Ep. 17 Identity, Belonging, and Disability

Written By Sarah Bessey

Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu

Featuring Stephanie Tait, Derrick Dawson, and Raedorah Stewart

In a beautiful, wise experience, we are thrilled to welcome Stephanie Tait, Derrick Dawson, and Raedorah Stewart as they each present a talk about identity, belonging, and an evolving faith through the lens of disability. Then our guests join Sarah and Jeff in a life-giving conversation on identity, hope, beauty, belonging, covenant, and perceiving the new thing God is doing. (This episode runs a bit longer than usual because it is a full Evolving Faith conference session.)

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Show Notes

Stephanie Tait

Derrick Dawson

Raedorah Stewart

Other mentions in the show

Special thanks to Audrey Assad and Wes Willison for the music on this episode. And thanks as always to our producer, Lucy Huang.

“The covenant of hope is what gets me up every morning. It’s the covenant with humanity. I have hope that we will do better today, we will be better today. And that’s an awesome transformative spiritual location.”
— Raedorah Stewart
 

[IMAGE CONTENTS: First: White square with a green flourish, at the top is the Evolving Faith logo. Photographs of Stephanie Tait, Derrick Dawson, and Raedorah Stewart are in the center. Text reads: Identity, Belonging, and Disability. The Evolving Faith Podcast Ep. 17 featuring Stephanie Tait, Derrick Dawson, and Raedorah Stewart. Now Streaming. Remaining images are the same: white squares with a line drawing of an open book that has a tree growing out of the pages. Floating bubbles of green, maroon, and brown surround the bottom third. Text is as follows: 2. “Do you have the ability to let go of the old in a way that frees you to imagine and discern something that's truly new, not a new and improved version of what you had before, something so radically novel that we don't have any existing framework to compare it to?” - Stephanie Tait. 3. “Praise God for the wilderness where we can be led by those for whom prophetic imagination is like second nature, to have no temptation of the things of old.” - Stephanie Tait. 4. “I could no longer entertain fantasies that I was independent and did not need anybody. I was to be born again.” - Derrick Dawson. 5. “You restore the image of God among the fellowship of believers, reach out, restore, rehumanize, abled and disabled persons together we are called to God's love in this way.” - Raedorah Stewart 6. “The more I understood that need and value of interdependence, the more I began to thrive beyond survival.” - Derrick Dawson. 7. “The covenant of hope is what gets me up every morning. It’s the covenant with humanity. I have hope that we will do better today, we will be better today. And that's an awesome transformative spiritual location.” - Raedorah Stewart. 8. “There have been glimmers of joy that fuel my hope. There have been glimmers of resilience that fuel my hope. Because my covenant relationship is with something bigger than my Right Now.” - Raedorah Stewart. 9. “Nobody is the giver, nobody's the winner, nobody's the leader. Everybody's giving and receiving, needing and taking and giving, in a circle around and around, until you can't tell where it stops anymore. And that’s how we’re truly unified.” - Stephanie Tait. 10. “How can I partner with God, finding Him in the mundane and finding Him in the right now and learning to perceive the work that He's doing now, not just in the someday to come?” - Stephanie Tait. 11. “Sometimes I feel like I don't have to be hopeful; I just have to be diligent and faithful and get up the next day and do it again.” - Derrick Dawson. 12. “I see God in you. I'm giving you the best God in me to make a greater God for both of us and for the world and for humanity.” - Raedorah Stewart. ]

 

Transcript

SARAH: Hi, friends, I'm Sarah Bessey.

JEFF: And I'm Jeff Chu. Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast. 

SARAH: This is a podcast for the wanderers, the misfits, and the spiritual refugees to let you know, you are not alone in the wilderness. We are all about hope. And we're here to point each other to God. No matter where you are on your journey, no matter what your story is, you are welcome here. We are listening—to God to one another, and to the world. 

JEFF: The story of God is bigger, wider, more inclusive and welcoming, filled with more love than we could ever imagine. There's room here for everyone, including a very tired Sarah and Jeff.

SARAH: There is room here for you.

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SARAH: Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast. Yes, we are a little bit tired coming off of the incredible weekend that was Evolving Faith 2020. This is Episode 17. And this is the first part of a two-part special addition to our first season. If you've listened to the podcast before, you know that we have been featuring talks from our 2018 gathering, which was a messy and imperfect and remarkable and beautiful experience for so many of us. However, in two important ways, we failed to live up to our values, especially our value of belonging. Two particular identities were underrepresented or entirely missing from our main stage: disabled people and trans/ non-binary people. This was wrong on our part. And even though we can't go back in time to change what happened in 2018, we couldn't share this season of the podcast without starting to make this right. So this episode will feature disabled people. And our next episode will feature trans/non-binary people. 

JEFF: We want to be clear. We want to make sure you know that the folks who are joining us today and next week, they're not here to offer us absolution. We apologize wholeheartedly for not including more disabled voices in 2018. But we invited our three guests today not for forgiveness, but because they have great wisdom and great insights to share with us.

Let's pull back the curtain for a second. Typical podcast practice is not to pay guests.

But given the context, this felt wrong to us. So we're paying each of today's guests, as well as next week's, what they would have been paid had they delivered their same talk on the Evolving Faith conference stage. So we'll hear their talks one after another. And then we'll gather around a virtual table to share in conversation. 

SARAH: Exactly. So this episode will feel more like an actual Evolving Faith mainstage session. So it may run a bit longer, because in each session, we usually hear from about three folks and then we have this conversation together. And you are going to love every minute of this, friends, because first up today, we'll be hearing from Stephanie Tait. Stephanie is an author, speaker, disability advocate, and trauma survivor. She wrote an incredible book called The View from Rock Bottom: Discovering God's Grace in Our Pain. She partners sound theology and practice with the unashamed acceptance of struggle, in the present tense. So she not only creates space for the reality of suffering, but also for practical tools and experiences for the management in the center of our faith ethic, our communities, and our joy. Stephanie lives in Salem, Oregon, with her husband and two sons. And Stephanie joined the Evolving Faith team this past year as a disability consultant. And it is directly because of her work that we were able to make our 2020 gathering so much more accessible than ever before. And in addition, she served as the disability liaison during the gathering, and she hosted the disability Oasis for disabled attendees to gather after the event to process through their experiences together. She is familiar to so many of you, I know, and we are so lucky to have her as part of our team. 

JEFF: Our second speaker today is Derrick Dawson, who is a US Navy veteran who now serves as a program coordinator for Chicago Regional Organizing for Anti-Racism. Derek has served also on the Standing Committee for the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. He's a 2020 fellow for ADA 25 Advancing Leadership. And Derek served so beautifully and so generously on the chaplaincy team at Evolving Faith a couple of weeks ago, meeting one-on-one with attendees during the gathering.

Finally, we'll hear from the Rev. Raedorah Stewart, pastor at Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Washington DC, and the director of the Writing Center at Wesley Theological Seminary. Pastor Raedorah is a preacher and a poet, a teacher and a painter and a scholar who has worked at the intersections of womanist theology, Black theology, lesbian feminism, the arts, and disability studies. 

SARAH: Now, friends, join us as we listen to Stephanie, Derrick, and then Raedorah. After that, we'll be back with them for a roundtable discussion. And we will catch you on the other side.

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STEPHANIE TAIT: Isaiah 43:18 says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” That word “perceive” really jumped out at me, because it doesn't say, “Don't you see it?” It says “perceive.” That's because the Hebrew word used in this passage is yadah. It's a word that expresses a deep sense of knowing, what we might call discernment. Do you not perceive it? As in, Can you not sense and discern this thing that I'm doing? But picturing mighty rushing rivers of water, suddenly carving canyons into dry desert rock before you; you'd assume that be something you couldn't easily miss? How would you even fail to notice something like that? Why should this require any sort of discernment? There's a hint one verse back. It says, “Remember,not the former things nor consider the things of old, Behold, I am doing a new thing.” Now I need you to trust me for a minute sort of put a pin in that thought for now; we'll come back. But jump ahead with me for a minute to the Book of Luke. In chapter five, we find Jesus and his disciples sharing a meal with a large group that contains both the tax collectors and the Jewish religious leaders. Now the scribes are famously grumbling here, asking, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? But if you keep reading, they actually follow this up with a much more targeted critique. They hold up other well-known religious movements of the day as a comparison. They say, Well, the disciples of John fast often. So do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink. They're essentially saying to Jesus, If you're so holy, why don't you and your followers behave like all the other holy people we know? Or, Why aren't you more like so and so and their ministry? 

This is what Jesus answers to them: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old. If he does, he will tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. New wine must be put into fresh wineskins, and no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says the old is good.” Now can we take a second to acknowledge this is such a Jesus move? Instead of answering their question, he just sort of jumps to telling them this seemingly unrelated set of stories about who even really knows what, let alone what it has to do with their question. But speaking of seemingly unrelated tangents, there is a thread of connection running here between our Isaiah and Luke readings. Remember yadah? Do you not perceive it? The parables Jesus tells here are asking the same question. And their ability to yadah—it hangs on the same thing as God's vision for Isaiah: prophetic imagination. Do you have the ability to let go of the old in a way that frees you to imagine and discern something that's truly new, not a new and improved version of what you had before, something so radically novel that we don't have any existing framework to compare it to? Now there was 700 years of time between Isaiah bringing this word to Israel and Jesus putting the same issue to the religious elite of his day. And right now, in 2020, we're tackling new incarnations of the same struggle: Make America Great Again, or the myth of American exceptionalism. You see, when you're convinced that you are a participant in the best, most successful, truly exceptional system of doing things, it makes you intrinsically resistant to even considering a new way. It makes “Behold, I'm doing a new thing” something to fear, something to resist. There is no room for prophetic imagination when we believe we're somehow sacredly entrusted with preserving traditions and culture and standards for the establishment.

I can't tell you if those parables Jesus offered made any sense to anyone in that room. But the beautiful thing about parables is the way it leaves room for the Spirit to move in her power and offer the right truth to the right listeners at just the right time. And I can't think of a more important set of parables for the such-a-time-as-this moment we find ourselves in, because if we ever needed to hear a call to prophetic imagination, if we ever needed someone to ask us, Hey, can you not just yadah what I'm doing, that time is now? 

No one tears a piece from a new garment, puts it on an old garment. If he does, he'll tear the new and the piece from the new will not match the old. Now this is a word to my disabled siblings, to my siblings who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color, to my LGBTQ siblings: How many times have you been asked to tear yourself up into pieces, to patch the garments of failing institutions desperate to cover their holes? How many times have you been asked to cut yourself down so they can decide which pieces would make the best colorful patch to showcase their diversity? Or when your fabric is too bold, too distracting, too divisive to blend into the rest of their bland Sunday suit? How many times do they label that lack of uniformity as a lack of unity, and then blame that issue on us? You don't match, they say. They ask us to dye ourselves, fade ourselves, cover over patterns and colors that just don't fit in with their tweeds and their grays. And when the garment goes into the wash, do you know what happens? The fabric of a brand-new patch will shrink and that old pre-shrunken suit will stay the same, causing those holes to rip even wider open for everyone to see. And isn't it the patch that gets blamed? You were supposed to cover over our holes quietly, not draw more attention to the actual structural flaws in our suit. 

Now to my siblings who are white, who are abled, straight, cisgendered, male, those who enjoy intersecting layers of privilege that give you access and options and prime seats at the table: Consider the second parable. “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be destroyed. New wine must be put into fresh wineskins.” Jesus is giving a warning. If you try to cram new wine into those old wineskins of yours, they're gonna burst and you'll be left with no wine and no skins. If you keep asking the new things, the new voices, the new ways the Spirit is moving, to pour themselves into old systems, old structures, old ways—it's always been done like this—it simply won't work. And the weak spots in those wineskins will be exposed. They'll literally burst from the stretching of the powerful fermentation process that happens in new wine. New wine must be put into fresh wineskins. New leaders need to be free to lead us out of old systems. And that means out of the city and into the wilderness. Because it's only in the wilderness we get to yadah those rivers springing out of dry desert stones. But what about that last part of the wineskin parable? “No one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says the old is good.” It seems so contradictory to the rest of everything he just said about letting go of the old, because if you know anything about wine, you know this isn't just a mistake in case of not knowing any better. You’d be totally correct to prefer an expensive, aged vintage to, I don't know, newly bottled glorified grape juice. But that's the thing about this calling to behold a new thing: For the privileged, for those already accustomed to your seat at the table with its access to the good wine, it'll seem like you're being asked to give up better things for less desirable ones. And really, that's because you are. Jesus isn't trying to convince you that Two-Buck Chuck tastes the same. He's acknowledging that there needs to be a sacrifice in choosing to seek that yadah. That's why it's so important to recognize the wisdom of the marginalized. When you've never been given a seat at the table, you've never tasted old wine. It's a whole lot easier to tap into that wilderness yadah; when the naked are handed a new garment, they would never even think to cut it up into patches. They don't have anything to patch. When the thirsty are offered a river of living water in the desert, their only thought is to gorge themselves in it, not question why it tastes nothing like what they're pouring back in the city. 

Praise God for the wilderness, because it's the only place to find our yadah. Praise God for the wilderness, where it is too damn hot for tweed suits or warnings against the immodesty of spaghetti straps. Praise God for the wilderness, where there's no need to compare who's feasting or fasting or on which day, because here, manna only falls enough to eat that day still, and you can drink directly from the endless streams of living water, with no need to try to hoard anything into plastic bottles or old wineskins. Praise God for the wilderness, where we can be led by those for whom prophetic imagination is like second nature, because they have no temptation of the things of old. 

Lord, lead us all into the wilderness and teach us all yadah.

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SARAH: Hi, friends. Quick pop in here to remind you that if you attended Evolving Faith 2020 or even if you missed it, the goodness is not yet over. You have access to the recording of the conference right up until April 1, 2021. You can still watch it on your own time and at your own pace, listening to incredible speakers like our own Jeff with me here, myself, Jen Hatmaker, Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Padraig O Tuama, Monica Coleman, Nadia Bolz-Weber, so many others. It was an incredibly beautiful and redemptive time together. So go to evolvingfaith.com. The table in the wilderness is there for you still, Okay, back to the podcast.

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DERRICK DAWSON: By the time I got myself to the doctor's office, it was too late. He smelled the gangrene and told me that I had to get to the emergency room immediately.

Since I was at his office downtown, the only way to get to Northwestern Hospital was by taxi. I went down to the street and hailed one. And in the emergency room, they didn't even triage me. Within a minute or two, they were ready to amputate—no forms, no consent, no friends or family.

 When I woke, my right leg below the knee was gone.

After that day, things did not immediately get easier. In the following days and weeks, there were more surgeries and more crises. To this day. I don't know how long I spent in the hospital; was it weeks, months?

The night of my worst day I laid in bed feeling weary and scared. I had two IVs feeding me antibiotics for two major infections. And they were cords and tubes coming out of several parts of my body. If I moved the slightest amount, loud, obnoxious alarms would go off. I was exhausted. The hospital bed was uncomfortable, and I tried to adjust my body to find a less painful sleeping position. But I moved a little bit too much. An alarm went off and scared me. I started sliding toward the edge of the bed. And when I grabbed for the guardrail, I grabbed one of the cords attached to my chest instead and pulled it out.

There was blood squirting everywhere, and the sheets were wet from a combination of blood and sweat. Nurses rushed in to help, including changing the sheets with me still in the bed. By the time they were done, I was spent. I was tired from the episode and the whole experience. I was in dire need of peace and closed my eyes to rest.

As I drifted off to sleep, for the first time since she had died a few years before, I quietly called out for Mommy. My mother's name was Mary Jane. Most people knew her as Miss Jane, but I only knew her as Mommy.

A few years before, Miss Jane and I drove from Chicago to St. Louis, to spend Christmas with family there. Halfway to St. Louis, she got nauseous in the car and quietly vomited while I was driving. Nothing like that had ever happened before and I was concerned, but she said she was okay. Still, I pulled off the interstate at the next exit and drove to a gas station, where she went to the restroom and cleaned herself up.

She still insisted that she was okay. And she looked fine. So we continued to St. Louis.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, other than constant bickering about the temperature in the car and her insistence on smooth jazz on the radio.

When we got back to Chicago, I mentioned all this to my sister, Diane. Only then did I learn that Miss Jane had weeks before been diagnosed with kidney failure. The doctor treating her had been urging her to undergo dialysis, as it was her only chance for survival. But Miss Jane refused the treatment. And I understood. Miss Jane’s sister Irene had suffered a stroke a few years earlier. My mother and I used to drive to the far-flung suburb where she lived once or twice a month to visit her. Seeing her oldest sister that way in the nursing home broke my mother a little bit with each visit, and Miss Jane did not want that fate for herself.

A few weeks later, my sister Diane called me to Miss Jane's house. And when I walked in Diane and Miss Jane were huddled on the sofa. Diane held my mother up with one arm, and with the other arm held the bucket under Miss Jane's mouth to catch the steady stream of bile coming out of her mouth.

I got on the phone and tried to reach anybody who might be able to help us. I called her doctor, the hospital, anyone I could think of, to come get her, even as she protested. I was horrified to learn that no one would take her to a hospital without her consent. I suddenly realized that I might be able to use her faith to convince her to receive help. Miss Jane, like me, was a quietly devout Episcopalian, who was somehow as African American as she was, she was also Anglican to her core.

When Miss Jane's oldest son, Dwayne, my brother, drowned in a boating accident on Lake Michigan, I never heard her speak about it. She just went to church.

And so I called my friend Tyrone, an Episcopal priest in Chicago. Certainly Tyrone could give me something—scripture, a prayer, a collect—anything to make her accept help. But Tyrone disappointed me. He said, “Let her be. Let her be.” And I said, “What the hell do you mean ‘let her be’? She is dying.” He said, “Derrick, you have to let her be. You have to let her make her own choice.”

And I took a breath. And I sat down and cried. After a while I spoke to Diane. And we sat down together and had a conversation with Miss Jane. We told her if you don't want to go to the hospital and have dialysis, you don't have to have dialysis. But at least let us take you to the hospital so they can make you comfortable.

By now Miss Jane was weak and tired. And she asked us to take her to a bedroom upstairs and we did. I lay down in my childhood bed and try to prepare for what was to come.

In the morning, Miss Jane came out of her bedroom on her own and said, “You can take me to the hospital now.” And so we took her to the hospital and she did accept dialysis treatment. But a few weeks later, Miss Jane died at home.

The pain from the pulled IVs woke me in the middle of the night. Someone was standing over me watching me. I was confused, not sure where I was. As my eyes cleared, I saw that it was Tyrone. I thought I might be dreaming or dead.

“How did you get here?” I thought. And then I realized he was wearing the priest collar that would allow him to get into just about any space.

Tyrone did not speak immediately and neither did I. Until he took my hand and said, “Can we pray?”  And we prayed together. I fell back asleep, content that I might not wake again. But in the morning, I did awake. And Tyrone was asleep in the chair near the hospital room’s window.

Quite a while later, I left the hospital and went to rehab at Mount Sinai on the West Side, where I was fitted with a prosthetic and learned how to walk again. People were surprised at how quickly I developed skills. Within a week, I could walk without anyone knowing I had a prosthetic. And I was proud. When I left rehab a week later, I didn't even go back to my apartment. I had a friend take me directly to work, where I could get back to my independent life without any more distractions or interruptions.

It took about a year before something felt off. It was barely noticeable, and I couldn't quite place it. But something didn't feel right. And I did the only rational thing I could do: I planned a trip to Paris.

Paris had always been my place of escape. But this time I felt compelled to take my family with me. I gathered my sisters, Diane and Tanya, and their three adult kids. And we went to Paris and London for a week. I introduced my Chicago family to the city I love and to my French friends. The trip was successful as I had hoped it would be. And I was happier than I had been for a very long time. Yet I was quietly carrying a deep sense of dread.

A couple of months after getting back to Chicago, the source of the problem became clear: The infection was back. And they'd have to take away the rest of my right leg and possibly my left leg as well. And they'd have to do this immediately. This time, however, I fought them. I became my mother’s son, and I refused the surgery. I said I would rather die than have them take the rest of my leg. And I meant it.

Paris was my swan song; peace out. In fact, it was at that moment that I realized why it was so important for me to share my Parisian life with my family. My death was imminent, and I wanted to share with them parts of me that they did not know. Someone—maybe Diane, maybe a doctor, I don't know—someone said, “We won't make you have the surgery. But at least let us make you comfortable.” And I relented and I'm still here.

I recently learned that after the great writer, poet, and feminist Audre Lorde underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer, she refused to wear a prosthesis. She said, “Either I love my body one-breasted now or remain forever alien to myself.”

For me, this time, things would have to be different. There was to be no pretending that I was not disabled. I could no longer entertain fantasies that I was independent and did not need anybody. I was to be born again.

After a suitable mourning period, I added a disability-rights fellowship to the anti-oppression work that I was already doing as my call in my vocation. And I enrolled in seminary, where I'm studying now for my master's in divinity. Thank you.

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JEFF: Friends, a wonderful way to support us would be to share your reviews and ratings of the Evolving Faith Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you are listening to us. Sarah says she prefers Apple and especially prefers that you say nice things. I like to allow a little more freedom. But reviewing and rating our podcast helps other listeners to find us and to join us at this feast in the wilderness. So thank you so much.

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RAEDORAH STEWART: And just like that [snaps]— no traffic jams are jockeying for a taxi. No long lines for coffee or longer lines at the bank. No hurry, no harried, no sleep deprivation fatigue. Also [snaps] no casual dining out or happy hour hangout. No movie theater escapes or music venue headliners. Nowhere to go without concern, caution and care. And just like that [snaps] Americans without disabilities were forced to live in a place, to live the pace, to experience the inconvenience, to know the isolation, to know the frustration that humans with disabilities in an able-privileged culture and able- accommodated accessibility endure. 

And just like that [snaps] the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine of 2020 leveled the playing field where abled and disabled humans share lament, frustration, isolation and accommodation to an unforeseen reality, unprepared for reality, and what has been our resident reality for the past six months.

On the flip side, persons with disabilities have been displaced by unparalleled imposition upon essential life services that were at best luxuries and perks for abled persons prior to the quarantine. Two-hour grocery delivery was pushed back three days. One-day pharmacy delivery was pushed back two days. Overnight Prime deliveries got there when they got there. Life as a disabled person was adversely affected as abled persons necessitated accommodations to prevent the spread of this horribly devastating disease. 

Now, now that they are affected by isolation, accessibility, and inconvenience, now that these affect abled persons, common reasonable accommodations oft requested by disabled persons through a maze of bureaucracy, denials, and heartbreak became [snaps] the new normal for disabled persons, from skyscrapers to ivory towers, boardrooms to stock rooms. 

And just like that [snaps] society found itself acting out the relationship between Mephibosheth and King David in 2 Samuel 9. While this text rightly speaks to the bromance, also known as the covenant relationship, between Jonathan and David, I posit for our conversation today that this is also a model of a righteous relationship between abled and disabled humans. And Mephibosheth is not the only disabled body of the sacred texts whose disabilities are largely ignored and dismissed in our faith consciousness but our creative ways in which God showed God's self sovereign. Persons with blind or eye problems, Isaac, Paul, Bartimaeus, Samson, and Leah; those among the limp or otherwise crippled—Jacob, Samson, Zacchaeus, Mephibosheth, the bent woman, the hemorrhaging woman. The one with a mangled hand—Ehud. One  who was hard of hearing. And the stutterer Moses.

Is this not the perfect answer, for those who misconstrue Leviticus 21:16-23, where the metaphorical Messiah is described to be without blemish? In that passage, some have concluded that those blind, lame, deformed limbs, lazy eye and other facial abnormalities, dwarfism, curvature of the spine, also known as being hunchback, skin diseases such as psoriasis, impetigo, and leprosy or even crushed testicles could not serve into leadership and ministry.

While this passage alone calls for another 10-minute talk, let me point out key observations for developing a hermeneutic of disability. First of all, note that intellectual disabilities and acumen are not explicitly named in this passage. Therefore discover the untapped and underutilized brilliance of disabled people. Secondly, our holy brother Jesus decided once and for all that the disabled are not untouchable. Therefore, the church is compelled to get close to people with disabilities. 

During quarantine, while I have subscribed to YouTube celebrities for comedy, music and makeup tutorials, others report a ravenous consumption of binge-watching endless seasons of rom-coms, suspense, forensics, sci-fi, and reality TV. Of particular note are those who rewatch a show series and post on social media what they missed—a nuanced character or significant prop to the plot. They had to rewatch their favorite shows to see the more that was already there. That's what I call us to do today to this familiar story.

Instead of only seeing it as a positive outcome of a love story, instead of only reading it as a rescue mission, instead of preaching it as mere benevolence, rewatch, reread the story and see King David and Mephibosheth’s story as a story of abled and disabled persons living side by side, working side by side, ruling side by side. Because Mephibosheth was disabled, he couldn't use his legs. He was paralyzed in a musculoskeletal injury sustained as a boy, you know the story. King David readily made reasonable accommodations for Mephibosheth to assume ruling privilege nonetheless. 

And just like that [snaps] full worship services became accessible live online in real time across various streaming platforms for free. Electronic giving and giving reports we'e not back page after the fold, but we're upfront and hyperlinked. Sick and shut in, disabled by age or disease, met at the virtual altar with everybody under the sound of the pastoral prayer. Bible study and business meetings worked on Zoom. Laptops and smartphones were no longer deterrents to intimacy; they are now essentials for connectivity.

These reasonable accommodations long asked for by disabled congregants, co-workers, and families are now standard issue of the culture. As with Mephibosheth and King David, disabled and abled at work with equanimity, reasonable accommodations rehumanize the disabled one to fully participate in the life of the community and influence of culture. No more was Mephibosheth spoken of as a whispered tragedy; he was rehumanized as a leader. No more was Mephibosheth named by his disability; he was rehumanized by his business acumen. 

So therein lies the quandary of the task to take away from this talk. As an abled person, how have you dehumanized the disabled person? As a disabled person, are you ready to teach others how to rehumanize you? To us all I implore: Might the church be the head and not the tail for making this overnight reasonable accommodation post- pandemic new normal a movement to rehumanize disabled persons. As people of faith, we are shown this model of how abled privilege is to restore property and power to persons with disabilities—to restore property and power to persons with disabilities. 

However the body may be formed, persons with disabilities are fully human and holy—the Imago Dei. How is this done? By legislation and participation. Is disability a justice issue in your congregation? Is disability a language in the story told of your church?

Where to begin perhaps is this—this is only a spark. It's not an end. From the pulpit home a hermeneutic of disability that is gender, race, class and variant-sensitive. Among the leaders don't make a move on behalf of a disabled person without empowering that one to speak on their own behalf. For all, transform the unreasonableness of making the least consequential accommodations to making changes and doing that which is righteous.

When we resume public, enclosed gatherings for worship, give the disabled persons the good seats, on committees and at the church. Keep delivering worship and Bible studies online or asynchronous. While the building is not in use, now's a really good time to install the ramps that have been in the building fund for decades. While above all else, rehumanize disabled persons into full participation in fellowship, worship, and leadership, accommodating us as we ask. 

Finally: King David restored to Mephibosheth his grandfather's inheritance. To humanize the disabled person, you restore the image of God among the fellowship of believers. Reach out. Restore. Rehumanize. Abled and disabled persons together, we are called to God's love in this way. Ashe, amen, and so it is.

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SARAH: Okay, thank you all so much for being here with us. That was incredible. I feel like I have about 100 different questions buzzing through my head right now. But I wanted to begin by asking all of you to speak a little bit more with us about identity, because I heard that as almost this through line in all of your talks, which may be people who are listening might even think that, that we had, you know, workshopped that or blended, but that implies a level of preparation which we do not enjoy. So you all just really, you know, crafted something and brought it and that through line was there for all of you. Derrick, he spoke about being born again again, in your new identity. And Stephanie, you spoke about how we can tear ourselves into pieces, to patch up old wineskins and how we need that prophetic imagination to perceive the new thing that God is doing. And Raedorah, you spoke about rehumanizing each other and ourselves. So for each of us, the journey is really different when it comes to living into our identity. And I wanted to ask, if there was a passage of scripture, or a person, or a book, or even a teacher who has helped you to experience living into the fullness of your identity as you understand it now. And I'm not only talking about your disabled identity, but you know what, let's make it intersectional—let's not do what Stephanie said, right, and tear ourselves into pieces here. So the fullness of what makes you you. I'd like to hear about how that, how you began to live fully into that. And if there were teachers or or passages of scripture that served us you were doing that. So why don't we start with you, Stephanie? 

STEPHANIE: Oh, of course, let's start with me.

SARAH: Love you!

STEPHANIE: I have had two really main teachers in this process. One of them is my dear friend and fellow disability advocate, Shannon Dingle. I came into this world of writing and speaking as many of us do through the door of blogging. And in blogging, they really drill into this idea of find a niche, carve it out, be that niche, and then stay in your lane. Be one thing. Be one marketable, predictable thing. And Shannon has really led by example, for me, in our friendship, in what it looks like to say, Yes, I am a disability advocate. And I'm proud of that. But I am also all of these other things, and that I shouldn't have to make a trade in deciding what it is that's important to me, or what I want to speak about, or areas I feel called to lead. I can be all the things and I can be all the things at once, because that's exactly who God designed each of us to be. 

And the other person that does it for me is my son. I came into disability as a teenager, but I really didn't call myself disabled into adulthood. And the person who most showed me what it looks like, and why it's important to own all those pieces of ourselves and not pick and choose the right, supposedly right ones, was watching my son, with his journey of identity with autism, and the way that we had to teach him to embrace these pieces of himself, the way we had to counteract the messages the world gives him. It was sort of like a second school for me. I felt like I was really the student hearing and reminding myself: Oh, but am I doing that a little bit, too? Am I doing that to myself? Well, darn, I guess Mommy needs to work on this just as much. So between the two of them, you know, they've pushed me and grown me in ways that I really didn't expect.

SARAH: I love that. Love that. Thank you for sharing that. How about you, Raedorah?

RAEDORAH: My identity and the intersectionality of my being is around my sense of agency as disabled, as woman, as Black, as aging, and as poor. And yet, there are segments of society that can pick and choose where they want me to enter and how they want me to enter. But I don't have the luxury of picking and choosing. In my whole self, I show up as all of these, you know, simultaneously. And what helped me most get to that place early on in my life was when I read the Psalms—139. The creation psalms of, you know, the individual was so powerful, even more so than the Genesis stories—the first or second creation story for me in Genesis. And as I began to articulate faith and how to communicate, how I viewed disability and incidents, whether it was racist or sexist, was around Psalms 139:16. And the one place that I really, you know, embrace as I speak on disability witness as wholly made in the image of God is Psalms 139:16. It says, “Your eyes saw my unformed body.” My unformed body. And that opened up to me that that is not deformed—that is unformed. And then to look around, and to see the many iterations of how my body, my identity, my needs, and my gifts to the world have evolved, it's the essence of being this unformed body is perfectly formed by God. 

And so when I seek to, you know, give testimony of my intersectionalities, you know, that very powerful but recent vernacular of multiple identities, I am always taken back to this psalm, you know, from top to bottom. But when we talk about body and ability, I think of this passage, that the unformed body is not synonymous with the deformed body, and that whatever is formed is still under the grace and the guise and the creativity of God our Creator. So that's what's exciting to me about identifying all of my places and being. 

SARAH: I'm just having church over here. Thank you for that. That was so, so helpful. And good. Derrick, what about you? Is there anything that you wanted to share?

DERRICK: You know, the older I get, the more I realize how difficult a question that is to answer. I think I can actually, I can actually appreciate the question because it gives me an opportunity to thank two of the men that I could name as teachers. And the first one is my former priest and a mentor, the Reverend Juan Reed, an Episcopal priest here in Chicago. And I name him because when I landed at his church as an adult, he was able to have conversations and share a relationship with me that allowed me to accept my identities as both a Black man and a gay, Black man. And he did that in a way that crystallized all of my experiences up until that point in ways that I could not even delineate, but I am eternally grateful to him.

And strangely enough, when he retired as the priest of my church, St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Chicago, he was replaced by another priest named Christopher Griffin, and what Father Griffin did, after Rev. Read opened me up to being able to accept my identities, Father Chris gave me an opportunity to actually live into those identities that I never had been able to before. And the reason I find both those things powerful is that later in life when I became disabled, although neither one of them spoke to me at all about disability necessarily, one of the reasons that I was able to begin to accept my identity as a disabled person was because of the ways that they had opened me up and allowed me to love and see myself as being worthy. So that painful process of accepting my disability and accepting my body, my new body, started with them. And they will always be in the background as people who allowed me to go through the difficult task. You know, our culture makes it very, very difficult to see and accept oneself as a Black man, as a gay man. And the gift of having somebody to hold your hand and usher you through that process and say it is okay is a powerful teacher. And I am grateful that God provided me that in my life.

JEFF: Thank you so much for those testimonies. It's just such a reminder to me of interdependence, of the importance of relationship with God and with one another. And it's just beautiful to hear you all reflect on those relationships. 

Stephanie, I wanted to talk with you a little bit about your emphasis on the word yadah. Perception isn't really, at least to me, an instantaneous thing, sometimes so much as it is a process of learning, of shifting perspective, of growth. And I'm curious to know maybe one thing you might still be struggling with or working to perceive, and how you might be going about that process of faithful imagination. What helps you as you work on yadah? And what doesn't help you in learning to perceive?

