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Youths Challenged on Attitudes to Disability

Episcopal News Service. May 24, 1984 [84111]

Anita Monsees, The Messenger

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (DPS, May 24) -- What does it feel like to be mentally retarded? To have a hearing problem? To be blind? To need a wheelchair to get from one place to another?

Young people from parishes all over the 14-county Episcopal Diocese of Central New York learned some answers to those and many other questions about disabilities by taking part in simulations at a youth forum May 12 at Trinity Church, here.

Guided by their adult leaders, the young men and women, representing grades 7 through 12, experienced disabilities at first hand and then talked about what those experiences had revealed to them and what their responses as Christians might be.

They also heard from, and talked informally with, the Rev. Nancy L. Chaffee, a recently ordained Episcopal priest who heads Central New York's ministry with persons with disabilities. Chaffee, who was born with cerebral palsy, told her listeners what it was like to buck a system that insisted she was unable to function as a whole and productive person, when she knew she could. She did note, however, the vast amount of energy which must be expended by people with disabilities simply in day-by-day coping.

In her case, cerebral palsy causes her hands to shake and, even with one hand tightly supporting the other, it is difficult for her to do something as ordinary as pick up a piece of paper. She cannot, for example, administer the chalice, and is able to distribute the bread only if someone else holds the paten.

"When I first went to seminary, I thought I would never be able to celebrate the Eucharist," she said. "But now I know that I can't be a priest all by myself. That's what ministry is all about -- sharing the gifts of others in order to use our own gifts to the fullest."

She drew a distinction between disability -- "those things that interfere with the way I do things" -- and handicaps: "We become handicapped only by the attitudes of others."

The simulation segment of the day-long gathering offered a wide variety of challenges designed to give the young people a sense of how it feels not to be in control of one's own body or mental processes. Among these were the following:

  • To gain a sense of the frustrations entailed in learning disabilities, they tried to make drawings by "remote control," relying solely on an image of their hands in a mirror.
  • They took an "unfair" spelling test, in which words were deliberately pronounced unclearly, to gain insights into hearing loss.
  • They tried getting around in a wheelchair and doing ordinary manual tasks wearing gloves.
  • They bumped their way around the room blindfolded or wearing heavily fogged glasses.

In small-group discussions, participants talked about stereotypes associated with disabilities, about their own perceptions of disabilities, and about ways in which the church community might be more accepting and more enabling. There was strong positive response to Chaffee's urging that, to begin with, one should see a disabled person first and foremost as a person, and not in terms of their disability, which represents only one facet of the total individual.

The youth forum concluded with a Eucharist at which Chaffee celebrated, assisted by the Rev. Dustin Ordway, lead rector of Central New York's Oneida Area Episcopal Consortium.

This was the third youth forum to be held in the diocese. The first, a year ago, focused on the nuclear question, and the second, last November, on chemical use and abuse.

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