This. Is. SO important. Despite that some would consider me's a heathern, I tenaciously believe our sense of spirituality and need for many (including myself) to connect to something greater than ourselves is a fundamental human right. For too long, faith communities have been denying our disAbility population that right. Yes. You read that right. Others of you who live within the disAbility and are reading this are vigorously shaking your heads and sayin': "Yeah, got that right."

The numbers are depressingly astronomical: 75 percent. That's seventy-five percent of families who would attend a faith community…But. Do. Not. They do not because they are invisible, ignored, asked to leave, misunderstood, and sometimes even cannot get in because of lack of physical accessibility. We're talking about God here, people! Access! Access! Inclusion! Faith for All! Families and individuals with disAbilities have the right and the need to be included within faith communities. For Christians: WWJD? (Interestingly, for social reasons, my daughter attends a local version of a national ministry of the impressively led YoungLife called Capernaum.  I'm totally touched and impressed that the inspiration for the name of this YoungLife branch is Capernaum, the city. My cob-webbed memories of Sunday school lessons (remember the old-timely, large, richly colored flip-chart illustrations?) had to be dusted off and reminded that Capernaum–thought it sounded familiar–was the city in the Bible story where men lowered an "infirmed" man on a stretcher from the roof of the building where Jesus was speaking. Talk about accessibility issues! The man's community went to great links to make sure their friend with a bit of a challenge had the same right as everyone else crowded into that clay hut that day. Cool.

Not. Cool. That centuries later, our families are faced with challenges of inclusion in the centers of faith where so many draw spiritual sustenance. Happy fact, however, is…its' changing! In 14 years, I've seen spits, spurts, stops and starts of unified efforts in Nashville to educate faith communities of the needs and how to address them. But there's serious momentum going now. A critical mass. And, one of my favorite drivers of this local movement is Thomas Boehm–a Messianic Jew from a prominent Nashville Jewish family–who founded Faith for All. October 11, in conjunction with Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, which has also taken a serious initiative (because it affects families' quality of life). Yay! Also note an August 27 short workshop more specific to autism and inclusive religious education by the folks at TRIAD*, below. [They know a lot about autism!]

The above is "now," but my story was "then" and still too many others'….When I was married to The Wuzband, we turned to our faith community for solace in the pain of our daughter's new diagnosis. We were met with.  Silence.  We learned only after we left the church that our Sunday School members wanted to reach out to us. They just didn't know what to say. Listen. People!: Say. SOMETHING! Silence is deafening! (Was that politically correct-disAbility speak? Maybe not.) There were several years in one church when I tried to get the ball rolling, recruit volunteers and train them. This was all while in the throes of coordinating and running everything else imaginable for my special needs daughter. I finally threw in the towel and spent many years not attending a church (when I wanted to be,) with later some moderate success followed by disappointments at other churches and a spiritual center. Get it, please: families need respite. They need the ability to sit in peace, like the other congregants around them. And if they are a couple, they deserve to be with one another. I do not view mother in the nursery, swapping off with Daddy an option every other Sunday. C'mon. What are we asking? And what do spiritual communities believe and how are we carrying out what we believe? Huh?

Do the right thing. The spiritual thing. The Christian thing. The Faith Community thing. Include all people in your community. Attend these workshops and conferences. For more info, click here:

Families First Program: Including Childen with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities in Religious Education, *Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD) and also Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, Sat., August 27, 9-11 a.m.

AND

Second Annual Disability and Congregational Inclusion Conference in here in Nashville on October 11, 2011. Co-Hosted by Faith for ALL & VKC. (No web publicity was posted online yet at this writing, but here is a link to the VKC Disabilities, Religion, and Spirituality page. If you want more information, meantime, you can contact Courtney Evans Taylor, M.Div. (courtney.taylor@Vanderbilt.Edu), and she'll email you when registration opens. The address for the collaborating agency, click here: Faith for ALL.

I fancy that posts like these tend to get passed around and shared an extra bit. Great. Please do! That would be mighty inclusive and change-agent of you….