Communication - Diane Mettam

Yes, once again internet woes have kept me incommunicado.  But we think (and pray) the problem is finally solved.  As I tried to tell the new internet service provider, it was a bad modem.  They finally agreed and replaced it.  But it got me thinking about communication, and how difficult it can be.

I have a friend who was born with a severe form of cerebral palsy.  He has needed help with feeding, bathing and dressing all his life.  He needs a wheelchair to get around, and someone to push it for him.  He needs help getting into and out of bed.  And, like Moses, he is slow of speech.  But despite these ways his body has betrayed him, he is incredibly intelligent and very well educated.

Despite these challenges that might defeat a lesser person, Dan has managed to serve on a disability board for the State of California, traveling around the state on a merciless schedule advocating for the rights of the physically and developmentally challenged.  He also arranged a bowling league for the physically and developmentally challenged in the town where I used to live, which I enjoyed tremendously. 

I never knew I could bowl in a wheelchair until I met Dan.  Enter the ramp - a metal device on which you (or a helper) place your ball.  You (or your helper) aim the ramp in the direction you wish the ball to go, release the ball, and with any luck you knock down the pins!  In no time I was nearly as good a bowler as I had been as a young woman (but not nearly as good as Dan).   

Because of his speech impediment, people treat Dan as less than able.  They become impatient waiting for him to complete a sentence and try to finish it for him, or they look to his attendant to conduct the entire conversation.  And I think how much they miss, and how much they hurt Dan.

At the beginning I was just as guilty.  At times I thought I was helping.  I had a friend who stuttered, and it took her telling me that I was not helping by finishing her sentences.  Those who stutter need time to complete their sentence.  Cutting them off to complete it for them cuts off their mental process.  Dan was in the same situation.  Once I learned that, communication was much easier.

Sometimes we think we’re all communicating on the same level, but we’re not.  There might be language barriers, or physical barriers, or emotional or mental barriers.  We need to take those into account, and listen more carefully before we say another word.  We need to give the other person an opportunity to finish what they are saying before we respond.  We need to digest what they’re really saying, and not what we think they’re saying. 

A friend always used to say that’s why God gave us two ears but only one mouth.  In addition we have  a heart and mind with which to listen, and to gauge our actions and words. 

This week let us all concentrate on being active listeners, enthusiastic listeners.  What we can learn from each other, and about each other, can be revelatory.

“. . . but God has surely listened and has heard my prayer.”  Psalm 66:19

Dear God, We thank you that you give us a fresh opportunity ever day to reach out to each other in love and understanding.  Help us to listen with our hearts and minds as well as our ears.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

photo: bowling at Indiana Special Olympics, 2012, Tim Vermande

Kindness - Diane Mettam

Today a man at church thanked me for my advocacy of mobility access and sensitivity for those with hearing loss, but told me how difficult hymns and scripture passages speaking of “broken hearts” are for him.  He has a broken heart; that is, he has had heart surgery and lives with a heart that doesn’t work properly.  

The same pain that greets me when I see lyrics equating “lame” with “shame,” two words I don’t allow in my vocabulary, assail him when he reads and hears about a broken heart.  He shared how he’s tried to talk to people about it, and he gets the same response many of us do:  “Oh, it’s just a figure of speech.  We’re talking about spiritual brokenness.”  That response usually comes from an able-bodied person.

I thanked my new friend profusely for opening my eyes to a new (to me) disability, and another new way of thinking.  I also told him about “Invisible Illness Week,” which I neglected to mention last week.  That brought up his second sorrow, the fact that he has a disabled parking placard, but receives unfriendly stares whenever he uses it because he appears perfectly healthy whenever he exits his vehicle.  No one knows that he can’t walk for more than four or five minutes without becoming physically exhausted.  A trip to the store is a trial. 

