SandiC
Language of Prayer/Sermons!
Posted on: 09/22/2009 09:23
They did it again. A prayer to the Lord to help those who need our pity: the disenfranchised. The poor, the ill, the homeless, the addict, those in jail, the disabled.....
The last man theory one more time. Your momma said, "If you think you've got it bad, think of someone worse off then you." I get to be the last man, worse off than most. Language again, inattention to language. What are we saying when we lump the disabled with the homeless, the poor, the sick and dying? Are the disabled the last man? Frankly, it's plain insulting to most disabled persons. Just because you deal with a disability doesn't mean you are any of the above! You MAY be, that's true, but not because you are disabled. Tsk tsk mr minister. Oops, minister person. My favorite saying, "I was sad because I had no legs. Then I met a man who had no class." Please, don't class disabled as last man.
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Melchizedek
Posted on: 09/22/2009 12:09
I could, with tongue in cheek, rationalize the insensitive minister who marginalized the groups you speak about by praying for 'them' as if 'they' are a different species entirely, by thinking that perhaps s/he was using the word 'disabled' in its cyber/computer lexography: that is, anyone who has been disengaged from fully functioning as part of the larger system (i.e. my anti-virus programme has become disabled, or the airbag in my car has become disabled) As someone with a 'differently-abled' physiology, I guess I could say that my cultural normalcy had been disabled in vitro. hmmmmmm In this context, any worship leader who prayed over me with special reference to my specifically-disabled function would obviously have had her/his sensitivity disabled and I would happily 'disable' myself from her/his ability to speak to me as quickly as I was able.