John Anthony Dunne: We all good to go.
John Anthony Dunne: Well, Amy, thanks so much for joining us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Yeah, thanks for having me.
John Anthony Dunne: So we're really excited to talk about your book. My body is not a prayer request. He tells a little bit about what you are going for in that book, and and what the
John Anthony Dunne: Well, I was gonna say what the thesis is. I think it's pretty straightforward. I love the title I I was telling a colleague earlier, and he's like that is a title you can't forget. I'm like I know it's pretty freaking off. So okay, let me let me. let me try this again.
John Anthony Dunne: Can you tell us a little bit about your your your book, and and what you're trying to set out in it?
Amy Kenny (she/her): The book is a loving clap back
Amy Kenny (she/her): and invitation to the Church that I have grown up in, and been a part of, and want so desperately to live up to, who we say we are and what we say we believe.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and it's inviting people into my world and sharing my story
Amy Kenny (she/her): by sharing some of the harm has been done to me as a disabled woman in church.
Amy Kenny (she/her): hopefully inviting people to a more inclusive way.
Madison Pierce: Did you say a little bit more? And I
Madison Pierce: I think I can anticipate what some of that harm might have looked like. But what are some of the things that you're
Madison Pierce: guarding against? What are you trying to encourage us towards.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I grew up in a home and a church that told me that everyone was made in the image of God.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and I had the audacity to believe that.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and it turned out that
Amy Kenny (she/her): not everyone believes that about my disabled buddy.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and many times dozens of times in my life.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And i'm, sorry if you can hear my husky howling in the background. That but dozens of times in my life
Amy Kenny (she/her): folks from chat to, I think a really well-meaning, have approached me with pat prayers and potions, to
Amy Kenny (she/her): rid me of my disabled body, to get rid of what they consider to be uncomfortable, or something that's broken.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and
Amy Kenny (she/her): that does something to you over time
Amy Kenny (she/her): for people to try to pray you away
Amy Kenny (she/her): for people to unsolicited. Give you advice about how to not be disabled. I've had everything from put Gallic in your socks to hit your leg with a hammer
Amy Kenny (she/her): Somehow i'm still disabled.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and it does something over time to only be able to access the church community because you go in the back entrance with the only the rats for you.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and I think that the book is sharing those experiences as a way to reveal what many people just Haven't even been aware of is very common for us disabled folks in church spaces
Amy Kenny (she/her): and hello to Chris joining us. And Steph.
Chris Porter: Apologies. Zoom is being somewhat obdurant this morning that
Chris Porter: they reset all of our logins Courtesy of a hack, so
Amy Kenny (she/her): no worries. Time is a construct. We're all good
Madison Pierce: if you want to jump in, Chris, by all means. But i'm happy to follow up. Otherwise you go, for I miss the the start of it
Amy Kenny (she/her): like droning on about my both.
No, not at all.
Madison Pierce: and we thank you so much that makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate you articulating that. And i'm sorry because I know we're asking you to relive and to articulate various pain that you've experienced but i'm really appreciative, because there
Madison Pierce: you're right. There are so many who haven't even thought about what that experience might have been like for you.
Madison Pierce: So
Madison Pierce: you've articulated some of the harm that's been done, and I think I you know I've heard I've a friend who has terminal cancer. I have long term health issues. I've heard others articulate similar occurrence, or even I've I had a student with severe mental health concerns
Madison Pierce: each of them, and my and I have articulated the pain that comes in
Madison Pierce: this desire to kind of pray you healed, and then also in some Pentecostal circles. Then there's also the kind of lack of faith, kind of
Madison Pierce: the concern, and all of that. So. oh, yes, the what sin is preventing you from walking. I've had many a time. Yeah, absolutely. So there's a there are a lot of malformed ideas that we have in our churches 101
Madison Pierce: a lot of questions rolling around my head. But one that comes to mind for me is what are some of the theologies or ideologies that you think this represents. So you say that this is about for you is about being rooted in the image.
Madison Pierce: What do these other ideas? What are they rooted in? Perhaps
Amy Kenny (she/her): I think most people are really well meaning.
Amy Kenny (she/her): but they often
Amy Kenny (she/her): have misunderstood disability or misplaced some of what disability represents
Amy Kenny (she/her): for a lot of people. I represent the Ghost of Christmas Future.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and just encountering me at church, at the grocery store at the library.