Before my legs and back degenerated to the point where i needed my wheelchair, I often found myself in the same situation.  Sjogren’s Syndrome doesn’t show on the outside.  Asthma doesn’t show.  Diabetes doesn’t show.  The old joke, “But you look so good,” was a sad truth.  No one wanted to hear that you didn’t feel good, and certainly no one believed that you deserved that special parking place.

So what can we do to be kind to each other?  That is my question for each of us this week.  As my friend Dan always says, we can’t tell what someone else is going through until we have rolled a mile in their shoes.  How can we open our eyes, ears, minds and hearts? 

Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.  Psalm 119:34

Dear Creator God, Remind us that we each have challenges, and that sometimes these challenges are not easily made known to us.  Help us to be aware of the needs of those around us, and to help and accommodate those needs in all the ways we can.  In the name of your Son, our Healer and Savior.  Amen

Polio and immunization - Diane Mettam

I have been thinking this past week about immunizations.  It started with a viewing of the “This Close” commercial produced by Rotary International in which international figures, including Bishop Desmond Tutu, Jackie Chan, Bill Gates, and others, hold their thumb and index figures and inch or so apart and declare “We are this close to ending polio.” 

As Rotarians, my husband and I are very proud that the fight to end polio is nearing an end.  We believe it complements the United Methodist Church’s Imagine No Malaria campaign quite nicely, and we are thrilled to fight two diseases which threaten the well-being of so many. 

Polio cases have decreased 99% since 1998, from 350,000 reported cases to 406 reported cases in 2013 according to the World Health Organization.  But three countries - Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria - are still endemic, and aid workers in Pakistan are being turned away because the Taliban is convinced immunizing children is a plot to harm or kill their children.  Consequently, children (and adults) are becoming infected with polio and the disease is spreading.  Workers have also been attacked in Nigeria.

According to the WHO, “as long as a single child remains infected with poliovirus, children in all countries are at risk of contracting the disease. The poliovirus can easily be imported into a polio-free country and can spread rapidly amongst unimmunized populations. Failure to eradicate polio could result in as many as 200 000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world. There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented. Polio vaccine, given multiple times, can protect a child for life.”

Many people look at the failure of the Taliban to allow aid workers to allow children to be vaccinated against polio as the backward act of an ignorant or superstitious people.  But we have a similar crisis here in the United States, where many parents are refusing to immunize their children against common childhood diseases like measles.  There is a prevalent misconception, soundly refuted, that immunizations, cause autism.  Tragically, people are exposing their children to diseases that can cause serious harm to their children based on the irrational belief that they are averting a neurodevelopmental disorder. 

Most parents today aren’t old enough today to have seen a person who was touched by polio, in even its mildest form.  Measles, mumps, and chicken pox can have dire complications in children, including pneumonia, meningitis, hearing loss, sepsis, and encephalitis.  In adults complications can be even worse.  I have a friend who spent six months in the hospital paralyzed from the neck down after he was exposed to chicken pox as an adult.  He later regained use of his shoulders, arms and hands, but his life was changed forever.

Today I plead with each of you to encourage your congregations, your friends, your families, your acquaintances, to make sure their children have their recommended childhood immunizations.  It is a kindness to their own children, to the children around them, and to themselves.

We thank you, O Lord, for the gift of medicine and healing.  We thank you for the wisdom of doctors, and the gift of preventive medicine, and we ask for the faith and confidence to use those gifts wisely.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

Keeping in touch - Diane Mettam

As many of you must have noticed, last week’s devotional was a tad late.  Our house was without internet service for most of the week due to a defective router, and it had been receiving poor quality internet service for weeks prior to that.  I had actually purchased a new wireless printer, thinking my old one was bad, and taken my laptop to the Mac shop, thinking the network card was bad.  But it was the router, the little black box that brings the internet signal into our home and shares it wirelessly throughout the house.

