Sidewalk Poetry

I stumbled upon this quote today.  It was written in chalk on the sidewalk:

We must remember that each one of our children
is destined for a mission in life.
Neither we nor they can know what it is,
but we must know and make them believe
that each one has a mission in life
and that she is bound to find out what it is,
that there is some special work for God
which will remain undone unless she does it,
some place in life which no one else can fill....
We must bring home to our children
and to ourselves also,
the responsibilities of our gifts.
We must put our talents at interest
not bury them in the earth
and the reason is sufficient,
that they are God's.

Tropic Thunder

So there is a new movie coming out entitled "Tropic Thunder". Ben Stiller plays an actor who in a subplot had played a man with disabilities in a past movie.

Here is some of the dialogue:

Ben Stiller's character: "There were times when I was doing Jack when I
actually felt retarded. Like really retarded."

Robert Downey Jr.'s character: "Oh yeah. Damn."

Stiller: "In a weird way, I had to sort of just free myself up to believe
that it was okay to be stupid or dumb."

Downey: "To be a moron."

Stiller: "Yeah."

At another point, about acting like a person with intellectual disabilities,
they say:

Stiller: "It's what we do, right?"

Downey: "Everybody knows you never do a full retard."

Stiller: "What do you mean?"

Downey: "Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, 'Rain Man,' look retarded, act
retarded, not retarded. Count toothpicks to your cards. Autistic, sure. Not
retarded. You know Tom Hanks, 'Forrest Gump.' Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe.
Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong
competition. That ain't retarded. You went full retard, man. Never go full
retard."


Pretty sad. Both b/c of the ways in which I have seen folks at L'Arche blatantly discriminated against and shunned, but even more so for its ramifications on those who are not "disabled". In a culture that says you are only worth what you can produce or what you can achieve, folks with disabilities teach us something new about the unconditional love of God. They can give hope to our impoverished way of seeing the world, God, and ourselves. It does something destructive to ourselves and our souls to degrade human life in that way.

I know many folks will say that we are just forcing the media to be PC, but that is to over-estimate the powerful way in which the words we use not only describe the world around us, but also the way in which the words we use create a world around us. The way we speak of reality also influences the way we and other experience the world. I have alternately cried or shaken with anger in public when Walton offers his hand in friendship to people when out on the street or at Starbucks and people refuse to shake his hand. Some people pretend they don't see him, a common thing that many people do to folks with disabilities, but some people have even told me that they will not shake his hand. When we understand that films like this reinforce a culture of exclusion and hatred toward people with disabilities, a culture that tells Walton that he is less than human simply b/c of the way he was born, I hope we will summon the goodness of our own humanity to stand against this portayal of people with disabilities. We have perhaps a few cheap laughs to gain, but I think we lose a lot of our humanity in the process.

Who said it?

"The poor man's son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around him, admires the condition of the rich. … It appears in his fancy like the life of some superior rank of beings, and, in order to arrive at it, he devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. … Through the whole of his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age he should at last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable to that humble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it. … Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which in spite of all our care are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. They are immense fabrics, which it requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season. They keep off the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much, and sometimes more exposed than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and to death."



-Adam Smith