narrative sermon on the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:22-34)

Last June, I attended a preaching workshop and heard a sample of narrative preaching by Dr. Jeff Frymire. I was fascinated and wondered whether I might be successful in using this form. My previous sermons had been received reasonably well; but I still hoped to find a more effective way to communicate creatively and connect well with people.

I recently preached my first narrative sermon at Bremen Church of God in Indiana. It was an enjoyable experience for me, and I received encouraging feedback afterward from both the pastor and the congregation. I did not know anyone there other than the pastor and the visiting worship leader; and I consider this a very positive experience. As usual, I have some room to improve. However, I will try this again with more confidence. I will post reflections separately about the experience of preaching this particular text.

The sermon is posted on YouTube in two parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Going to a conference...

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.

Well, that was fun!

I logged in this morning to post on one of my blogs and found...

The navbar in Hebrew!

I haven't even had coffee yet! Gee, at this rate I might as well start dreaming in Hebrew!

I got it changed back to English, but what a fun adventure!

"You don't let it limit you"

"She hasn't let blindness limit her." This statement was recently written about me in an article that appeared in the local newspaper. A few days later, someone spoke the same words to me while discussing a potential speaking engagement: "You haven't let blindness limit you." I have been mulling over the statement since then, trying to understand why it bothers me. Some of my friends and colleagues who have disabilities would not be so bothered by the words. In fact, they would agree wholeheartedly that the statement portrays a chosen approach toward life with disability: facing it head on instead of letting it determine the course of one's life.

My experience of disability does not generally revolve around these choices. There are frustrations associated with disability and the barriers it erects in my life; but to say that I don't let it limit me implies that I might entertain such an option. Generally this kind of statement has more to do with the speaker's thoughts about himself than it does about whatever expectations he has of me; but the implication that is not stated is that I am, to his surprise, better because I have not done what he would expect himself to do. The remaining assumption is that I always did it with a positive attitude.

When I was attending training with my third dog guide, a decision had been made that students getting successor dogs would not have to walk through a particular route. I was very happy because the route had a steep hill and at this point in my life I had begun to suffer the effects of arthritis in my left ankle. Unfortunately, I was paired with a new student; and my instructor decided that I should walk the route with her. I protested; but he asked me to do it once and said that he was sure I could take it.

Walking down the long blocks, the other student dropped behind and needed help with her dog. The trainer dropped back to work with her, and I continued ahead. I trudged up the hill, my ankle throbbing mercilessly. If I had been anywhere else, I would have turned and gone home. But it would have been as far to go back as it was to finish the route. I wished I could just sit down and cry. Of course, I couldn't. I needed to complete the route with the other student. So I walked--and cried.

Life with disability is not always upbeat and inspirational. When I get up in the morning, I have a big to-do list of things that need my attention that day. When I applied to seminary, I didn't think, "I won't let blindness (or migraines or anything else) limit me in doing this. I thought, "I am called to do this. I must commit myself to the task and see it through." And I walked ... and sometimes cried--not only because of blindness but because of many other life circumstances as well. Sometimes I knew much better how to live with blindness than I knew how to live with other things that were raising barriers in my life.

disability, ministry, and theology

I have had opportunity recently to review my ministry activities for several reasons. I needed to provide a summary for my ordination committee; and I needed to provide some biographical information for some workshops I recently led. In doing this review, I realized that my activities have focused heavily on disability-related issues and very little on other issues. This is something that I would like to see change in the future; but I think that it will have to come in time. The more I so activities in the realm of disability-related ministry, the more I become a respected leader in this area. This creates a dilemma of sorts for me. It is a good thing, on one hand; and I must be willing to do what God gives me the skill and opportunity to do. On the other hand, good disability ministry models real integration and reconciliation. If I do not have balance between a ministry in which I preach reconciliation and other ministries in my life, I give lip service to my own message.

A few tidbits to ponder... My thoughts often scatter in numerous directions as I attempt to sit down and write meaningfully about disability and theology. Perhaps in time I will find a way to give them better form. Oh yeah... That isn't my job at all.., is it. My job is only to give the voice, and to listen for the form that God gives.

Sermon Prep

During my fourth semester of seminary, I took a course in homiletics (preaching, for those who are not fond of fancy words). In some seminaries, these courses include a component that requires students to analyze other people's sermons. Mine did not; but I often found myself listening to other people's preaching in order to determine what seemed engaging or helpful, what didn't connect, etc. I had some other kinds of public speaking experience; and in some ways this was helpful. I was comfortable talking to people; but preaching is a particular kind of speaking in which I am attempting to engage with a person's most vulnerable personal space--with or without their permission depending on the reason why they came to church. That is a story for another blog...

A student recently asked me how I went about preparing a sermon. This is a legitimate question. She wasn't asking about how a person does this in general, though the question could have been interpreted that way. She was asking about how I, as a person who is blind (and how she as a fellow person who is blind), would access and organize the information I needed to use in sermon preparation. This is, perhaps, one of the most frustrating aspects of what I do. Sighted people work through this process using a lot of skimming and scanning. I don't have the ability to do this; so I have to be wise in collecting, searching using keywords, and describing to someone else at times what I want. At times, when none of these strategies works and I just feel something is missing, I have to be persistent in seeking it--and sometimes "it" is some unknown thing that just nags at me until it is found. I always pray through the process; and when I get those hunches, the praying becomes a crucial thing.

Organizing information is a difficult thing to handle at times. I have the same problem regarding research for papers. I can't just store cards or files with tidbits or copies of things and pull them out when I need them. I've tried creating file folders on my computer and naming little files with tidbits. That works in some instances. Sometimes I just use a big file and insert a new page for a new tidbit. It just depends on what I am working with and how many tidbits I need to organize.

students with disabilities, old wounds, and liberation

I once proposed to a staff person the idea of launching a support group on campus for students with disabilities, to provide a place for them to talk about experiences, share coping strategies, etc. The idea never went anywhere; and she suggested that students didn't often feel comfortable talking about their disabilities and even seemed to prefer to avoid them.

Since that discussion, I have spent several semesters serving as a teaching assistant in university classes--mostly Greek classes. I have encountered several students with "hidden" disabilities: disabilities that would not be known about unless the students disclosed them. Many of these students confided in me about their difficulties in class. Some had not registered with the learning center on campus and had no idea they could be receiving assistance. Some did not realize the learning center was the provider of services for students with disabilities--they had been looking for the word "disability" in the office name. This lack of knowledge had, in some cases, cost them a year of accommodations.

My discussions with these students often become matters of pastoral care. Teaching takes a back seat when I discover that a student's learning is more deeply affected by fear or memories of wounds created by the stigma associated with disability than it is affected by disability-related barriers. When a student perceives herself to be stupid because she takes more time to understand something or because her learning style is different, she is prevented from recognizing the image of God that resides in her and accepting the truth that God loves her deeply just the way she is. She confines herself to traditional means of learning instead of freeing herself to learn in the way that God has created her to learn; and all of the accommodations that we can make in the classroom cannot reach her as long as she is imprisoned in this wounded state. Sadly, this occurs because of years of experiences in which she has learned that this is what society expects of her. It is a process with which I am personally familiar, a process from which I have struggled to break free. That process was not easy.

If I could communicate one thing, it would be this. Those of us with the power to liberate others from those old wounded places must do so, knowing that liberation is not an easy task to engage in. Those of us who want to be free must step out of those wounded places, knowing that it is painful to trust and to ask for what we need. Together we make new things happen.

disability studies in the seminary curriculum

During my seminary years, I read a lot (on my own time) about various topics in disability and theology. Some of my reading concerned the need to address disability issues in the seminary curriculum. I am completely in agreement with this. For a time, I considered pursuing a second Master's degree in disability studies in order to give myself some expertise so that I might be able to contribute to this end. Over time, I realized that I have numerous things in my background that already give me that expertise. What I need is to step out and contribute.

Disability studies is, like other fields introduced in the seminary curriculum, a very broad field. I chose the word "introduced" quite deliberately; for nothing is covered completely. I took three courses in pastoral care, two courses in Christian education, a few other general ministry courses, two courses each in Old and New Testament, four semesters each of Greek and Hebrew... Courses were offered in various specialized topics (marriage counseling, grief, women in ministry...) It is possible to pursue numerous hours of advanced study in any of these fields.

Disability studies is no different. The challenge is to determine the best way to incorporate it into the seminary curriculum so that students come away with adequate understanding of issues facing people with disabilities and ability to address them in the particular setting of their ministry. Is the solution a specialized course on disability issues? Such a course would likely be an elective; and I suspect that an elective course on disability issues would be poorly attended. If using this format, what is the best way to increase awareness about the importance of taking the course?

Or is the answer the inclusion of disability-related content within the curricula of other disciplines? This would be an ideal way to ensure exposure for all students, assuming the chapters were not ignored or left for study at the last minute.

about the call to ministry

Recently a seminary student asked me how I hear God and how I know what I am called to do. I wasn't surprised by these questions. Many seminary classes open at the beginning of the semester with times of introduction when students share their sense of their call to ministry. In other words, they share their understanding of where God is leading them to serve in ministry. In some classes, students write papers about their experience of being called to ministry in response to particular biblical passages (e.g. prophetic call passages such as Jer. 2 or Isa. 6). I have very mixed feelings about this practice. Certainly I believe that some people experience a very specific call to a particular place of ministry. However, I also believe that other people--and perhaps most--experience a general call and are led by God in faith to places where ministry happend. For these people, there is not one place of ministry that is best. The environment of sharing among the other students can feel very competitive, especially for the student who does not have a particular ministry direction.

