If you walk through the doors of the building where I work on a Monday afternoon a woman named Kimmie* will undoubtedly greet you. She will probably be wearing her trademark rainbow fedora, leggings beneath jean shorts, and something hot pink. She’ll take a pink earphone out of her ears and you’ll hear pop music blaring as she introduces herself. Then she’ll want you to meet Mama J (also known as Julia), a BJM staff member and something of a surrogate mother to Kimmie. When Kimmie found housing earlier this month (a literal miracle in the Tenderloin), she immediately called Julia and they rejoiced together. Julia even gathered the BJM staff together to host a house-warming party for Kimmie. I felt privileged to attend this party and to be welcomed into Kimmie’s home after helping carry a few gifts there.

This may sound strange, but there is one factor that makes Julia and Kimmie’s relationship especially meaningful to me: Kimmie is transgender. To be honest, when I came to BJM, knowing that it grew out of an evangelical Christian missions organization, I was a little fearful of how they would view and treat trans people in the city. I thought, if I have to spend my entire summer either biting my tongue or trying to convince these people to call a transgender woman “she,” I’m not going to make it. Fortunately, from the first day, BJM dispelled the assumptions that I was trying to resist making.

Now, I don’t want to misrepresent BJM. Although Julia is affirming of transgender lifestyles, from what I can tell, most people here foster a fairly traditional understanding of gender identity. However, there is diversity of opinion, and most of all, there is an attitude of respect for all people. Regardless of her anatomy, if a person who identifies as a woman comes through our doors, she will be referred to by the pronoun she chooses. But, in reality, that’s pretty superficial. That’s the bare minimum of what BJM strives to do. Every Monday, BJM hosts an outreach called Nail Day in which women from the community come for free manicures. Many trans women attend. Volunteers and staff hold their hands, look into their eyes, and talk with them for about 45 minutes at a time. It’s an intimate moment. This is more than respect; this is love.

Although some of my thoughts and opinions are still more progressive than many at BJM, somehow I know that if get on a high horse I will get knocked down. So I’ve gone ahead and taken my foot out of the stirrup. I may have read scholarly articles by trans people. I may be swimming in a sea of queer theology and academic jargon. I may even be “Safe Space” certified, but this does not mean that I know how to love trans people. Political correctness is not love. The women of BJM are teaching me how to love trans women. And Jesus is teaching us all.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading The Long Loneliness, the autobiography of the legendary Catholic social activist Dorothy Day. As the publisher raves on the back cover, Day was “unstinting in her commitment to peace, nonviolence, racial justice, and the cause of the poor and the outcast.” She was at the forefront of the social revolutions of her time and an inspiration to activists like Thomas Merton, Michael Harrington, Cesar Chavez, and many more.

As I read her story, I too am inspired by her courage, her compassion, and her piety. But sometimes…. I think she’s kind of sexist. Especially when she says things like,

“I am quite ready to concede now that men are the single-minded, the pure of heart, in these movements. Women by their very nature are more materialistic, thinking of the home, the children, and of all things needful to them, especially love…” (The Long Loneliness, 60)

Day was quite obviously forward-thinking, but how could she have said these things about women? How could she care so much about socioeconomic inequality but not about gendered inequality? In The Moral Vision of Dorothy Day: A Feminist Perspective, June O’Connor recognizes that Day’s moral vision was affected by “sexist thought patterns that she inherited and sustained,” but she argues that there is a “hidden feminist dimension” to her writings. In essence, she, like all of us, was trapped in her time. This doesn’t make her impervious to critique, but it does make her understandable.

In response, I’ve been asking myself the following questions:

If someone read my autobiography 100 years from now, which of my opinions would seem incredibly shortsighted and ignorant to her?

In what ways am I “trapped in my time”?

What are my ugly thoughts?

I’ve been trying to apply this to my thoughts about transgender people and other marginalized groups. I haven’t had any breakthroughs. While I’m happy to distance myself and point out that “the Church’s” thoughts about women, homosexuals, and others have been ugly, I can’t fully exclude myself from this group. Although I’ve changed as I’ve studied, prayed, and listened over the past few years–and I believe that God, in Her graciousness, has redeemed many of my thoughts–I’m far from having it all right. It’s still much easier to see the speck in someone else’s eye than the log in your own. I think Jesus said that…

Mostly I’m just thankful that I’m only 21. I have plenty of time for self-critique. In a particularly frank moment of self-scrutiny, Dorothy Day wrote this:

“I do not know how sincere I was in my love of the poor and my desire to serve them… I wanted to go on picket lines, to go to jail, to write to influence others and so make my mark on the world. How much ambition and how much self-seeking there was in all this!” (60)

Sometimes I see this attitude in myself and I’m actively trying to resist it. I thank God for bringing me to BJM and for introducing me to people like Kimmie as I continue this struggle.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the women in this community.

The Exodus

“During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites!…The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!” So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing….. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves” (Exodus 12:31-37).

