My campaign for the last 45 years has been to help the church see that God thinks people with disabilities should be treated with special honor, and they should be embraced and welcomed. The church is stepping up to speed now. We are excited to see so many congregations across the country developing effective outreaches to those with disabilities, putting people with disabilities in places of leadership, and accommodating more people.
I wanted to pivot for a second and ask you about your book about Brother Lawrence, the monk who wrote about finding God’s presence while doing mundane tasks like working in the kitchen. Why revisit that book now?
Well, I read that book back in the ’60s, when it was very popular, and everybody seemed to be reading it. Then when COVID occurred in 2020, and we were all sequestered and reading everything we had on our bookshelves, I pulled it down, reread it, looked at it, and thought, “Oh, my goodness, this is the way I live.”
I practice the presence of Jesus every single day. Except I’m not working among pots and pans in a kitchen. I’m working with wheelchairs and battery chargers and leg bags and bedpans and things like that. It was an interesting journey looking through it and thinking, “Wow, I can write something a little more current,” but yet, at the same time, introduce a whole new generation to Brother Lawrence, in hopes that they will pick his work off the library shelf as well.
RNS does a lot of reporting on the changing religious landscape and the way that the loss of influence has made religious people very tense and worried. What do you say to people who worry about losing cultural power?
Culture is not changed just because you vote somebody into office. It begins with your own life, the way you relate at the grocery store, the way you relate to your neighborhood. If everybody who is worried about losing influence would just start influencing for good the people in their neighborhood — the elderly person down the street, the mom with a special needs child — we can make a difference. That’s where culture happens.
When we care for people in our neighborhoods, in the grocery store and in the marketplace, we invite other people to care, and we invite other people to experience what community should be like. Culture changes on a local level, (with) prayer and a good solid witness. In other words, “Here’s my life. What can I do to make your life happy and more meaningful? How can I serve you today? What can I do to assist you?”
I mean, we’re all starved for that kind of person in our lives. Each of us can be that person in our communities, and I think that’s where the influence starts.
This article originally appeared here.
