makes my life difficult even if it's not harmful and I say to leadership hey adjust yourself please because you love me and because you love us and if they refuse that's a problem but if I have if I have the ability to keep my community accountable right for what they do and the decisions they make about why do you have stairs leading up to the pulpit um so if you're doing renovation are people who are typically abled still using those stairs or is everybody preaching from the floor um even tiny things like that right are a way of of incorporating what does this look like in practical terms when there are disabled and atypical bodies of all sorts in a

space. Oh and can I add one other quick thing because because I noticed that Ty had a had a citation to my favorite Pentecostal Theologian his name is Amos Yong and Amos Yong when he writes about disability he goes here's one way you know you're being equitable there are visibly disabled people on your Healing Ministry team who are praying for the flashy stuff and and that is still allowed you know someone isn't discounted from the charismatic side of the ministry uh just because it hasn't happened yet and that feels dangerous to a lot of the people that I grew up with because how do you know there's not something wrong with you this sort of rhetoric right so by saying look we're all on the way nobody's arrived yet look here we are we're all in the mess together we're learning to follow Jesus together let's go um so yeah

thanks. That's really interesting Robbie and I don't think access to the pulpit is a small thing its quite a its a big big move that more churches do that.

Yes I had you in the back of my head when I was preaching because I was like I have friends who have been in much more unjust situations than I ever have uh related to we can't hire you because we don't want to spend the money right fuck well off excuse me you know um so that's what I want to say to those big wigs on your behalf Mar I don't know but I'm like fuck well off all right. Oh my God I think things are starting to change hopefully in the church um we want to come back again to the intersectional identities I know I also have CP and I'm also queer so we um we yeah are alike in that way and I find that more people as me to speak about

disability justice rather than queer justice  and I love it when people you know that imaginative to ask about crip and queer justice

but we wondered um how these identities intersect in your own work? Thanks um yeah I find it's interesting for it to be part of my vocation that people will say can you speak specifically about disability justice and I always come back and say Yes uh And I'm going to mention that I'm queer and I'm going to mention that I'm Pentecostal and I'm going to mention that I'm now part of the mainline churches and all all of these things because all of them are relevant and nobody is only one thing hello uh and so when I started learning about intersectionality that was just really powerful like one really practical way to think about it is nobody is is only one thing so why are you only asking one question um so I've already sort of mentioned the struggle and the back and forth um you know how can you be Pentecostal and disabled how can you be uh Pentecostal and queer because if you believe in healing how do you know your queerness isn't something God wants to heal I'm like well because I'm sitting in the in a single body with both and I can tell you I think in my conviction that God wants to heal the one and not the other and there's my personal conviction and you can slice the pie differently if you wish um but there it is um yeah do I ever feel I'm just reading in the chat do I ever feel like one gets prioritized over the others yeah um lately it's disability sometimes it's queerness hardly anybody wants me to speak as a Pentecostal so I just mix it in anyways uh because it's well part of my personality um yeah I just it's uh like I mentioned earlier sometimes it's not just other people it's it's me sometimes holding the tension and all of the convictions that I'm like okay all of these things need to balance or dance together somehow um and I'm not quite sure how to do it so sometimes I make myself spectacularly uncomfortable trying to wrestle with all of these