“I was making dinner for my children. I had one child strapped to my back, and one in my stomach. It was then men from Burmese government came. They broke into my house and asked me where my husband was. They wanted to take him for forced labor, to carry their equipment. I would never see him again. I said I didn’t know where he was. They put a gun to my head in front of my children and asked me where he was again. I said I didn’t know where he was. They let me live. I was very lucky. I took my kids and my husband and wrapped up my food… it wasn’t fully cooked because we had to run. We ran for 4 days to the refugee camp on the Thai/Burmese border. They burned down my house when I left. We stayed there for 9 years before leaving for America. This happens to my people every day” (Mrs. Q, a Karen Refugee).

As Mrs. Q spoke in her native tongue, her words were gently translated to the room. All of us who were gathered—including three other Karen refugees who I was interviewing, and me–fell silent. As her story unfolded, the atmosphere in the office palpably changed. The air felt thick, sorrowful, and sacred. We sat under a holy mist, consecrated by her story, in solidarity with our sister who had experienced too much.

The Karen people are a minority comprising 7% of the total Burmese population. They have been persecuted by the government for their religious (Christian), ethnic, and resulting political status. A 2005 New York Times report by Guy Horton reported, “documented slave labor, systematic rape, the conscription of child soldiers, massacres and the deliberate destruction of villages, food sources and medical service[1]”. BBC has estimated that up to 200,000 Karen have been driven from their homes since the 1950’s, with 160,000 living in refugee camps. The other 40,000 have been resettled to various locations including, of all places, Oakland, California.

It is no surprise that Mrs. Q parallels her experience to the Israelites who God liberated, leading them away from a corrupt political tyrant in Egypt and (…400 years later) into their promised land. She knowingly laughed as she told us that she too was forced to take her half-cooked food on the run. God is the same faithful God even now. As Mrs. Q was honoring us by sharing her story, her love for God was visibly overflowing in her narrative, yet the lines etched on her face and the sadness that occasionally graced her eyes spoke another story and forced me to wonder about questions that she may too have wrestled with:

What about the people who were not as lucky as Mrs. Q?

…Did God’s saving grace not apply to them?

For those still in Burma, who have been internally displaced, who are now foreigners in an alien land, or in a refugee camp, what does liberation look like?

Perhaps dejectedly:

What could I even possibly do about it?

My adrenals are activated knowing how easily these questions can snowball into an existential crisis reminiscent of my first year at university when I found out the Israelites may not have actually crossed the Red Sea.

What does this mean? For them? For me? For the nature of God?

Elsa Tamez, a Latin American liberationist theologian, is all too familiar with these questions and writes in The Bible of the Oppressed, “The Bible does not hesitate to speak of oppression as an action directed against Yahweh Himself” (38). For Tamez, the entire biblical narrative must be read in light of God liberating God’s people from oppression. It should not merely be another easily overlooked theme. From the freeing of the slaves in Egypt to Jesus saving the adulterous woman from death by the religious leaders, God has continually shown God’s hatred of oppression. At every moment in history God has been in solidarity with the oppressed so that they may be assured that love and liberation will be realized.

For Tamez, God of Abraham is not an unfeeling deity that floats around in the sky, that plays with the life of humans like the pantheon of Greek Gods. While I hesitate to quote C.S. Lewis (as I am afraid it may induce an eye roll from a number of academics and disillusioned Protestants), Lewis brings Tamez’s quote to life through an image of God’s grief in light of injustice in The Magician’s Nephew.

“‘But please, please – won’t you – can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?’ 

Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great.’” 

What if, in an ineffable cosmic algorithm, God is somehow bound?

What if, instead of being sidetracked by passionate anger at God for a perceived lack of saving grace, we put that same passion into enacting Jesus’ call? God is waiting for us to express our faith in God through a public display of love; love which looks like working towards justice for our neighbor.

What would a world look like if we were more like Mrs. Q and truly believed that we are mandated to be the hands and feet of Christ through the Holy Spirit; coupled with the constant hope that Yahweh will do what Yahweh has always done in the biblical narrative, which is to bring justice to the oppressors and liberation to the oppressed?

“Love and truth will meet; justice and peace will kiss each other. Truth will spring up from the ground and justice will look down from the sky. Yea, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. Justice will go before him, and make his footsteps a way” (Psalm 85:11-13).

1. [1]A witness’s plea to end Myanmar abuse‘, by John Macgregor, New York Times, May 19, 2005.

“To love another person is to see the face of God.” -Victor Hugo

I can picture it now: I was sitting near the stir-fry bar in Newcomb dining hall cramming for my Hebrew Bible exam in early December when I was presented with a welcome distraction. No, I’m not talking about the fish tacos. I received an email that morning from the manager of the Project on Lived Theology, asking me to advertise something about some random summer internship to a Christian apologetics club of which I am a part. I had never before heard of this organization, and suddenly I forgot entirely about my previous task of learning to spell “Tanakh” correctly (come on, Hebrew!) and became entrenched in finding all information I could about this initiative and its summer internship.

