In a few hours I will take the train from Santa Cruz, CA, where I have been visiting friends, to San Francisco, where I will attend the annual conferences of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. I am excited about the upcoming weekend and look forward to attending several seminars about teaching biblical languages, disability and theology, and other topics of interest to me. In fact, I also look forward to joining the ranks of those who will be presenting at some of these seminars.
I am also a bit nervous about how my conference experience will turn out. When I first registered, I was pleased to see wording to the effect of, "We offer accommodations for people with disabilities such as sign language interpreters..." Other types of accommodations were also mentioned. I didn't suppose it could be very hard to assist if I asked for some creative solutions regarding some blindness-related dilemmas. I didn't expect a program in braille--there would be hundreds of sessions, and such an undertaking would be quite unreasonable. The program would be available online anyway, and I would be able to use that version. What I would need most was some assistance with navigating between the six hotels and convention center since I would be traveling alone. Surely there must be a creative solution. After all, they could come up with interpreters...
It couldn't be done. In the end, I negotiated a free registration for an assistant, and the person donated his time and funded his own trip to assist me. It should not have been necessary to arrange this--it was a significant cost to the person, and I am in the early stages of ministry and not set up to receive such a thing as the gift of service that it is. The reality that this situation exposes is that accomplishing the tasks of ministry or professional work with a disability often involves great cost financially and otherwise which only those closest to a person are willing to bear. The result is that the person who desires to live in service to God struggles to shake off a sense of deep shame associated with an unavoidable need for assistance. I go through numerous self-talk exercises as I prepare for this conference weekend. As I do these exercises, I also find it important to be honest about the emotions I experience. Perhaps in doing so, I will be able to lay them aside.
My family member has become very adept at disappearing into the background while I socialize; but socializing is also difficult for me to begin in the first place because I cannot navigate a mmassive hotel complex without assistance, and the fact that I am engaged in conversation and am being directed from here to there can at times create the illusion that I am in need of a caretaker. It is a difficult balancing act to maintain, especially when it is important for people to understand that lack of ability to navigate in the conference environment does not equal lack of professional ability or lack of ability to master navigation of a campus environment, where I have time to become accustomed to traveling.
I also take to the conference with me a beautiful dog: a half Labrador/half golden retriever. She has amazed me this week as we have trekked around Santa Cruz. She is a good memorizer; but I never realized how thorough her recall was for entire routes. It only took her one trip out to remember the way from an eating establishment to my friend's home. The last time we were here was four years ago. But Loretta is not really amazing... If one stops to think, a dog who runs out the front door will also find its way home when it has stopped having fun. It is we humans who underestimate the intelligence of the animals we love so much. And I am not prepared to have angelic qualities lavished on my dog when I go to a conference seeking professional networking opportunities. Still, I must steel myself for the possibility that this will happen, and happen rather often. In an environment where 10,000 people gather, I would be sticking my head in the sand if I thought otherwise--and the truth is that I stick my head in the sand rather often.
If the above seems excessively melancholy, perhaps it is. I must admit that I am afraid. I am afraid of continuing to play the role of child, because that is the role that people with disabilities often play. And I am afraid of breaking out of that role, in case I do not know how to fill the new role that I am suddenly thrust into. Mostly, I am afraid of not knowing what is before me and afraid of being whiplashed back and forth between one role and the other.
And there you have the honest musings of a conference-going biblical studies scholar who is blind. I may regret posting such things in my blog someday. For now, I must simply be honest and allow it to be what it is.
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