The only commission that Jesus gave to his disciples was to "go and make disciples." There is no higher calling. Many people who faithfully served the Lord had what we might view as undefined calls. Still they answered faithfully, led by the Holy Spirit in everything they did. There is no shame in being uncertain about one's ministry direction. The real call is to serve the Lord, to love Him and to go and make disciples... Everything else is a matter of the leading of the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit can certainly take care of that in tine.

learning styles

In many of my seminary classes, things were presented in charts. Obviously, I needed to find a different way of handling this information; for though I am skilled at handling charts, most charts don't convert well to braille, and I didn't have ready access to braille in seminary. I spent a fair amount of time reformatting things so that I could access them via the computer. I often asked myself questions about relationships between pieces of information, the goals I had in putting things together in certain ways, etc. Did I need to understand material so that I could use it personally, or did I need to be able to present it visually to other people so that they could understand it? These questions stretched me and forced me to learn to understand other people's learning styles in comparison to my own.

To some people, the idea that I would work to understand other people's learning styles might seem amazing. For me, it is part of the natural process of adapting to life with blindness. During my early childhood years, my parents did not have many resources available to assist them in teaching me how to do things; so they used their own creativity. They explained things in the best way they knew how, helping me to understand their own point of view so that I could build my own. Because of this, learning to take the perspective of other people is m=normal for me.

I became a natural tutor during my later childhood years, helping a younger student who was beginning to learn braille. Much later, during my high school years, I offered help to classmates with algebra. In college, I studied elementary and special education for a time, spending one semester as an intern in a classroom for students with learning disabilities and another in a classroom for students learning English as a second language. I loved teaching, but I found the elementary school environment chaotic and confusing. I returned to my love of teaching later, when I was in seminary.

I have found that often sighted people assume that visual learning is the norm. However, I have met a number of sighted people who do not learn visually. I developed a great compassion for sighted people who could not process information from complex charts that were used to organize things that could often be presented in numerous other ways.

When I tutored Greek, I developed alternative presentations so that students could turn to individual verb paradigms instead of scanning across a page or piecing them together from stems and endings. In the professor's opinion, my alternative method was cumbersome; but for the students who were not visual learners, they were refreshing. The students had been attempting to copy notes word-for-word and had been struggling with disorganized messes of notes. Twenty-four pages of individual paradigms were better than a mess of disorganization.

about vocabulary and church history

One of my great fears about seminary was that I would not be able to comprehend the reading material. I have good grammar skills but a very small vocabulary. When I worked for a company that manufactured computer products for people with disabilities and the supervisor said that we needed to write help files as though sixth graders were going to be reading them, it made perfect sense to me. People could have perfectly good minds but not be good at using big words. I approached theology with the same attitude. It should be written with the idea that people were smart but did not have large theological vocabularies. Things either needed to be explained in a respectful manner, or the word should not be used at all.

My textbook authors were not so gracious. Even when the words were understandable, I sometimes felt as if I had started a movie in the middle of the story. I checked more books out of the library in order to fill in the holes in my knowledge base. Of course, that meant that I spent more time scanning and reading. I'm afraid I earned a reputation for being a nerd--and I still didn't feel like I really understood the scope of theology or church history.

In time, I began to put more and more pieces together. Of course, who can really condense thousands of years of history into one or two textbooks? There is a reason why people can get entire doctorate-level degrees in this field alone!

daily life in seminary

In order to get my seminary work done, I needed to scan my textbooks into the computer and then take time to read my assignments. I also scanned books from the library that I used for research assignments. In a given semester, I might scan as many as 10,000 pages. My scanning speed was affected by the amount of memory in my computer; so I found it necessary to upgrade my computer twice in the course of my seminary career in order to increase my efficiency in studying.

Even at peak efficiency, I often woke up very early in order to allow time for all this extra scanning as well as reading.

I walked to campus on days when weather and stamina allowed. I lived 1.5 miles from campus; and I hoped that the exercise would be good for me. In time, my plan didn't work so well. My dog guide began to slow due to the onset of arthritis; and the walk that first took 35 minutes eventually took an hour. My own health problems also began to interfere with walking; and I began to pay for transportation to campus. This allowed me to make better use of my time; but it was a tremendous financial sacrifice.

