Comments on: The Young Man and His Vocation (1925-26): Lesson 17: Vocations for the Disabled and for Special Conditions

By: Researcher

Researcher — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:17:16 +0000

Oh, Ardis, I don’t know that you want to hear my ramblings. As any long-time reader of Keepa knows, I am the mother of a medically disabled child. He is more or less normal except for his single ventricle (Fontan) circulation and is doing exceptionally well for his condition. He is having a full and active life, and we hope that will be the case for many years to come, but there are so many unknowns, and we live in a world of medical visits and medical terminology and studies and online heart groups and regularly need to pray and express support and concern for parents with a recently-diagnosed child and for those with children going in for surgery and those who lost a child to this condition, and I live in the world of discussions about Social Security Disability and Medicaid and Loophole State Secondary Insurance Programs and organ donation and transplantation and concern about the function of other organs besides the heart, and complications of the condition and surgeries as well as the possibility of complications and concern about private insurance and preexisting conditions and funding for special education programs and Medicaid.

But said child just walked from one room to the next singing, “My life is a gift, my life has a plan…”

So let me get back to you another time on what I thought about this post.

By: J. Stapley

J. Stapley — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:10:43 +0000

If I were to have guessed, I would have thought that this was written later, but it does have elements of Grant’s self sufficiency incorporated in it.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:06:49 +0000

I’d welcome your rant if it’s still bubbling, Researcher. While I appreciate the lesson’s recognition that a disability doesn’t necessarily render a person absolutely helpless and hopeless and incapable of contributing to this world, every reader could probably find a different reason for objecting to some part of it.

Here’s mine, mildly stated: Cory Hanks and Helen Keller were both, essentially, motivational speakers. They told their personal stories of not shriveling up in isolation, but of learning to face the world. “I faced the world by learning to tell my story about facing the world by telling my story about facing the world by telling my story.” This is not a career option for very many people — the world can absorb only a few such motivational speakers at a time before their story becomes routine and less motivational. These two extraordinary people are not role models for economic independence.

By: Researcher

Researcher — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:38:48 +0000

I'm going to have to delete the rant that this post has provoked, and instead I'll just say: thank goodness some of the discourse and practice surrounding handicap and disability changed in the Progressive Era, and has changed even more in recent times, and thank goodness the church is trying to train its leaders and members to have a greater understanding of disability, but we still have a long way to go in the church and especially in our society before we are ministering to the poor and needy in the way we should.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:02:55 +0000

They didn’t give me an answer key, Mark.

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:52:22 +0000

Are we supposed to answer “Italy and Mexico” to question number 2??