STEPHANIE: I feel like when we talk about people speaking prophetically or when we talk about prophetic, we often sort of miss— I think there's two separate components to that. And there's more emphasis on the first: this idea of seeing what isn't right, seeing what's not how it should be, seeing what isn't flourishing, and having the ability and the willingness to speak to that. But there's that second half of seeing what it could be and what it should be, and speaking the hope towards that, in finding goodness where it exists, and bringing people's attention to it, and trying to parlay that into, “Hey, what hope could this give us for the future? How could we grow this? How could we use this?” I have an easier time with the first half and a much harder time with the second half. I struggle regularly to find my perceive in the mundane, in the everyday, in the right now, not in the world to come, but in the world that I'm in. And so it's interesting that COVID and this year and being isolated at home, I really threw myself into the garden and got my hands in the dirt. And it's been such a powerful and very tangible set of lessons for me: what it looks like to lean into that hope of tomorrow, the hope of the next day. But it's also just been full of reminders of what it looks like to keep going in the faithfulness of the right now and to find God in the mundane when, when nothing blooms that day and there's still a ton of work to be done. When I don't see immediate short-term progress and I have to hope for what's to come and still know that this was a good day's work, regardless of what happens in spring. If these bloom, great, and if they don't, this was still a good day's work. I struggle with that in my spiritual life so much. So sometimes I think maybe God sort of gave me a summer to practice it in more tangible ways and really get it into my head so that I can start to figure out how to carry that over and do that in the ways that I look at the world, in the ways that I tackle ableism, in the ways that I push the church towards better inclusivity. How can I partner that finding Him in the mundane and finding Him in the right now and learning to perceive the work that He's doing now, not just in the someday to come? 

JEFF: Well, I think we should put a link to your Instagram in our show notes so that listeners can see the glorious dahlias that you have been harvesting in your garden. I think you are doing some pretty decent work there.

SARAH: Pretty decent. Yes, indeed. I literally have I think one of your recent bouquets as my screensaver on my phone right now. You have just been cultivating such beauty. And you know, speaking of that word, I hear that word “cultivating” kind of coming through in what you're saying there, and Derrick, at the conference this year, when we were, you know, kind of exploring so many different themes from so many different angles, but that idea of cultivating hope came up a lot for a lot of us and even naming our hopes. And not in some, I don't know, naive optimism, right, or silver lining these times, but because we want to contend for hope. And so I would really like to hear how you are contending for hope in our world right now and even where you're finding it. It can be you know, big and complex, or as Stephanie was saying something as real and ordinary as putting your hands in the dirt.

DERRICK: This question is very complex, Sarah, and I have to say I hate it.

JEFF: That's our specialty on this podcast is questions that our guests hate.

SARAH: If you don't feel personally called out by a question, we're not doing it right.

DERRICK: It's a terrible question for me because it puts me in that bind where I say to myself, Okay, try to sound hopeful when you answer this question. But hopeful is not one of the ways I would describe myself. I put it in the category around happy. I'm not even sure that it's a requirement of my life to be hopeful or happy. I do anti-racism work and anti-oppression work for a living, which means I'm steeped in some of the ugliest history of race and racism that all of us experience—and ableism and homophobia and xenophobia and transphobia and all those things. It is so difficult to be hopeful in the midst of all of that. And sometimes I feel like I don't have to be hopeful; I just have to be diligent and faithful and get up the next day and do it again. And so I often leave hope on the side, because I also feel like it's dangerous, given my history and my identity, to cling to hope, because of the way it can be dangerous and painful and harmful. 

But I have to say, some years ago, I did some genealogy work. And I found a plantation in Natchez, Mississippi, where my family were enslaved. In fact, I found a man who was a slave on their plantation that I was actually named after. His name was Charles Vessels. The plantation still exists, by the way, it's called the Monmouth Plantation in Natchez, and spent a lot of time in Natchez when I was young. And one thing I found was a history of the plantation. And I found the history of my relative listed Charles Vessels. And what I remember reading was that when Jackson came through Mississippi in the 1860s, during the Civil War, that Charles Vessels ran off the plantation with four other enslaved men and joined the Union Army.

And when I think about that, I don't know that Charles Vessels was thinking about me when he ran off that plantation into the wilderness. What I do know is that I'm here because he took that risk. And I feel I have an obligation to Charles Vessels, and the generation that comes after me—my nieces, my nephews, and others—to do what I can to stay engaged and make things better for people who come after me than they were for me, just as my mother, and my father, and others did for me. So my focus is on that. And sometimes I will say that that is as hopeful as I can be. But I leave hope for others and just try to keep my head down, be diligent, and do my work with faith.  

SARAH: That's a good word. 

JEFF: My people believe that our ancestors are still working in us and through us. So I really appreciate that bit of testimony. Thank you, Derrick. I think there is something to spiritual ancestry too, and Raedorah, I love that you named the bromance between Jonathan and David, as well as the covenant relationship between Mephibosheth and David. I'm in the Reformed tradition. And “covenant” is a really important concept in the Reformed tradition, but I think it's one that's not always particularly well understood. So Raedorah, I would love to hear more about how you understand that concept of covenant and really how it applies to our lives today.

RAEDORAH: Great, great question. I would frame covenant against the notion of contractual. Covenantal versus, in a way, contractual. Contractual relationship, I would think, would be negotiable, conditional, subject to be defaulted upon, or to be rescinded. A contractual relationship is tit for tat, quid pro quo, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. And contractual reward is usually a payment, remuneration, or a commission of some sort. Conversely, covenantal relationships, I posit that it's a grace that endures, if we could use that language of our hymns. It's the grace that endures. And that is grace that goes beyond the right now. It began before we got here. And it lives on, as you said, from ancestral to how we become the legacy and the gifts that we leave to our progenitors. I think of covenant identity when I think of the African American woman, this playwright Ntozake Shange. In her “For Colored Girls,” piece, she has a point in that play/choreo poem/ book series/performance. And the tagline is, I see God in you.

When we are in a covenant relationship, we are able and we choose to and we work at pursuing relationship with the God in you, and that's in the face of some of the most difficult living and living in this context that we're in now. One of the ways that I seek to be in covenant or make covenant relationship with humanity, when I am faced with racism or sexism or homophobia or ableism, I imagine a different story or background for the person who's effecting that, you know, that negative upon me—because of my covenant relationship with humanity, because I see God in you, or I'm trying very hard to see God in you. And I think that bears so heavily upon my commitment to do the work, to honor God in one another, and be God for one another.  

This covenant, for me, is demonstrated even through the work that Evolving Faith does. I believe your work, from the mind of the conveners of this idea, to even this moment that we're sharing now and every space in between, and the hope I have for conversations to happen beyond this one, to me, is a covenant with humanity. Because you bring in the outliers of faith, to say, if I was to translate what's happening here: I see God in you, I'm giving you the best God in me to make a greater God for both of us and for the world and for humanity. And so, this covenant that I speak of, Jeff, is that non-negotiable unction that calls us. When I use the word calling, I think of calling in the ministerial sense of preachers, who would say, Oh, I’m called to preach the gospel. But also comedians are called to make jest and to bring funny. And medical professionals are called for wellness and wholeness and protestors and politicians, when done well, are justice makers. They are called to that and when you find a person who understands their calling, I would say that we have made covenant. Non-negotiable. No matter what else we do in life, we have this joyful burden upon which we covenant, ultimately. And Derrick, this, you know, maybe the antithesis of, of how you so explained your location and relationship with hope. But for me, the covenant of hope, is what gets me up every morning. It’s the covenant with humanity. I have hope that we will do better today, we will be better today. And that's an awesome transformative spiritual location. Because I'm Black, I'm Texan—you know, it's a list of all of these places that makes, that have experienced humanity and the world in such a horrible way. But yet, there have been glimmers of joy that fuel my hope. There have been glimmers of resilience that fuel my hope. Because my covenant relationship is with something bigger than my right now. 

And I believe that that's the love that David had for Jonathan. It weighed on his mind, I believe, every time he looked out and saw, in his purview and under his control, that so much of that land and that wealth and that reign did not belong to him. And at some point, he says, Is there anyone left of that house, that I could give this back, restore this back, to them? And that's my, that my sense of hope. How do I restore another's humanity? Because I work to keep mine intact and to make mine known.

JEFF: I just felt this incredible moment of being pastored in such a beautiful way. 

SARAH: Oh, my goodness. 

JEFF: And our listeners should know that we did not pay Pastor Raedorah extra to say those nice things about Evolving Faith.

RAEDORAH: No, not at all! 

JEFF: So that was beautiful. Thank you. It also provided me the perfect segue because I think the concept of covenant ties in so well with another theme we've already touched on, which is interdependence. All three of you have named this either implicitly or explicitly. It was another through line in your talks. And it really pushes back against this Western idolatry of independence. So I was wondering whether each of you could give us an example, a story, an anecdote, some nugget that illustrates why you feel so strongly about the value of interdependence, or an instance in which this has showed up beautifully in your life. Derrick, maybe let's start with you.

DERRICK: Oh, these tough questions, Jeff, thank you very much. I appreciate it. You know, I grew up black and poor, gay and smart, and Anglican no less, on the South Side of Chicago. And so because of that, I learned very early in my life, that I was, what's the old Simon and Garfunkel song—I am a rock, I am an island. And that was my only way of survival as a young man growing up that way. And I went through most of my life that way. I went to high school, pretty much alone. And I flew off to college at the University of Colorado—I was by myself. And I was pretty much set up that way, and very comfortable with living independently. And most of my life, I lived that way and have gotten pretty, pretty comfortable with it. And later in life, I started to come to a different understanding, particularly when I started doing anti-racism work. And I started thinking about that covenant. You know, one of the strongest covenants I experience is the covenant with God, that He would never leave me alone.

I was able to cling to that often. But I also realized that my relationship with God was not enough. It gave me a certain kind of comfort. But I also know that what happens when a baby is born and is not held, they fail to thrive. And it occurred to me that having a personal relationship with God would allow me to survive, but it would not allow me to thrive—and God wanted me to thrive. And what I found was that when I was able to think about how my independence was not necessarily serving me as an adult the way it did as a child, I began to see the value of relationships. And I started forming relationships with other people, other groups of people. And I've had several experiences—my fraternity Phi Beta Sigma that I pledged in college, other groups that I've been involved with my church community. Once I became disabled, I became a fellow with ADA Advancing Leadership, where I was able to be in community with other disabled people and learn and share those experiences. And the more I understood that need and value of interdependence, the more I began to thrive beyond survival. 

And for some of us who, again, embrace independence as a way of survival, that can be a very tough, tough row to hoe. But I'm so grateful that not only was I able to learn how to depend on myself, and be independent as well as my nature, I also learned that independence is not the only way to be and you can combine being strong and independent and taking care of yourself with the absolute necessity to be able to be in community with others. And that, for me, is helping God to live out the covenant that he has made with me. 

JEFF: Thank you so much for that, Derrick. Steph, how about for you? Talk to us a little bit about where you've seen the value of interdependence. I know you've already referenced Shannon as well as your son, but I'm sure you've got a little more for us there. 

STEPHANIE: I took a minute. You mentioned in your answer about, you know, what happens to a child when they're not held? That was me. I was that child. I'm a child who came from a neglect and abuse situation in my first home before I was adopted. And so looking through my story, I see patterns in which I didn't learn what that looked like as a child. And so I had sort of two options put in front of me, right? There was codependence—really unhealthy patterns of dependence—or equally unhealthy patterns of needing total independence, almost an isolationist view of independence. And in the white evangelical traditions I grew up in, that second one was really drilled into me for a long time: that we’re called to show everybody how self-sufficient and how self-contained and how truly independent we were. And I fought with this for years, sort of vacillating wildly between these two equally unhealthy ideas of, I have to find a way to be detached and independent and self sufficient. Or I'm just going to be as completely attached as possible to the first thing that moves in front of my path, because I need attachment, and I need it so bad.

It wasn't until I started really exploring theology and my place in this world through the lens of my newly found identity as a disabled woman that I was really able to start connecting the dots on this idea of interdependence. So much so, I wrote an entire chapter in my book just about this idea of independence; I called it the declaration of interdependence. This is something I'm so passionate about now. It's not enough for us to admit that we need to take care of each other. And it's not enough for us to occasionally admit that we need to share our weakness with somebody next to us. We were always designed to be both. We weren't designed— I hate when I get a sermon on the parts of the body and it's like, so some of us need to be givers and some of us need to be receivers and— Wrong! All of us need to be both. I need to learn how to receive from the people around me just as much as some people need to learn how to give generously or how to care for their brother’s needs. It's in that giving and taking and in that both that we do truly humanize each other. Because I can't see myself as your savior if I'm receiving from you, in ways that I'm noticing and acknowledging and expressing gratitude for, just as much as I'm giving to you. And that's not to say a tit for tat. That's not to say, you know, I helped pay your GoFundMe so now you owe me back when I have— that's not it. It's recognizing that we all have gifts that we bring to the table to each other in community. And that sometimes allowing me to come into your story and share something that you need, that is a gift you bring me. You're teaching me something in my spiritual life. And sometimes it means making intentional spaces for people who always feel like they're cast as the receivers to give something, to lead something. Maybe it's stepping back sometimes, and saying I don't have to jump in and save them; I'd like to create an opportunity for them to show us what they're capable of. It's going to have an ebb and flow to it. But it's so healing for me these days to try and seek out this idea of interdependence as, really, the core relationship on which the church was founded: That nobody is the giver, nobody's the winner, nobody's the leader. Everybody's giving and receiving, needing and taking and giving, in a circle around and around, until you can't tell where it stops anymore. And that's how we're all truly unified on the same page.  