Amy Kenny (she/her): People are having to think through all of their thoughts on theodicy God's will.
Amy Kenny (she/her): suffering, pain, disability, creation. That's a lot when you just in the the pasta aisle.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And I think what's happening that is, that people are confronted with
Amy Kenny (she/her): the truth that
Amy Kenny (she/her): we are not promised that we will not be disabled. We are not promised
Amy Kenny (she/her): health or illness or wellness, or whatever words you want to use there.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and that makes people really uncomfortable, because I think, on some level, many people have internalized this prosperity gospel that as long as i'm faithful
Amy Kenny (she/her): I will get, and then insert whatever that is here, a life without chronic illness or pain or life without disability.
Amy Kenny (she/her): That's actually not what we promised.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And I think, even even beyond that, though
Amy Kenny (she/her): it's not just that we're not promised it. It's that sometimes folks are failing to even
Amy Kenny (she/her): consider how God is already at work in disability.
Amy Kenny (she/her): So many of the characters in Scripture
Amy Kenny (she/her): are disabled and disabled. Folks are at the forefront of the work that God chooses to do with humanity.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and God is so powerfully at work in and through, and with how disabled body minds
Amy Kenny (she/her): so to try to fix them
Amy Kenny (she/her): or get rid of them
Amy Kenny (she/her): is really problematic on a lot of levels. I mean, Hello, Eugenics, but also it's problematic because God is already
Amy Kenny (she/her): present
Amy Kenny (she/her): in disability.
Steph Judd: Sorry to miss the earlier that I was having some Internet issues that always seem to have
Steph Judd: something that I
Steph Judd: really appreciated in your book. It was the way in which he kind of tried to help people in the church, particularly to stop
Steph Judd: exclusively viewing people with a disability, just as objects of pity or compassion, or You know the recipients of care, and
Steph Judd: start expecting encounter with God, and start expecting what are the gifts and contributions that can be made. Can you talk about the ways in which you've found that shift to be done better than others in church communities?
Amy Kenny (she/her): Actually, there's an AD today. I have. yeah, that's a great question.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I remember one time 7 communion at the church, and someone complained because they didn't want to receive communion from a disabled person.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and I mean I guess they missed the whole. This is my body broken for you, Pop. But
Amy Kenny (she/her): Lol
Amy Kenny (she/her): and I remember the discussions that came out of that, and the way that
Amy Kenny (she/her): various community members actually pushed back on that and said, Well wait. No. This is part of the body. This is part of our body.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and this is part of our community, and someone who is serving with us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and
Amy Kenny (she/her): that complaints
Amy Kenny (she/her): isn't valid.
Amy Kenny (she/her): They didn't ask me back to self community for quite some time. But I can think of examples into personally where community members in my churches have
Amy Kenny (she/her): embraced my disability, have learned with and from my body, mind.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And then, when I have connected that to
Amy Kenny (she/her): the resurrected Christ, to Jacob, to Moses, to me for the chef to pull to Timothy that that has been welcomed with encouragement and with depth.
Amy Kenny (she/her): But I think all the examples I can think of individual and not systemic
Amy Kenny (she/her): and out, based on a few friends in a community and not based on what church leadership has responded.
Steph Judd: Yeah, and I think
Steph Judd: Unfortunately, as as you point out.
Steph Judd: when when communities are
Steph Judd: organized around, what's most efficient, or what might it? What's going to be most.
Steph Judd: you know, cost-effective, like those kinds of metrics being the organizing principle of a community. That's when
Steph Judd: that's when I was in comes before I could you just say, could you just hash out a a shorthand definition of what you mean when you say able to
Amy Kenny (she/her): Ableism is discrimination against disabled folks. But it's much broader and deeper than that. It's a system that places value on people's body minds
Amy Kenny (she/her): based on ideas of what we think of as normal strong smart productive, efficient cost-effective.
Amy Kenny (she/her): So you can connect in there how Ableism upholds racism, colonialism, sexism.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Queer phobia! How it connects to these ideas of hierarchies of humanity.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and how it also sells us this lie that we can be independent, and that we can do everything by ourselves, and we just know that to not be true, it's just that non disabled folks can pretend it's true for a lot longer.
Chris Porter: Yeah.
Chris Porter: thanks for the yeah, thanks for sharing your your with us and
Chris Porter: interested. So
Chris Porter: you've often in in in different places. You've talked about that the
Chris Porter: Let me refrain this
Amy Kenny (she/her): i'll. I'll link it back to to your comedian. thanks so much for sharing your experience with us, Amy.