intersections. Well I appreciate that Robbie and I also live in just like a well I live in a big mess of like a ball a blob of uncomfortableness so I get it um I was it kind of it it spoke to me a little bit when you were talking about how um how as we grow and sort of uh move in the world um people when people start asking us to speak you know um I like when you had some boundaries and you said yes but I will also need to do this and this because I like for me um that's about congruence right it's like you're showing up your whole self and you're you are you bring all the things with you yes that's that's so important so I'm I I really respect you for that thank you um okay so the last question that we have for you Robbie we have really picked your brain today is um I enjoy it can't you tell my inner Pentecostal is coming out to play you can tell all right Hallelujah all right hallelujah your your sermon ends with a powerful reflection on systemic ableism in the church so whether through in accessible spaces exclusionary policies or the way that we frame healing so what are some concrete ways churches can move beyond inclusion to true accessibility and belonging this is probably a a question you hear a lot uh we we mentioned the the hatred of the stairs uh what are there any other Lord yeah! Are there any other things that I've been bubbling up lately that you might want to share one of the things that um because I hang out in Anglican spaces last year so um the diocese of of the Anglican dasis has a specific social justice push uh that they try to be intersectionally informed but they have one push that they want the entire diocese to do last year it was around Ontario Disability Support um the Ontario program that uh funds in quotes um you know permanently disabled from the government's perspective permanent disabled adults uh fine fair I'm a recipient and it makes my life significantly easier and more manageable and I'm still 25% below the poverty line in Canada because the system isn't just so one of the things about you know we want to talk about universal access or design it's like one of the things that I want to say to people is like you're it's so good when the way you run your services the way you configure your buildings the way your leadership teams work in your parish or your congregation are firing on all cylinders and Universal Basic Income guaranteed livable income increasing ODSP by 100% okay like those sorts of larger systemic things also come into play because if the government won't do it and you have bodies in need I'm not just speaking as a disabled person but like half my congregation now is is people from the African diaspora some of whom are refugees for various awful reasons um and how do they stabilize themselves in Canadian society and if the government won't do it for them and they're here what's our responsibility and can we do one better than a government bureaucracy usually the answer is yes I'm not complaining about the government being there because I'm not one of these Christians that say eh who cares about government you know support Let the church do it let the church do it let faith communities do it and and and poke the systems until they become more humane and so for me the broader systemic thing around income um has a lot to do with how people experience Universal Design and access to spaces and etc. uh because sometimes you just need the baseline sense of neurological security right that you sort of deep breath out that I will be secure even if life goes sideways this week you know so yeah. Yeah and guaranteed liveable income would be is so important for so many people so Mir can I can I just do you resonate with this I have one question for you for me do do you under well because I just I just have a thought that I want to share with you okay do you ever encounter the attitude that somehow being visibly disabled is less expensive than being

able-bodied? I'm sticking my tongue out I I haven't had that but I don't think most people realize how expensive our lives are with transportation and equipment and care services beyond the I know I only get an hour a day of attending care which is not enough for me to live so I don't think many people know the financial cost of disability.

I just I just wanted to double check whether that was just in my head because my consistent experience is that people I talk to literally think it is less expensive no to be visibly disabled I'm like no no but because people believe that that's why we can be uh whoever is on ODSP can be 25% under the poverty level. Yeah that's that's around capitalism and the worthiness of people's lives so much yeah yeah so thank you for name in that conversation Robbie. And now you get to a break and we get to turn our attention to Ty's work and we are so delighted to have here. 

So Ty can you can you introduce yourself friend yes say anything you would like about yourself. Thanks Mir uh so visibly I have no hair I have brown eyes I finally surrendered to the fact my eyes are getting old and I have bifocals I'm wearing a black hoodie uh that's a Star Trek hoodie so he got the Star Trek emblem and then for those who watch Star Trek Picard it has his number one his pit Bulldog uh the bully breeds have been the most gentle with my son our first one this his old house hip with the past he was able to walk with his stroke affected side of the CP and she would not pull at all uh so just those different intuitions um I'm a writer a dad of two one with complex medical needs I'm an advocate I'm an educator I'm curious I like to play I like to push back and really get groups to think differently hopefully and I'm also Treky and I was going to say so for those in the know I'll try not to drop any colorful metaphors but after hearing Robbie talk I'm guessing we're okay with that and I'm also a Trecker so we're good excellent I kind od one out here but you have all the Trekky fun. yay nerds unite!

