#faithfullydisabled

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Due to flare ups, I’ve been thinking more about my relationship with my disabilities and my relationship with God — any good resources/book you can recommend?

Hey there, sending love and solidarity as you go through flare ups and as you explore all this <3

You came to the right place — disability theology is one of my great passions! Here are my recs for you. If anyone has more resources to add on or insights for anon, please share!

For starters...

First, you might enjoy wandering through my #disability theology tag over on my other blog, which includes excerpts from various disability theologians.

Or reading through / praying with the disability text prayers I shared here last July for Disability Pride Month, which were written by a variety of disabled folks.

Since it's Lent, Unbound's Disabling Lent: An Anti-Ableist Lenten Devotional is timely!

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Memoirs Exploring Christian Faith & Chronic Pain / Illness

My Body and Other Crumbling Empires, Lyndsey Medford (2023)

This memoir connects faith, chronic illness (especially autoimmune disorders), and the sickness at the heart of Western Empire / the Protestant work ethic.

How can we learn to work with instead of against our bodies? How can we rebuild our world to treat all bodies with the love and gentleness they deserve? .

This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley (2022)

An incredibly beautiful book, poetic and searing...explores the goodness of embodied life and intersections between disability (particularly chronic illness), Blackness, queerness, womanhood, and more.

Each chapter focuses on a different emotion (anger, joy, lament, love...) to teach us how to honor and listen to what we feel in our bodies.

CW for accounts of sexual assault and other forms of and abuse and trauma, as well as accounts of antiblack racism. .

Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved, Kate Bowler (2018)

If you've been steeped in any kind of prosperity gospel, "if you pray hard enough you'll be healed" type Christianity, I highly recommend this book.

Bowler writes with gentle honesty about how her chronic pain and then cancer compelled her to move away from that kind of harmful Christianity into a faith with room for doubt, grief, and a God that holds her in her suffering.

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Disability Theology — Books, Podcasts, Videos

Disability: The Inclusive Church Resource edited by Bob Callighan (2014)

If you're interested in the perspectives of various disabled Christians, I love the range of voices they brought into this text! A great intro to how theology and church life impact disabled persons and how our churches must re-form themselves with disabled persons at the center. .

My Disabled AND Blessed YouTube series

I've got multiple YouTube videos that draw from various disability theologians!

I especially recommend my introduction to reading the Bible with a disability lens — stressing how different biblical authors hold different views around disability; so what's God's overall message? — and my video on Luke 14's parable of the banquet!

If you have questions about or struggle with the Gospels' healing narratives, I also recommend my livestream on that topic. .

My friend Laura's Autistic Liberation Theology Podcast (you can listen wherever you get podcasts)

Laura explores scripture through the lens of an autistic trans person who uses a wheelchair and has multiple chronic & mental illnesses.

I especially recommend their episode on "the Gethsemane of things," which takes an honest look at pain and where God is in our suffering. (Most of Laura's eps don't have transcripts, but I shared an abridged version of this ep on my podcast and it has a transcript)

"I am not your ornamental prophet" is also a great episode for thinking about what pressures are put on disabled persons and how to construct boundaries for yourself .

The Mad and Crip Theology Podcast

This podcast interviews the authors who are published in the Mad and Crip Theology journal, which is really cool! You can watch episodes with captions on YouTube, or listen wherever you get podcasts.

A good starter episode: this one "on Queer and Crip Sexuality and the Disabled Christ" .

Some eps of Blessed Are the Binary Breakers

While my own podcast largely centers trans perspectives, disability comes up frequently as well! Each ep has a transcript. These are the disability-focused ones:

"No End to Transphobia without Uprooting Ableism — exploring embedded forms of oppression"

"Our Pride Is Not a Sin — a Queer and Disabled Christian Lens"

"Goodness Embodied — an intersex, nonbinary first human and a disabled risen Christ"

"Marginalized Bodies as Spectacle and the good news in Jesus's disabling wounds"

"Eli and the prophet Elijah"

“Secular” books that helped shape my own theology

What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, Sara Hendren (2020)

Fantastic book digging into recent disability history, present, and future with focus on the “misfit” theory of disability where body and world interact with each other disharmoniously, and the creativity disabled people employ to make them more harmonious  .

Exile and Pride, Eli Clare (1999)

One of my favorite books of all time. Connects disability, queerness, rural life, trauma, and more. Clare is one of the originators of the concept of the “bodymind” (though he talks about that more in one of his later books)

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Wanting even more resources? Here's my google doc with aaaaall the disability theology stuff — plus some helpful disability 101 stuff to share with loved ones!

Praying for comfort, wisdom, and community support for you as you journey! Please feel free to drop by again with any questions that come up or to share any insights you've gained any time <3

[a-queer-seminarian]

My dear friend Laura joined me on YouTube to look at cool artwork of God/Jesus in a wheelchair!

Drawing from the insights of wheelchair users like renowned theologian Nancy Eiesland and Laura themself, we discuss how such images can transform how wheelchair users see themselves, and show faith communities how critical it is to ensure disabled people experience full access and belonging.

As Rabbi Julia Watts Belser puts it:

"We live in a world that consistently devalues Black and brown bodies, fat bodies and femme bodies, queer, trans, and disabled bodies. We live in a world where those bodies are too often held as incompatible with the sacred, a world where those bodies are imagined as the antithesis of God. 

Theology requires a reckoning with politics. It requires that we confront the question of who has been afforded the power to name and claim our bodies as close kin to the divine.”

ID: thumbnail of a YouTube video titled "Holy Roller: The power of a wheelchair-using God. There's an illustration of Jesus sitting in a wheelchair next to text reading "God in a wheelchair?" / end ID

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Join me and my friend Laura as we explore biblical and artistic images of God on wheels — from the wheeled throne of Daniel 7 to art of Jesus in a wheelchair.