JEFF: In my Reformed tradition, we talk about the equality of ministry. And I think it's actually something that's underemphasized. I appreciate that you drew a circle for us, Steph, because I think sometimes we end up with more hierarchical visions of our faith communities, when we really are gathered around the Lord's table, and each of us does have a part to play, even if some people have titles and others don't. So thank you for that. Raedorah, how about for you? Where have you seen the value of interdependence in your story? 

RAEDROAH: Let me begin where it begins for me. The Western notion of independence is a colonized mindset. Because for me, independence is what empowered Europeans to conquer and claim land that was occupied and functioning and thriving for other cultures. It's that independent mindset is, I have to take care of me, so everything I see I can take, or acquire, to take care of me. And my spirit “me” is from individual to whatever race, class, gender, nationality, you know, to which one would ascribe. And so for me, the Western notion of independence rather than interdependence is morally deficient. It's morally deficient, and spiritually deficient. Now, with that mindset, I ascribe to be womanist. And if you're not familiar with Alice Walker's definition of womanism or being a womanist, the the key places that inform me most is— it's a four part definition. But the three parts that I'll bring into this conversation is that a womanist is responsible; a womanist is committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female; and that the womanist loves, loves, loves, loves the struggle, loves the folk, loves herself regardless. 

And coming from being an African in America, the idea of interdependence is an inheritance for me. I wasn't raised to see that I am only for me. But the very strong sense of communal identity and that who I was individually contributed to the communal identity, from when I leave the house. I was my mom's daughter. So I represented what my mom represented. And, you know, we began to create this—oh, you are, you know, Miss Stewart's daughter. And that became what I did. It not only identified me, it identified my roots, and my roots where, you know, were established in my mother and her family and in being Texan, and being Christian, and being black. And so that interdependence, I relied on those, all of that to be who I am. 

One of the things that strike me is that even with the new covenant, I'm talking of the sacred texts, in our case that the Bible, the New Covenant, in you know, in Jesus in the New Testament, still quotes the First Testament and is so engaging and involved not only with fulfilling prophecies of the First Testament, but also as models and reminders of God, who was always, will be and is now, you know? And so for me, the interdependence is innately cultural, innately spiritual, and innately social. And so all of that works for me. 

Now, one of the ways— the most beautiful way that interdependence works in my life is I have this magic way with babies. And whenever I fly, when we used to fly—remember when we used to fly?—and there was a crying baby onboard, I was always the one to approach the mother or the dad and I'll go, “Okay, who needs to hug? You or the baby?” 

And what's amazing is no one ever rejects it. Everyone always welcomes that extra hand in some way. But in one flight from— I want to say, from the East Coast to Texas, or from Los Angeles to Texas. I was with a father, a young father, a new father, and a white father, with a beautiful plump Gerber baby-looking white baby. And the baby was just fretful, just could not be consoled. And all of my maternal sensibilities saw: The baby asleep. You're jostling the baby, which is not comforting. And the, you know, the strong rocking is not what the baby needs. And so in my sense of being mother to the world, as my son called me from when he was very young, I turned around— the dad was sitting behind me, and then as once we got in the air, and crying, and people were squirming, and, you know, sighing hard. I looked over the back of my seat, and I asked the dad, I said, “Can I give you a hand?” He looked so relieved. I guess he thought I was gonna turn around and, you know, really jack him up, but he handed the baby to me. And just my internal clock for calm. And I just looked at the baby. And while he was fretting, I just began to speak softly; that caused the baby to want to listen more to what I was saying. And I was just talking like, Sweetie, I know you're tired, and I know you want to go to sleep. And I just began to suggest all of the comfort that this baby needed. And the baby was under a year old; I think it was like closer to six to eight months old.

And the baby just began to calm down and calm down, and so the whole plane got calm, you know? And I held the baby across for the whole ride. 

So as the baby fell asleep, the dad asked me if I want to give the baby back, you know, so I could get snacks, you know. It's like, No, I'm holding a baby; who wants peanuts? So I held the baby for the duration, you know, the three or four hour duration of the flight; I think it was going from LA to DC. And throughout that time, even people around me took care of me because I took care of the baby. The person next to me got up and and move the middle seat to a different middle seat, just so that I could have extra room. The flight attendant came and she still made sure that I got my cool drink, you know? And so that interdependent relationship that I had with a father who was overwhelmed; a baby that just needed calming instead of you know, shaking and cajoled into calming. 

And so I held the baby, and you know, the dad got my overhead down, and, you know, we walked out. And when I got off the plane, the passengers clapped and thanked me for quieting the baby. And that was just one of those moments where, what will it take for us to rehumanize one another in places of comfort and not leave that father abandoned to this fretful child or that fretful child abandoned to a new dad who clearly was out of, you know, taking the baby, to meet his family, to visit his family, snd so the mom wasn't traveling with the— it was just a big thing. But to see that, in that enclosed cabin, we are all interdependent in case of a crisis, or emergency, but just that moment of engaging and connecting with love, and that I was taken care of, while I was taking care of the baby, and taking care of the dad. Never knew their names. He asked me if he could, you know, buy me something. And I was like, you don't pay humanity for being human. You just don’t. I just said, Sir, you know, it's, it's fine. And so that was my most awesome and I just remember that. And I'm always the one who turns to a fretful child and just go, What's the matter? What can you tell me? Take a deep breath and tell me. It is so funny how babies to kids… All I could do is just talk and they can calm down and refocus. 

I think that's my gift because of how I view existing in the world as covenantal and interdependent.  

JEFF: Well, thank you to all three of you for unfolding us in your embrace and calling us once again into relationship. What a gift. I really appreciate it. 

SARAH: Thank you all so much. This was just— I really wish that we could have video so you could see how I have just moved from like vigorous head-nodding to just resting, I mean, just in your words, just— This has been so healing and so good.

--

JEFF: Let me just reiterate our deep gratitude to Stephanie Tait, Derrick Dawson, and Raedorah Stewart for sharing their wisdom and their insights with us today. You can find all of the links mentioned during the show, including info about Steph, Derrick, and Raedorah as well as a full transcript in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com/podcast. You can sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com. As always, the Evolving Faith podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, along with Lucy Huang. Thank you to Audrey Assad and to Wes Willison for our music. 

 SARAH: You can find me at sarahbessey.com for all my social-media links, my newsletter, and of course my books. And join us next week for the final of these two special episodes making things right. We'll be hearing brand new talks from three trans and nonbinary people: Michiko Bown-Kai, Austen Hartke, and Christina Beardsley, who will then join us for a roundtable conversation. Thank you for listening to this important episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast, friends, and until next time, remember you are loved

 

 

Sarah Bessey
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