Theological Context for the Dress Saga (and lots of other situations as well)
My family always gets me interesting books for Christmas, and among them this year is a wonderful one from Ellen entitled Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness by Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier. Duke Divinity School’s Hauerwas needs no introduction to people who read theology, but Ellen actually went to church with him while she was in Chapel Hill. I had read some of his previous essays on disabilities probably two decades ago. (An aside: I asked Wooster’s most liberal religious studies prof why Wooster had never brought him to campus as a lecturer because I thought he could speak to a wide-ranging audience, but he laughed and said that H’s verbal language is often foul!! Calvin had him as a Jan. Series lecturer a couple years ago with no public incident….) Vanier is the founder of the L’Arche communities that provide homes for severely disabled folk around the world. I read this slim book while we were driving the first leg of our journey to Texas today. The book is an attempt to begin writing a theology of disability and to explore the gifts the disabled give to us and the church. One paragraph in particular stood out for me as a profound context for the dress saga I told yesterday (and out from there to the current American experience of economic crisis):
“Long story short: we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we choose when had no story is a lie. [This is H’s way of describing modernity’s definition/idol of freedom and autonomy.] To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures. Christians are people who recognize that we have a Father whom we can thank for our existence. Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret. And that has the deepest political implications. Much of modern political theory and practice is about creating a society where we do not have to acknowledge that our lives are gifts we receive from one another” (92-93). Hauerwas and Vanier have been arguing/demonstrating that the profoundly handicapped (esp. as treated in L’Arche communities) deeply counter modernity’s model by being places of service, patience, listening, gentleness, celebration and sharing with people whom the modern world has no way (ultimately) to value. They are therefore gifts to the church and the world, showing us all what true Christian communities can be.
It seems to me that Karen is struggling to receive her life as a gift, to understand that she doesn’t get to make it up, but that God has gifted her well. The girls at the table Friday night helped her understand this truth by affirming her choices (though they weren’t the ones that she initially thought and may still sometimes think she wanted) and therefore her deepest humanity. Of course, I can only pray that our whole family helps her in the same way. (Certainly her group home community does.) In this way, she can lead us in reaffirming that Ellen and Kelly didn’t “make up” their circumstances and that their upcoming wedding too is a gift, the gift that we are celebrating with them. I love Vanier’s definition of celebration too: “To celebrate is to say we are happy together” (74).
“Long story short: we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we choose when had no story is a lie. [This is H’s way of describing modernity’s definition/idol of freedom and autonomy.] To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures. Christians are people who recognize that we have a Father whom we can thank for our existence. Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret. And that has the deepest political implications. Much of modern political theory and practice is about creating a society where we do not have to acknowledge that our lives are gifts we receive from one another” (92-93). Hauerwas and Vanier have been arguing/demonstrating that the profoundly handicapped (esp. as treated in L’Arche communities) deeply counter modernity’s model by being places of service, patience, listening, gentleness, celebration and sharing with people whom the modern world has no way (ultimately) to value. They are therefore gifts to the church and the world, showing us all what true Christian communities can be.
It seems to me that Karen is struggling to receive her life as a gift, to understand that she doesn’t get to make it up, but that God has gifted her well. The girls at the table Friday night helped her understand this truth by affirming her choices (though they weren’t the ones that she initially thought and may still sometimes think she wanted) and therefore her deepest humanity. Of course, I can only pray that our whole family helps her in the same way. (Certainly her group home community does.) In this way, she can lead us in reaffirming that Ellen and Kelly didn’t “make up” their circumstances and that their upcoming wedding too is a gift, the gift that we are celebrating with them. I love Vanier’s definition of celebration too: “To celebrate is to say we are happy together” (74).
posted by Barb @ 11:05 PM
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