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Rev. Michelle LaGrave
January 28, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
How do we build an accessible church where more and more people will feel included and welcome? We’ll share some stories of what it means to live a disabled life and how we can begin to dismantle ableism within ourselves and our community.
Chalice Lighting
This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
“TODAY WE CELEBRATE A DREAM AWAKENING”
by the Rev. Dr. Elizabeth M. StrongToday we celebrate a dream awakening.
Today we worship with renewed hope in our hearts.
Today we act on an audacity of hopes and dreams for the future.
Today we, begin the hard work for justice, equity and compassion in all human relations,
for today is a day like no other and it is ours to shape with vision and action.
Let us worship together and celebrate a dream awakening.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
“MEANT FOR LOVE AND BEAUTY”
by Julian Jamaica SotoI need you to know
that there is nothing
wrong with you, if you
find the world congealed
and unwieldy. You were
never meant to serve money,
to give loyalty to unprincipled
power, to spend your joy
frantically soothing yourself
in order to tend wounds
of being constantly
dehumanized. I need you
to know that your sense
of injury and anger is not
overdeveloped. You are meant
for love and beauty. You belong
where you are known and
where your future is not just a
resource, but a promise, which
you begin to fulfill by being
unmistakably, irrevocably
yourself.-you are not wrong.
Sermon
Together, we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the beloved community. This is the mission of this church and this church is the most mission-driven congregation I have ever had the joy to minister. Together, we build beloved community and the love which is centered in the word beloved is a serious love, it is a liberating love.
Today, I’m going to talk about the liberation of a people we don’t talk much about. People with disabilities. All kinds of disabilities because we come in all kinds of bodies. Some bodies think differently, some bodies process pain differently, some bodies regulate emotion differently, some bodies work differently, some bodies see and hear and move differently. Differently how? Differently from “the norm”, differently from the way human bodies “are supposed” to be. As if there were a single magical template from which any deviation is a problem.
Before I go any further, I’d like to make a note about language. As with any group of people, disabled folx don’t all agree on language, or anything else for that matter. Just like able-bodied people don’t all agree on language or anything else for that matter. And language tends to change over time. So, I’ll say right up front that I choose to use the words disabled and disability. I think these words, disabled and disability, are the best way to get at the heart of what ableism is and why we need to do something about it. In other words, because ableism is still largely unacknowledged, talking about disability and disability justice helps to acknowledge the very existence of ableism. Maybe someday, when we live in a more just world, I’ll feel differently, and I will find a better way to talk about the experience of living in my human body.
Some folx experience themselves as disabled their whole lives. For me, I didn’t encounter any serious issues until I was close to 40 years old. I was serving a church in central Massachusetts in a hilly little village, and by little, I mean a population of around 1200 people. This is relevant because in order to have a Memorial Day parade it was all hands on deck. Including all clergy hands. Yes, the clergy were asked to march, as our own little unit, right behind the Fire Department. All 3 of us. And since it was a hilly and fairly long parade route, it was also how I measured the onset of my disability. I went from marching the entire route one Memorial Day, no problem, to not being able to march at all the next.
Perhaps even more difficult than adjusting to the chronic pain was the process of coming into a new identity, that of a disabled person. Using a cane, getting a disability tag for my car, climbing into a mobility scooter for the first time, deciding whether I wanted to use the word disabled to describe myself, all were big milestones, as was getting matched with my first service dog for mobility, Bella. So, too, were the obstacles I began to encounter and my realization of inaccessible and ableist the world was, even more milestones.
Ableism flies so far under the radar that it’s worth a moment to define it. Simply put, ableism is the unspoken and un-thought-about assumption that able bodies are normal bodies. As a society, we build houses, apartments, offices, stores, libraries, hospitals, rest rooms, and more with this assumption. We design classrooms and museums and other educational or learning opportunities with this assumption. We create transportation systems, cars, airplanes, and even bike racks with this assumption. And, yes, we design our churches and our worship services this way, too.
Which is why there is a new ministry team here at First UU. A few months ago, I was approached by Vicki Almstrum who wanted to start an accessibility ministry team. While some accessibility features were put in place a long time ago, especially in the newer sections of the building – think hearing loops, a ramp up into the pulpit, wireless receivers to better hear the service, door openers outside the sanctuary doors, support grips in the restrooms, braille signs and hymnals, and so on, she knew that accessibility is about much more than seeing, hearing, and using a wheelchair. The new team was approved, and she got to work reaching out to people who might be interested in joining the AMT – Accessibility Ministry Team. Their first official debut was at the Connections Fair in December where many of you submitted suggestions for ways that accessibility can be improved here.
Beginning today, you’ll start to see some changes taking place with both the worship service and the website, the two areas the team has identified to prioritize. Because accessibility covers such a wide range of needs and in so many different areas of congregational life, there is going to be a lot to learn, and I include myself in that. So, to share your ideas for accessibility or your kind, caring, and covenantally constructive feedback, the Accessibility Ministry Team has a new email address. You can send your thoughts to Access@austinuu.org.
Like I said, there is a lot to learn to do accessibility well and it will take lots and lots of practice, on all of our parts, including those of us who are disabled because we still need to learn about each other’s needs, which are different from own. This is all work that can and should be joyful. Before I talk a little bit more about what we’re doing, I’d like to say some more about why. And it’s all about that liberating love embedded right there in our mission statement.
Those of you with a Christian background will likely remember these words of Paul’s and the rest of you will probably find them familiar, too, as they are so well known. In First Corinthians, which is actually a letter Paul wrote to the church in Corinth about how to be together as a church, he said: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud … ” and so on. Setting aside issues with Biblical translation for now, I’d like to share excerpts from something the Rev. Tess Baumberger wrote, which is based on this passage from First Corinthians. Here it is:
Love is kind with people but impatient with injustice.
Love is assertive and respectful.
Love listens to the anger of those who experience oppressIon
Without responding, without defending,
Without interrupting, without explaining.
It listens with compassion, seeking always to understand …
Love is willing to examine itself,
Its thoughts, actions, and unmeditated bias.
It recognizes one’s power to harm, or to be part of systems of harm
With or without awareness, but once aware it can only intend
To make amends, to right the wrongs, to change the systems…
Love is willing always to change,
Always to learn, always to heal.
Love rejoices in truth and in equity.
There is no limit to love’s steady presence,
Or it’s holding us, gently but insistently, to what is right.
This love she speaks of is a liberating love, a love that sets people free from oppression and systems of oppression. This love is a love that does what is right because it is right. And this love is a love that doesn’t give up because doing what is right is difficult to do. This love is willing to learn and willing to practice. This love is willing to change and to grow. This love is a joyful love. This love is a liberating love.
What does this kind of liberating love mean in action? Sometimes, it looks like new slides, in a different font, in a larger size, and a higher contrast color ratio. Sometimes, it sounds like purchasing more wireless receivers because hearing aid technology has changed. Sometimes, it smells like fragrance free soap, shampoo, and lotion. Sometimes, it speaks in American Sign Language. Sometimes, it means the time of silence isn’t actually silent. Sometimes, it means that the preacher’s image is left up on the sanctuary’s monitors. Sometimes, it means that people move around a lot during worship. Sometimes, it means that there’s a dog on the chancel. Sometimes, it means that the preacher speaks in plain language. Sometimes, it means that we get a little repetitive. (It’s okay to laugh at that one. I did it on purpose and I’m kind of making fun at myself.)
Now, I’m guessing that some of those ways of demonstrating a liberating kind of love that I just named feel easier or more challenging than other ways. Take the time of silence, for one. Silence is an age-old spiritual practice that does have many benefits for the inner spiritual life. And, it is challenging, stressful, and sometimes even impossible for some disabled folx to do. Never mind the non-disabled folx. Babies cry. Children fidget. And elders, well … a number of years ago, a noise audit was done for congregational worship. You know what they found? That the elders made more decibels of sound than the infants and children.
I’m guessing, though, that the most challenging way of becoming more accessible to more people for Unitarian Universalists is the use of plain language. We UUs (as a whole, not just this church) tend to pride ourselves on the number of college and graduate level degrees we hold, though it’s important to note , that’s not all of us.We are, on the whole, an educated bunch and we tend to intellectualize a lot. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. I can “geek out” on occasion along with the best of them. And people who have graduate level vocabulary tend to use it, without even thinking, most of the time.
Here’s an example. My mom, who holds a graduate degree, and gave me permission to share this story with all of y’all, spent much of her professional life teaching in special education. I often substitute taught in her classroom or volunteer chaperoned on class trips. The students, who were high school or college aged, sometimes couldn’t read or read at a 2nd or 3rd grade level.
So, one time, I was helping to chaperone a class trip and a student who also had mobility challenges was struggling to walk up a paved path. My mom said to her “Don’t worry, it’s only a steep incline.”
My eyes grew wide and I struggled to not burst out laughing immediately. Later on, she heard it from me though. “What was up with that steep incline, Mom? It’s a hill. It was a hill.” We are a family who love to laugh at ourselves, and that joke lived on for a long, long time.
My point in sharing that story is that while plain language is more accessible, it can be hard to change the way we talk, especially in worship and during the sermon. It does not mean, though, that our sermons and our services have to be any less deep or any less based on complex thea/ological ideas. Let’s face it, we’re only getting so far in less than twenty minutes anyway.
There are many stories I can tell about what it is like to live with a disability that causes chronic pain and limits my mobility. And many tips I can give about how to interact, or not interact with and near me.
A few quick ones, all of which have actually happened to me:
1. Never call someone else’s service dog to you while they trying to go down the stairs.
2. Never park your car or truck or other vehicle with one end hanging over the sidewalk.
3. Never cut off someone who is using a mobility scooter in a store, either with your body, your child, or your cart. Those things don’t have brakes, people!
4. Never glare at someone parking in a disabled spot. Many disabilities are invisible or nearly so. And, yes, it was amusing to see how quickly faces changed once Bella hopped out.
And one longer, and more humorous story.
One year, I went Christmas shopping for my spouse, Micah, in one of those dollar-type stores. I was looking for things to fill his stocking and I was there with my service dog, Bella, a beautiful black lab, whose jobs included picking up things I dropped on the floor, getting my cane when it was out of reach, and so on. I was stopped by the rack of crossword puzzles and word searches, wearing my glasses, and flipping through the pages of one of the books, when all of a sudden I heard two older men say, from partway across the store:
“She can’t help us. She’s blind.”
So, I turned in to find out:
(a) if they were really talking about me. (They were) and:
(b) what they were up to.
It turned out that someone, a niece apparently, had sent them to the store in search of some feminine products, without clear instructions, and they didn’t know what they were doing. I decided not to volunteer to help, curious to “see” what would happen. They did wind up getting some help, from a store clerk. My only regret was, they were not around when I went out to the parking lot, got in my car, and drove away.
The moral of the story is – we never know what anyone person’s needs or abilities are without actually getting to know them. We can learn how to put some good practices in place, but in the end, we are all different, and yet we are all the same. We are all human and we are all worthy.
Amen and Blessed Be
Benediction
As you go forth, in the many ways you go forth,
May your hearts and minds be open to the many ways of being in this world,
May your senses be open to new encounters, May the ways you experience the world,
lead you to transform this world,
all for the better.
Amen and Blessed Be.
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