After serving twenty-five years in parish ministry, Dave was called as minister for the Eastern Association, Minnesota Conference UCC, in 1995.

I have lived with aggressive Crohn’s Disease all my adult life. Some manage to control it without surgery and achieve long periods of remission from active symptoms. Others lose their entire intestinal track and must receive all fluids and nutrients intravenously.

To date, I have had eleven major surgeries and about a hundred hospitalizations. At age 32, I had my first colostomy surgery. I now have an ileostomy, which has been revised several times.

In my twenties with still much bowel remaining, I enjoyed remission and resumed distance running. Some years even later, I could compete in a dozen road races some years. In between, flare-ups brought me close to death.

In recent years because of the loss of most intestine, I struggle to avoid dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. Twice,, I have been denied admission to public events. One event was at a 1993 General Synod session.

Long ago, I decided not to hand over to this fierce disease *my life, identity, and deep * sense of calling to ordained ministry. A defining moment happened shortly after my first colostomy surgery. While registering at a United Ostomy Association meeting, I noticed the pre-registration name tags of Sue Smith, “ileostomate;” Ray Jones, “urostomate;” Nat Doe, “colostomate.” I crossed out “colostomate” on mine and added in tiny print, “Child of God, son, husband, father, brother, minister.” Some thought I was just being cute. For me, it was then and remains a deeply important issue. Persons with disabilities should not be defined by what does not work. We are people first.

During a recent sabbatical, I started writing a book, tentatively titled, “Laughing at the Devil: Spiritual Resources for Living with Chronic Illness.” I began to think systematically about how, despite its great liability, living with Crohn’s has become a gift for ministry and how those same gifts might be discovered by others in unique circumstances.

We develop these competencies in response to a personal need. Most spiritual resources do not show up ready to use but require considerable shaping and refining. When first emerging, they may collide with something else already in place.

Part of my ministry is to assist persons in the course of pastoral conversation to find their own way to one or more of these spiritual resources:

• Finding voice in the midst of a powerful, sophisticated medical culture;
• Discerning how to receive needed help without losing sense of self;
• Listening deeply to others’ voices;
• Praying when tending to pray cautiously;
• Laughing as a medium for experiencing God’s grace and mercy;
• Seeing the life that God has put in us when all the world sees is disability; and
• Recognizing signs of grace and mercy around and within us.

As Eastern Association Minister in the Minnesota Conference, living with this invisible disability also influences how I prepare local church search committees to consider ministerial candidates who may have a disability. Teaching how to read ministerial profiles, I suggest:

“Many pastors who live with a disability will talk about their situation in profile item #13, ‘Special Factors.’ I urge pastors to disclose to search committees a disability that they may have because I think that folks like you will respond well to being trusted with such information.

“Even more, I urge pastors who have a disability to let you know how living with that disability has become a gift for ministry. Sometimes pastors who have a disability are afraid to mention it in their profiles for fear that search committees will stop reading, immediately rejecting them.

“I encourage you not to do that but rather to focus on each pastor’s gifts for ministry. You may find someone with a disability who has discovered and developed incredibly great gifts for ministry out of that disability. Those may be exactly the cluster of gifts for ministry that your church needs.”

Most search committees take this to heart and genuinely open themselves to considering these gifts for ministry.

People will ask questions from spiritual struggles that they suspect I also have encountered. The most common, “Don’t you ever wonder why God allowed a disease like this that can be so physically painful and debilitating and socially isolating to happen to you?”

I just do not blame God or connect God with the onset of this crummy disease. What does amaze me is the abundance of God’s grace and blessing. Over and over it lifts me out of despair, giving me the capacity to see what a blessing my life is by God’s grace and to laugh at the devil.

From UCC DM Newsletter Archive

Mitzi Eilts is national coordinator for the UCC Coalition for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and
Transgender Concerns.

I’m almost fifty years old and have been female my whole life. For most of my adult life I’ve been at home (spiritually and emotionally) with the facts that my identity is not heterosexual and my life partner is another female. For all the rejection, oppression, and hatred that truth can evoke — coming home to myself has been a gift of God’s good companionship.

Are you wondering what all this has to do with disability? Coming to experience my whole identity as holy gift, including my particular embodiment as female, has been great preparation for coming home to myself as one with a chronic disability.

I have remitting-relapsing Multiple Sclerosis (MS), diagnosed four years ago. While I may escape significant deterioration of physical mobility, I meet chronic fatigue, sight issues, overt problems with heat and stress, and difficulties with hand coordination and cognitive dysfunction.

Neither my disability nor my sexual orientation is immediately obvious. Only when I make them known are others aware.

MS, like my sexual identity, has caused me to look deeply into who I am, the meaning of my life, and where and how God moves in all that. Through this journey I have gained new, different connections with the Divine, myself, and others.

Changed, not devastated, I made serious internal adjustments in self view and self-expectations. I learned about MS, what the medical world doesn’t yet know about it, and treatment options. Flexible health insurance gives medical choices and resources, an important factor in my ability to cope.

From the beginning, I refused to let any sense of shame, others’ or my own, make me hide what I live with. Informing people about my MS could negatively affect their view of me and limit their expectations.

So why do I share this information? In coming “out” of the closet years ago I learned that hiding parts of myself is dangerous and destructive to both my physical and spiritual/emotional self.

My soul is healthier in my body and spirit when I avoid expending energy hiding who I am and how I’m feeling.

My disability is somewhat invisible; as long as I don’t tell, it is assumed I am able-bodied. So I tell — neither for sympathy nor excuse but to be associated with anyone whose differences cannot (and should not) be hidden. I become one more “demanding” person seeking justice (accommodation and change) and a full place in society with all my imperfections and talents.

I have become sensitive to making the church (and all society) hospitable for all. I noted at the Coalition’s National Gathering how much all have to learn about making the church a place where everyone can come and be welcome.

From our first meeting, planners kept in mind hilly Seattle campuses. We reduced transitions between buildings. We budgeted for vans, ASL interpreters, and child care. We assigned persons to contact registrants indicating specific needs.

It wasn’t enough. We could have had a greeter out front to assist with problems. Lift-less vans were useless for wheelchair users who cannot step up. Ultimately, willingness to problem solve and authority to act will make the difference for what leaders fail to anticipate.

We must utilize the expertise of those trained to look at all possibilities and know the pitfalls of sincere but inexperienced solutions. That’s true whether talking about differences in abilities, race/ethnicity, class, gender and sexual identity, or language.

For me, the lesson is universal and obvious. The more diverse those who are included in being the church are, the more welcoming church can be.

With MS, I have found once again what it means to believe as I say I do. Loving God with my body, soul, and mind is essential to being spiritual. Loving my neighbor as myself is to be faithful. Working with my body and mind — in thought and spirit, connecting with others, with creation, with silence, with ideas — is where and how I encounter communion with God.

Persons with disabilities know in body and soul the struggle to love ourselves and to love God with our whole selves. We meet these realities daily, moment by moment. Although no one has all the answers, each has unique insights to bring to the mix of this reality that points to Truth.

Jeanne Tyler co-chairs the UCCDM board and is co-pastor of Saint Paul UCC, Lincoln,
Nebraska

He told them another parable: “The [realm of God] is like yeast which a woman took and . . . .” – Matthew 13:33

Slowly bubbling along with warm water and sugar, yeast grows as it rises into dough and bakes into bread. This image from Jesus’ rich parable is especially apt for persons with disability and our call to serve.

We have been around forever and have been bubbling slowly ever so slowly into the wholeness of life, bringing the church into the fullness of transformation along with all who have been marginalized, made invisible. With many and diverse gifts, some serve and others are served.
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