In order to minimize my need for transportation, I sometimes spend the entire day on campus when I had class in the morning and evening. I used the long break in between classes to study. Other students who commuted in from out of town did the same, and we often studied in the seminary lounge. I related more easily to the commuters than I did to the students who lived on campus. I wanted to participate in social events that took place during the evenings; but it was difficult to obtain transportation to these events even living so close to campus. The pseudo-commuter lifestyle frustrated md greatly.

getting my feet wet

When I began my courses in seminary, I had been out of school for seven years. I was advised by a friend to begin by taking one course in order to see how I did, learn to study again, etc. I didn't have the luxury of doing this. My financial aid providers all required me to take 12 hours. This confused me since nine hours is typically considered a full load at the graduate level. My friends in other graduate programs wondered at my ability to handle such a load. My answer was that I needed to do it in order to get financial aid which was vital to me; and I would find a way to manage the load. I did find a way; and in time I even took a couple of 15-hour semesters.

In order to prepare myself for such a shock to my days, I began to keep track of my activities and to measure my tolerance for an increasing amount of appointments, reading material, etc. I attended a training for small group leaders at my church and practiced my study skills by organizing the handouts in advance.

During my first week of classes, waves of fatigue and anxiety swept over me; and I wondered whether I had taken on far more than I could handle. Eventually, I slept deeply; and deep sleep altered my perspective. After a couple of weeks, I began to gain my footing.

During orientation sessions, a faculty member emphasized the importance of balancing various aspects of life while in seminary: work, devotional life, relationships, self-care, rest, and play... Another faculty member spoke about a concept that was completely new to me. He said, "Your four-word commission: you are God's beloved." I had always thought of "commission" in terms of action: "Go and make disciples." Throughout that first semester, I would begin to learn what it means to live as God's beloved; and this would revolutionize my understanding of the action-commission. It would also give me the fortitude that I needed to do what had to be done in order to succeed in a 12 or even 15-hour semester.

Welcome to seminary...

In approximately two weeks, I will begin what has become one of the most enjoyable activities in my life. I will be serving as a teaching assistant in an intensive first-year Greek course at Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana. In five weeks, students from the seminary and the undergraduate school will study a year's worth of Koine Greek. I took the course as a seminary student in 2008 and served as teaching assistant last summer after completing my second year of Greek, also in intensive study format.

Students often call this course "suicide Greek." I can certainly understand why. The class meets every day for four hours and generally covers one chapter every day, working through J. Gresham Machen's text, New Testament Greek for Beginners. The text is an old one and would not be my choice if I planned a Greek course from the start. It is, however, one of several textbooks which is available in braille; and this was advantageous to me as well as to another blind student who took our course last summer. This allowed me to learn a lot about teaching and about how different people learn--every person who is blind does not learn the way that I do.

Back to the concept of "suicide Greek..." Taking an intensive language course has its advantages and disadvantages. It allows a person to focus solely on learning the language, which can be useful if distraction is a problem. For some people, drawing learning out too slowly is as much of a problem as doing it too quickly. The intensive method forces them to stick with the process and build on what they have already learned, not allowing time for forgetting things. They move directly into second-year study, and by this time they have built a habit of reading in Greek to some degree and are more likely to pick it up several times throughout the week even when the class doesn't meet so often. Of course, not all students stay with Greek; but I didn't hear as much complaining from the group who went on to second year Greek as I thought I might in light of the things I had read from people on the B-Greek list.

For some students, the intensive Greek course is the first course they take upon starting seminary. I have heard some people say they are glad they did this. I began my seminary experience with a regular fall semester. For me, this was necessary. Since I am blind, my language studies required some special arrangements. I don't know whether intensive language study would have been daunting to me. Looking back on my early experiences, I suspect that starting with such an intensive study would have been unwise for me. I will discuss the reasons why in my next post and will also address the possibility of a middle ground in intensive language study...

To wind up this post, since it is the first post here, I want to address the purposes of this blog. It serves as a resource for seminary students, staff, and faculty alike. Using my own life experiences as background, I hope to accomplish three purposes:

1. to provide a starting point for reflection on the interaction of subjects in seminary education and spiritual formation;
2. to provoke discussion of factors that influence learning and spiritual formation of seminary students;
3. to encourage seminary faculty and staff to take steps to increase access to facilities and programs for people with special needs through recruitment, accommodations, and financial assistance.

I will link to resources I have found useful throughout my seminary journey, sites that may assist current students, etc. I welcome your comments and discussion threads. In fact, those are an integral part of this blog project. Please do not be silent. In sharing my experiences, I will inadvertently bring up things that will prompt you to ask questions that may make you wonder whether I will be offended. That is the nature of living with disability. Please take the risk of asking the questions. If the question is too personal, I will handle it with grace. That is the nature of relationships.

> Welcome to the journey that is seminary! It is a good journey to take!