As I said, we had been without a reliable internet signal for some time, but it finally stopped working on Tuesday.  And the woman at Tech Support promised that a new router would be shipped out overnight.  She lied.  I waited at home all day Wednesday, missing two classes, and no router came.  It didn’t actually arrive until late Thursday afternoon.  And then, because the internet provider had changed my password, I couldn’t actually get my service up and running without another lengthy phone call.  And when I finally got it it running, the download speed was 1/10th of what it should have been.  So I left the house and waited for proper speed to be restored instead of another lengthy, and possibly testy, call to Tech Support.

Last Sunday I filled in for the pastor at our local church, and I talked about how hard it was to maintain the attitude of a Godly woman when I was so frustrated by poor customer service, the fourth router in 15 months, and the inability to get my work done.  None of these were adequate excuses; I was just plain crabby!  But I realized that I do so much of my sermon prep online because I still don’t have all my books unpacked, and I needed access to the web.  I was also quite late getting my devotional to you, and I wasn’t able to keep in touch with my friends and family as is my wont.

And that got me thinking about how we need to keep in touch with God.  If we don’t keep that line of communication open, that can probably drive us a bit crazy, too.  We need to read God’s word, pray, and spend time with fellow Christians.  We need to lift up and encourage one another.  And we need to make sure we don’t spend too much time plugged into our electronic devices, as convenient as they are. 

Thank you, Dear Lord, for the gift of the Internet.  We can connect with friends, family and colleagues in ways we couldn’t have imagined even thirty years ago.  We can reach out in ministry in new and exciting ways.  We can send your word around the world, and translate it into the languages we need to reach to reach new people.  We can reach the blind and the deaf with special technology, and reach people who can’t leave their homes.  We thank you for these gifts.  Remind us to use them wisely, and to keep you always at the forefront of our minds and hearts.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

Blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway.  Proverbs 8:34

Music - Diane Mettam

My husband and I went to a piano concert at the church this weekend, and I pondered how much comfort music brings to me.  I think it brings a  lot of comfort to many people, both able-bodied and disabled.  Bishop Peggy Johnson even wrote about it in her book, The Church and People With Disabilities:  Awareness, Accessibility, and Advocacy:  

“. . . it was ‘love at first sight’ the first time I saw a choir of Deaf people signing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ at a session of annual conference.  I was working as a vocal music teacher in the Baltimore County school system at the time.  I was mesmerized by the graceful motions of the words and marveled at the power of the music performed by the hands and arms of people who could not hear it.” 

Deaf choirs have become more common, and more appreciated, as they interpret music through American Sign Language.  And they do more than “sign” the lyrics.  They express the emotion of the music, as well. 

I have a sweatshirt that reads:  Bach gave us God’s Word. Mozart gave us God’s laughter. Beethoven gave us God’s fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words.”  I wear it because it expresses how much I love music, and some of the composers I enjoy.

During Friday’s concert we were treated to hymns, and original compositions, and other secular music.  A piece entitled “Dakota Rose” helped me envision the high desert we left for the coast where we live now.  Another named “Hot Air Balloon” made me smile as I pictured a balloon floating with the wind, and I thought of our Thai exchange student son enjoying his hot air balloon ride when he lived with us.  “Be Thou My Vision,” one of my favorite hymns, was played so beautifully it moved me beyond words as I pictured God in my life guiding me in the way I should go.  That is how I see God as my vision.

Small wonder that so many of us find such comfort in music.  It can inspire us, soothe us, charm us.  Even the nonsense songs I make up and sing to my dogs serve a purpose; Kirby, the younger dog calms down and quits whining when he hears “I’m a Baby Monkey.” 

I have learned of the American Music Therapy Association, which works with persons with Parkinson’s Disease to increase motor function, older adults to reduce the effects of dementia, children with autism to increase communication, premature infants to improve sleep patterns and improve weight gain, children and adults to reduce asthma episodes, and hospitalized patients to reduce pain.  Music is indeed a gift from God!

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;

    let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

Let us come before him with thanksgiving

    and extol him with music and song.  Psalm 95:1-2

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of music.  Amen

Fear - Diane Mettam

Today I want to talk about fear.  It first came about at Vacation Bible School.  I met two youngsters in my Storytelling Tent who were afraid.  It was obvious they were allowed to watch too many scary movies - the kind with mindless killing and mayhem - something children of eight or nine shouldn’t be watching with or without an adult.  And they were watching these movies alone, and then spending nights alone, and afraid.  Each noise they heard in the night was a potential killer.  “Haven’t you seen ‘Chucky?’” they’d ask.  “Don’t you know about ‘Saw?’”

“Yes,” I replied, “but I also know about God, and I know that those are just movies, and they aren’t real.”  And I’d repeat our memory verse for the day, “God answered, 'I will be with you.' “Ex. 3:12, and our Bible Point, “God is with us, so...trust God!” 

I’d explain how those creaky sounds weren’t ghosts, but loose floorboards in their old homes; how the billowing curtain wasn’t a ghost, but air from an open window.  And, blessedly, when they returned the next morning, and the morning after that, they were courageous and full of God sightings.  The “floating masks” they saw the night before, one child told me, were God looking after them during the night.  The rush of air was God kissing them good night.  “God is with us, so...trust God!”

Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Mark 10:15

Like those children, we need to have courage to fight the ghosts that seem to be all around us at times; the ghosts of unaccommodating people, inaccessible buildings, eyes that won’t see, ears that won’t hear, minds that won’t understand and hearts that won’t care.  At times it just seems like more than we can bear.  But I don’t think it’s more than those children faced. 

They were truly terrified, and one of them actually lived in a funeral parlor.  She was left alone because her parents were out “on calls” picking up the recently deceased.  The other child was a foster child who had lived in more homes than his number of years on earth.  But they heard the word of God, and believed.  “I will be with you.”

I now understood what Jesus meant about receiving the kingdom of God like a little child after my time with those children.  They heard the Word and they accepted it.  There was no “Yes, but . . .”  There was simply “Yes.” 

When do we lose that ability to simply hear and accept?  And what does it take to get it back?  Can we start by remembering that God is with us, so...trust God?

This week we are lifting up Rev. Russell Ewell, Vice-Chair of the DisAbility Ministries Committee, who has been on the streets of Ferguson, MO for a number of days and nights with his colleagues doing ministry with the younger (and older) people of that community.  We pray that God covers Pastor Russell, his colleagues, and all the people of Ferguson with the healing balm of God’s peace, understanding, and reconciliation.  We further ask that violence be replaced with calm, and angry rhetoric with reasoned discourse. 

Dear Father God,  When it seems that the night is at its darkest, and we are entombed in fear, let us remember that you are always with us, and that we can always trust you.  Embolden us to step out in courage, claiming your name as our legacy, and our strength ,and our security.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen

A question for discussion - Chad Clark

A question posted by Chad Clark, a student at United Theological Seminary, reposted with permission. He is requesting comments:

What do you think about this?

Disabilities is more a byproduct of society than an imperfection of the body/mind. Rather than primarily viewing disabilities as something less than an ideal (and often arbitrary) conception of the way human beings are supposed to operate and think, disabilities are created by those in power who shape and form reality to accommodate themselves (the majority who are in power).
Stairs were a terrible invention that were built to empower to those who can walk and disempower those who cannot.
Examples:
Imagine a world in which the majority of people used wheelchairs. Cars would be built to accommodate the use of wheelchairs and not people who could walk. You would roll into your car, lock your wheelchair in place, operate the vehicle with your hands, etc. The person who could walk could not use the car because cars do not come equipped with seats.
Imagine how sports games would be developed in a world in which the majority of people did not walk. As we know them, no one would have created football, soccer, volleyball, etc. All games would accommodate people in wheelchairs. People who walk would be "low functioning" in that society, unless of course they were good at the games in this world, in which case they would become an "object of inspiration" for that society.