Having wiffle-waffled in my own personal view of theology in recent years, I knew I had always struggled to see it as valuable in its own right. Although I was drawn to the idea of worshipping God with one’s mind, I usually left even charitable discussions of theology with a nagging emptiness indicative of wasted time. “God’s relation to time is really, really cool- but what does this say about how I am to relate to God and other people? How does this teach me to love other people better?” Theology was for me, at best, interesting intellectual gymnastics, and I regarded my own interest in it as selfish. At the same time, I really thought there was something to the idea of “worshipping God with your mind,” but usually confined this to what I believed to be necessarily a relational and evangelistic use of apologetics.

Flash back to Newcomb. Pieces started to fit together like a puzzle. I am double-majoring in speech therapy and religious studies, and I was looking for an opportunity to delve deeper into something related to either of those over the summer. Usually when I explain my major to people, I am met with a confused look and/or awkward silence to which I reply “Yeah… I know they don’t really go together… I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life.” It only goes downhill from there. I have gotten all sorts of career counseling, from “You could teach communications at a Christian school!” to “You could help preachers with speech impediments!”

So naturally, when considering a program whose goal is to integrate theology into the banality of everyday life rather than segregate it, it did not take me long to decide to apply. And here I am! One of the things I love about the Project on Lived Theology is how individualized each internship can be. I was encouraged to pick an issue that mattered to me, spend some time serving that cause, and then spend time thinking about the theological implications of the issue. I decided to do my project on the topic of disability, exploring what it looks like to construct a theological framework which honors and empowers people with disabilities.

The organization that I will be working with this summer is the Virginia Institute of Autism (VIA) here in Charlottesville, Virginia. As an intern, I will be learning how to implement a relatively new form of behavioral therapy called applied behavioral analysis therapy (ABA) in VIA’s youngest classroom. VIA’s mission is to “help people overcome the challenges of autism through innovative, evidence-based programs in education, outreach and adult services.” There are several different classrooms according to age group, and instruction occurs either 1:1, 2:1, or in a small group setting according to the needs of each student. Because of the extremely low instructor: student ratio, students receive very individualized instruction and data is taken on every activity and analyzed for progress on various prescribed goals. I will be spending most of my time in the youngest classroom, consisting of eight students between the ages of 5 and 9.

In an attempt to learn how to think theologically about this project, I have been reading about several church fathers’ and modern theologians’ views on disability and its theology. Honestly, I have been surprised at the breadth of work that has been done on “theology of disability” and have come to see that the question of disability is necessarily connected to deeper philosophical and metaphysical commitments. For example, one’s answer to the question of disability largely depends on one’s prior answer to the question “What does it mean to be human?”

Greats of the Christian tradition such as Augustine, Calvin, and Luther all contain some degree of internal tension in the way they discuss disability. Many share the often counter-cultural concern of providing for people with disabilities, both ecclesially and governmentally, as well as a rich understanding of the Imago Dei as present in all humans. However, their stubborn insistence that rationality is what separates man from beast seems de facto to exclude people with certain cognitive disabilities, which would include many of the children I am working with at VIA. Personally, I found Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s response to be the most effective in assessing “the real problem” in discussions of disability. Growing up in a context in which the Imago Dei was effectively smashed to pieces in Nazi Germany, his reflections on what it means to be human are particularly emotionally charged. His response to the question of how a Christian ought to think about disability is particularly paradigm-shifting. Scholar Brand Wannenwetsch offers a synthesis of Bonhoeffer’s opinion as it applies to current debates about the language used to describe disability: “Should we ‘include’ the disabled in the protective zone of the language of ‘personhood,’ a moral attitude which would still be based on a condescending ‘us-them’ rationale, or should we instead summon those who consider themselves not disabled to find themselves included in the same frail and dependent human existence as God’s creatures that the disabled exemplify?” (Wannenwetsch 364).

Maybe it is not simply more inclusive language that is needed in a theological framework of disability, but a shift from the ground up in how we talk about the human condition. Maybe able-bodied humans are not born in a state that is “already closer to the ideal.” As my professor Dr. Paul Jones has said in conversation, “maybe there are ways of entering into the suffering of Christ, and even doing theology, that only people with disabilities can do.” This strikes me as incredibly apt. In a time where experience is being seen as more and more informative for theology, maybe “able-bodied” needs to be understood as a category of privilege right alongside “white,” “male,” and “straight”.

Thinking about theology as more and more experiential has led me to begin to see what this “lived theology” thing is all about. What is theology if it is not lived? Can a theology with no inherent attempt to wrestle with its implications for “real life” truthfully be called “theology” at all? What if God is not primarily defined by his abstract attributes (omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience), but by his entering into the human condition? What if it is God’s actions that define him more fully than anything else? And what if the moment in which we most clearly perceive God is not when we finally “get” the best analogy to explain the Trinity (good luck with that), but when we look into the eyes of another human being made in his image?

Wannenwetsch,Brand. “’My Strength Is Made Perfect In Weakness’: Bonhoeffer and the War over Disabled Life.” Disability in the Christian Tradition. Ed. Brian Brock and John Swinton. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012. 353-390. Print.