All right so Ty um so we're so we're so happy to have your pieces a part of the journal this is the first time that you've written for us so thank you so much for um becoming a part of the conversation um so your piece um was fascinating to read and there was a lot of um I think you you interweave your personal experiences with some good books and good good theories that you've read there's some theology mixed in there so it's the kind of thing that we like to publish at the journal um so uh your piece frames dignity as deeply connected to authentic belonging in faith communities so can you share what led you to explore this theme? Um I think as just rooting in the way I came to understand the faith in general I was not a traditional Church kid um or a traditional one stream of Christianity kid um I was baptized Anglican my god parents were Presbyterian I went to ecumenical Vacation Bible School before coming back to Faith as an adult in the United Church and my mom and my nan shaped my understanding of everyone's created the way they reflect God and everyone deserves to have a place where they can be themselves and belong and so that's always what I've taken into the where wherever I've been whether it's been uh in shelters helping with life recovery work over the intersections of different pieces of people people building youth and children's ministries or young adults or in dementia care or in the classroom and so the hardest part I found was always the struggle within faith communties themselves they will either have a very narrow focus on who what the created image is and how we're to be or they may uh pick an aspect they'll do well so they may be very affirming to the tslgbtqi communities but then drop the ball on disabilities or be affirming to a little bit of the disability community have a strategy for one specific idea but not have those other actual pieces or think that as the previous conversation Mir and Robbie was talking about that the government covers everything so it's very cheap to exist with disabilities or disability family and doesn't understand the complexities of costs or even the complexities of constantly being forced as families or individuals with visible or invisible disabilities to constantly live in lack the idea that you're shaped under to get full funding your file and your paperwork has to basically prove you're deserving and in my context Alberta deserving is getting scary um so being able to understand what how do you break this basically uh misinterpretation of scripture of ableism up so that people can begin to understand what this looks like and it's more than just assuming there's a ramp somewhere into a building or someplace you can park your your assist

device. Yeah thank you I hadn't realized you're in the United Church

so

um I should have guessed that you when used Tom Reyonld's work around the myth of normalcy or the cult of normalcy 

and in your work uh you talk about how many churches prioritize appearance rather  than actual inclusion. So I know you shared some in your work but for our listeners  can you talk about some practical ideas that would help congregations move beyond just performative inclusion?

Yeah and there's some practical things um so I exist kind of in this spectrum of mainline-ism um we have a small Presbyterian congregation me and my son usually attend we also attend online some United churches um I was have some background in the Anglican Church uh practical ideas of inclusion um one of the steps actually comes out of life recovery for me our one of our main sacraments is communion it's is our table actually open to everyone to be able to participate? Um so you know um and that does look at you know gluten-free and juice how do we talk about communion with those who tube feed so they can also be included reducing the barrier as much as possible and not having it as well here's your gluten option why not just have glutenfree period for everybody why do I have to be able to be cognitive in my moment of trying to connect with the Holy to pause and go oh is that the one that's going to make me sick?