Drawing from the writings and lived experiences of Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, a teen named Becky Tyler, Professor Nancy Eiesland, and Laura themself, we make a case for why such images matter in the face of stigma, inaccessibility, and unsolicited prayers for "healing."

As Rabbi Watts Belser puts it, in a world where some bodies are assumed to be "incompatible with the sacred," it is vital theology to "name and claim our bodies as close to the Divine."

[a-queer-seminarian]

ID: Text reads "Disability Pride Month daily text prayers." An image under the text depicts paper cut out figures in rainbow colors with a variety of disabilities, including one in a wheelchair, one with sunglasses and cane, and one without arms. More text reads "Hosted by More Light Presbyterians." / end ID

Get texted a short prayer written by a disabled person of faith, every day of July!

Whether you are disabled or able-bodied, neurotypical or neurodivergent, sign up to join us in prayers that celebrate the holiness of all bodies & minds, give thanks for our unique gifts, lament the evils of ableism, and imagine a more just world together.

To sign up for these daily texts, submit this form.

[a-queer-seminarian]

June was Queer Pride Month, July is Disability Pride Month, and that means it's the prime time of year for certain people to remind us that "pride is a sin, didn't you know?"

So for episode 75 of the Blessed Are the Binary Breakers podcast, I called up my dear friend Laura, a fellow disabled trans Christian, to discuss how the kind of pride that marginalized communities use as an antidote to shame is not sinful, but indeed essential in our pursuit of justice and abundant life for all!

Listen as Laura and I — interspersed with excerpts from Eli Clare's 1999 text Exile and Pride — contrast marginalized pride with nationalist, supremacist pride; explain why "awareness" and "acceptance" aren't enough; and emphasize the need to join pride with witness.

Click here for places to listen + the episode transcript.

Hear more from Laura on their podcast, the Autistic Liberation Theology Podcast. Click here for their website of essays and biblical Playmobil art.

Look under the readmore for more excerpts + image descriptions.

ID for images at top of post: A messy paint rainbow on a black background with text reading "Our Pride is Not a Sin: a queer and disabled lens. Ep 75 of Blessed Are the Binary Breakers."

Text on a purple banner reads "Pride and humility don't have to be opposites — they balance each other out." A quote from Avery Arden below reads, "When we have too high an opinion of ourselves, thinking we are above others, that’s an excess of pride — time for some humility. But then if we are pushed down, made to feel inferior to others, that’s humility in excess — time for some pride. And it's all about how it influences you to act with others." / end ID

Text on a green banner reads, "Why is pride only sinful when it's marginalized groups' pride?" A quote from Laura Sommer reads, "It shows that this is a made-up argument! Our whole society is built around national pride. As long as it's [pride for something] that is well-established and mainstream, nobody even notices that they use the word proud."

A quote from Eli Clare from 1999 reads, “Without pride, disabled people are much more likely to accept unquestioningly the daily material conditions of ableism, unemployment, poverty, segregated and substandard education, years spent locked up in nursing homes, violence perpetrated by caregivers, lack of access. Without pride, individual and collective resistance to oppression becomes nearly impossible."

A gray banner has text reading "The Progress Pride flag's black stripe & Disability Pride flag's gray background commemorate those lost to queerphobia or ableism." Both flags are shown on the image. A quote from Laura Sommer reads, "Remember the ones who can't be here, or can't feel pride, or can't celebrate. And make sure [pride's] not just about celebration — it's also about defiance, and this feeling of 'we are still here, and we will defend the space that we have carved out.' And we do this to save lives."

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Jesus, I'm imagining a heaven full of wheelchairs, walkers, and canes — singing with sounds of stimming — alive with AAC and signing hands.

And there you are, smiling in the middle of it all in a glorious wheelchair of your own, stimming and signing along.

Pain falls away; joy remains — the joy of so many ways to reflect the Divine.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

[image shows a link to a youtube video with the text “Genesis 32: disabled people & trans people ARE blessed.” There’s a picture of Avery, a white nonbinary person with short brown hair who speaks in the video, beside an illustration of the biblical figure Jacob wrestling a glowing being whose face is obscured. / end id]

Super glad to finally have had the chance to publish another video to my Disabled AND Blessed series! it’s.....been a while haha. What do y’all think?

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In this video, I finally get to dig into the text that inspired the title of this series, Disabled AND Blessed! 

It's Genesis 32:22-32, the tale of Jacob's encounter with a strange Being in the heart of the desert, the dead of night. He wrestles, is injured, continues to wrestle, and receives a blessing and a new name. I explore God's invitation to wrestle with the Divine, with scripture, and with humanity, applying the lenses of disability theology and transgender theology to this text. I close with a poem I wrote about receiving a new name.

Watch the video on YouTube for citations to the music, texts, and images shared -- plus captions! 

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

“Whirlwheel” by Olivia Wise

[image description: a painting of a person with deep brown skin and upraised arms wearing a long red dress seated in a wheelchair. The art style makes the dress seem flame-like and lends to the feeling of movement, as if her arms are swaying and wheelchair rolling. The canvas is colored in pinks, reds, yellows, and white. /end id]

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“When I think of God on wheels, I think of the delight I take in my own chair. I sense the holy possibility that my own body knows, the way wheels set me free and open up my spirit. I like to think that God inhabits the particular fusions that mark a body in wheels: the way flesh flows into frame, into tire, into air. This is how the Holy moves through me, in the intricate interplay of muscle and spin, the exhilarating physicality of body and wheel, the rare promise of a wide-open space, the unabashed exhilaration of a dance floor, where wing can finally unfurl.” 

- Julia Watts Belser in “God On Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology”