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Sabbath Devotional :: The Power of Personal Narrative in Creating Identity and Vision
As a junior in high school, I usually enjoyed my popular Thomas Hardy/Charles Dickens English class with Mr. Thompson. He had a quick wit and engaging teaching style that usually led to interesting discussions among my classmates about all kinds of social topics. On one particular morning, as I sat ready to participate in our literature discussion, Mr. Thompson began with the following statement: “As we all know, religious people are just looking for a crutch to explain their suffering.” As a devoted religious teenage girl living in a largely secular community in Northern California, I sat there shocked, but silent. I was not prepared to say anything to contradict…
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Are You Aware? Life From My Point of View
This is part III in our Awareness Wednesday series on disability. Read the other posts in the series here. It is 2:30 p.m. and I’m sitting on the steps in front of the school waiting for the taxi that will take me, Connie, and Billy home. I’m working on my homework, which is reading. It is fun, and I’m learning more and more. I’m recovering from my first grade year of school in the U.S., where the teacher had no clue how to teach low-vision children. I’m now in a new school and must be transported to another town. The taxi arrives: It’s the white van and that means Ray. Ray…