Um as Robbie brought up the the ramp into the pulpits or where we station things those actual pieces are definitely necessary and ongoing many time couple times I've we've had churches offer to build a ramp and then drop the ball and decide no it's just too costly um where how do we we move in how do how visible are different folks doing different things within the church itself so are they part of the life of the church not just Sunday mornings but with the other activities going on do we ensure that it's possible for everyone to participate when we do potlucks do we ask that the ingredients be listed um do we alternate loudness levels in our services so it doesn't always have to be low sensory but do we alternate loudness levels so that we allow for those times of authentic quiet but also you can get loud because some need those as well um those aspects also too as someone who has some known neurological challenges I always I burst almost burst out laughing one day I was having a bad neuro day and really couldn't stand because I was trying to offset a seizure and someone's going well stand in body or spirit I sat there going no my spirit is saying sit down it's okay with God so even the language we put forward just pausing and asking how would this be heared from different people one of the questions I put forward in a discussion once was we we always talk about the new body in heaven but what if that doesn't happen what what about if we just accept that there is diversity and shape for that build for that um and part of that is looking at our bathrooms um looking at our space in churches um depending on the age just I I have issues sometimes just with myself as a bigger guy being in a quote unquote disability stall because it's only like three inches wider than the other stalls what if we built um actual gender neutral bathrooms that had the bars had a a change bench for any age so that anybody could flow through you may have only two or three bathrooms there in the building but at least they would be able to be used for everybody are the quiet is there a place for where you can go to quiet if you're feeling overwhelmed and is it unlocked that was one of the challenges in some of the congregations we've been a part of is the space wasn't unlocked and in that moment you want to center chasing down the person with the key can be a bit more than you need so it's just some of the ideas and that's on top of continuing some of the practices from the pandemic do we live stream do we close caption when you're live streaming please keep the PowerPoint slides on the screen there's nothing more frustrating than when you're trying to engage with the live stream and then all of a sudden the slide disappears on the song and you have this great beautiful picture of the choir the audience and you're going that's great but now I've just missed out all the words or the the the interactive prayer or responsatory reading and now I'm out of that moment as just feels like I'm I'm in a TV show and I'm Not In worship those just some of the ideas because that connects that shows you're you're seeing the person and and engage talk um find out. I don't know if that answered or not yeah totally yeah I appreciate those those really concrete practical things that that um churches can think about uh that's awesome I was thinking as you were describing the bathroom at Emmanuel College uh where um Miriam and I teach and our students and stuff they I think that they converted one of the offices into the accessibility bathroom it's so big it's literally the size of an office it's like a whole room so when you go in you're like oh this is so spacious so that's there's some ideas there of how you can make a good a good bathroom for folks um all right so we're gonna we're going to move now to another question about healing so um you bring up the concept of healing as social justice rather than cure and can you expand on what that distinction means to you and how it should shape how churches engaged with disability? Yeah so part of this was reflecting on the Gospel reading reading other folks obviously just reflecting the way my own brain works and going you know some folks would say you need to be cured that's the healing I'm like no I like the way my mind works that that takes away who I am with my son it takes away who he is um but there are things that can happen in the healing ministries as as Robbie started talked about you know are we actually trying to create physical spaces that are accessible and it goes beyond the building code because so many times building codes get updated and the buildings pre-existing buildings get grandfathered I always remember years ago that the shock when one priest was at the pulpit before offering and the church had an individual who had started having to use a assist mobile assist device and so he's up there he's talking he goes um as you're giving offering I just just want you to consider so and so and the fact that we're putting an elevator in and the elevator folks want to be paid so can we help hit with that and I can tell from Amy's face she either known people in finance or and you could you could just picture who the finance people on the committee were with that announcement from the just that action phase that not living in lack yeah it may be a struggle but guess what for that authentic belonging that healing has to allow for connection and if your hall is in the basement and folks can't get to the basement you're not a church I'm sorry you're not you are a social club for the people that can exist in your space and so healing for social justice is dismantling those systems that create the barriers so it is part of understanding how the government systems work for individuals disabilities so as a entity you can encourage advocacy to change those systems you can encourage thoughtful voting you can encourage folks when they write their MLAs their City counselors their MPS to point out this is because of their faith so we start changing the narrative on what Christianity means for disabilities for queer folk for the marginalized and they start to see it's an expansive voice of change but that and you also start to healing is also that systemic change within the church going oh isn't it sad so and so will never be able to or that your child can never do this or shut the hell up I celebrate my kid and the kids that were in a Sunday school that were across different disabilities for who they were and what they could do and if you can help shift that mindset as a church for families you alleviate a grieving process that's constant and that's a healing moment because then if that you can alleviate that healing process and they know there's a place they can go and be courageous and stand there and go this is who we are and we have value that changes your ability to interact with the systems that want to strip you down and break you down and leave you thinking there is no other outcome but institutionalization and that is a Healing Ministry here is you have a chronic condition and it go it's cured whether through the the blessing of medicine that and surgeries that God has given us or through those miracles that do happen but when you read the gospel stories what always struck me was it wasn't just the healing that miracle moment it in the resource of that time it was Jesus looking at those folks and going now go back to those folks that say you don't belong and tell those SOBs guess what God says I have worth and value and I belong so damn it let me in and always there's that fun story of the friends ripping down the roof of the house to get access which I I think I remember one uh school board meeting I was at where they were talking about trying to remove and imp implement to accessibility I said they could get people in do I said well me and my friends got some jackhammers it happened fairly quickly the offices you just want you play with destructive equipment why you do something. Yeah that's one of my

favourite stories yeah community solidarity.

we can do it yeah get people moving and it does. We we are so grateful for both of you and for your work and your um the conversation today and we wanted to give you some time to talk to each other about about anything you've heard today or read in each other's work so I invite Robbie to get that conversation

going. Thanks um I'm I'm I think I'm resisting the urge to ask a Star Trek question about disability um because there uh because I'm I'm hoping Ty that you've also bumped into resources where there are actually scholars who sort of think through how does Star Trek portray disability and neurodivergence and etc and it's really fascinating stuff um I I was curious because it came up in your essay and also in the way the question was phrased about um social justice rather than cure

um can you talk to me some more about that binary because I because for myself I don't understand rather than um I would want to say "and" uh I wouldn't want to leverage one over the other. I I create the binary because too often folks focus on the cure that leads back to what we view as normal or typical we don't have an expansive concept of normal so we want everyone to align with what our own paradigmic vision of humanity is. Right. And so by leveraging and separating them we're forcing the conversation on what does it look like to create that world now Jesus called us to in the gospel of Mark and then what else can be done because some things may not have a cure or no do not need one. Yeah. And so I really want to be able to separate those two because there's that confluence of the of both and and one and we then ignore what we have ability to actually change. Right right yeah I I appreciate um how you framed that because I realized from even for myself I I don't think by definition that people in my position who want cure are necessarily internally ableist but I but I definitely think I've definitely received legitimate challenge uh legitimate in the sense of people were challenging me to be less harmful um in terms of you do have a particular idea of what that would look like and are you imposing it right as opposed to maybe maybe the only this is this is me maybe the only range I should care about is I want to exclude the edges that are genuinely harmful the vast majority of the time um and anything between those edge cases could be normal even if I don't see it right um so I appreciate uh that you leverage the binary in that way to challenge people to say uh oh what is my view of normal in my head and is that a problem?

Yeah what do you got for me? I was actually curious in the realms you exist in how you actually leverage that concept of the fuller identity statements especially with our push back against um more generalized obviously push back against even pronouns never mind mind a fuller understanding of who we are that personal identity in the

existence? Hmm. Can you give me a little bit more I'm not quite. Sure so when you talked about Pentecostal and queer and disability and and the those that boundary you set but how you do in such a way that maybe it helps others understand. Oh gotcha um my own preference or my own gift I think sometimes is the people that I grew up with it's like where is that in Bible or how should I think about Bible in order to help me answer that question and and I am increasingly wary of big wigs with institutional power demanding that I fess up about Bible.

Okay? But on the other hand if my brother my sister my sibling my friend my lover is struggling like I was uh when I was coming out and you know figuring out how that was and I had a friend of mine who is a professional engineer God bless him because he took so much emotional labour because I I vomited all over him verbally for an an hour I looked at the clock and I had hardly took a breath taken a breath and then he leans forward and he puts his hand on my arm Robbie what what are you scared of and I just lost it snot cry everything gets cleaned out but those moments of the personal relationship that someone was willing to sit there and ask the really key empathetic questions so when some someone who isn't wearing a power trip on their sleeve wants to sit down with me then I'm yeah let's talk Bible let's talk um about gender pronouns uh let's talk about Jacob wrestling with the angel let's talk about uh Samuel when he goes to anoint David and you know so the oldest guy who's big and strapping and attractive oh this is the Lord's anointed no the people look on the outward appearance and the Lord looks on the heart oh the totality of the person and God knows and that person knows so maybe if that's a scriptural thing that repeats across the cannon then it is none of my business except to love well if I have a sibling who says gender dysphoria social stuff isn't uh fitting you know what I'm assigned can you please call me X can you please refer to me as y um and talk about it that way uh but yeah I'm not interested in talking uh to people who demand that I Supply them a framework before they're willing to change their mind because can you please name me any example in scripture where God gave the framework first before God actually did the thing and then the people caught up right this is the book of Acts this is this is everywhere in the cannon uh maybe the exception of uh build the ark Noah there's a flood coming that might be the only exception I can think of in the entire Canon right and so the demand that you know disabled people queer people vulnerable people generally need to supply the theology before you do the right thing is backwards scripturally speaking so thanks long longwinded but there is thank you well we are so grateful like Miriam said we're so grateful that you could join us today thank you so much this has been such a good conversation Miriam and I were furiously typing in the background saying we we'd love to hear you talk about these different ways of thinking about healing and and um we're so glad that you're part of this conversation that in the journal and also here on the podcast so yay and Star Trek fans now I know that you're Star Trek fan so I can bother you about that um the Borg is just my thing okay so um all right. Resistance is not futile! No that's right the character of Pike is an intriguing study in disability in life yes yes so much we should do an entire podcast episode on Star Trek and disability that would be very fun we'll we'll shelve that for later all right so thank you so much for being here and um yeah it was so great thank you thank you so much!