Chris Porter: Your communion the the story of you 7 communion reminds me of the concerns that the Stewart Long, who is eventually he had muscle present, progressive muscle disorder.
Chris Porter: and it was a Catholic priest and his formation advisors.
Chris Porter: We're hesitant about him be able to serve communion because he might spill the host. And it strikes me that there is this
Chris Porter: idea of the
Chris Porter: the normative things that we do as church communities, and we have certain concerns about those as well.
Chris Porter: and therefore disability challenges those. But the same time, I think sometimes we go then in the other direction, where people are so afraid of the normative that it becomes this. So I think you use the term disabled port or inspiration for
Chris Porter: of the the nature of of elevating someone's disability or a concept of disability into a place of
Chris Porter: yeah.
Chris Porter: I can't think of a word to to describe it.
Chris Porter: But I was wondering
Chris Porter: if you could talk a bit about navigating that that middle space between
Chris Porter: an enabledism on one hand and then a
and
Chris Porter: disability porn, I guess you'd say on the other, some form of prosperity.
Chris Porter: On the other hand.
Amy Kenny (she/her): yeah, it's tricky isn't it because both are rooted in dehumanizing, they just doing it in opposite directions and inspiration porn that that time comes from still a young, and may soon say.
Amy Kenny (she/her): who talk about how as many of us disable folks just navigating the world. People are constantly telling us we're inspiration. We haven't even done anything.
Amy Kenny (she/her): So something I receive a lot is you're such an inspiration, and it's just in the car park or in in the library, and it's from complete strangers, or my husband will receive. Oh, wow! Good for you! For putting up with her disability.
Amy Kenny (she/her): as though the sole purpose of our vows for me to track him into staying with me.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and those are really well-intentioned, but they
Amy Kenny (she/her): a harmful, because it suggests that I am an object, and not a subject. It suggests that i'm an angel and not just a human. And I'm just a girl standing in front of the church asking for them to love us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And I think that
Amy Kenny (she/her): even when
Amy Kenny (she/her): people want to praise just the bare minimum that i'm doing.
Amy Kenny (she/her): it always comes with a a pitch. It comes with a high pitched
Amy Kenny (she/her): tone that only dolphins and dogs can hear.
Amy Kenny (she/her): It comes with a tilted head, and often an actual pass on my head, as though I am a dog.
and
Amy Kenny (she/her): i'm a human. My needs are not special. When you go to a restaurant, don't you want that to be a bathroom for you to use when you go to your workplace, Don't. You want that to be a plan for your evacuation in case of emergency. Those aren't special needs. Those are just human needs.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and both that and then the other thing I receive a lot, which is, I'll kill myself if I had what you had.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Both of those are harmful, and they're both rooted in dehumanizing me.
Madison Pierce: It strikes me that in a lot of ways you know that second category of kind of the inspiration porn is a lot like tokenism.
Madison Pierce: what we see with other minoritized groups where it's sort of like
Madison Pierce: we enjoy that you exist.
Madison Pierce: But there's always a but especially with tokenism. So I wonder, you know, when we hear especially
Madison Pierce: You know those from minoritized racial groups, you know there's a lot of pressure for assimilation. and I can imagine that for you that something like that could be true as well. I don't know if that's a term that would resonate with you. But Are you celebrated in so far as you're not
Madison Pierce: causing trouble or asking for too much? I don't know if that question there, there's a bigger question there, but hopefully, that makes sense
Amy Kenny (she/her): absolutely. And then everyone loves me in a brochure. But the moment that I ask for my needs to be met, i'm excessive or extra, or demanding, or well, you know it's some past has told me one time we we don't want to have a ramp, because only you benefit from that.
Amy Kenny (she/her): That's not for anyone else. We don't have other disabled folks here.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Yeah, I wonder if that's connected to having no ramp. It's sort of a map happening there. But I think
Amy Kenny (she/her): I think what that reveals. There's lots of things that reveals. I'm actually not the only disabled person in the community. It might be the only one whose disability is apparent to you in that moment. But
Amy Kenny (she/her): we know that disabled folks are 15 of the global population and here in the States 26%. So
Amy Kenny (she/her): if I am
Amy Kenny (she/her): the only person that you know of in your community who's disabled, that's a real problem
Chris Porter: erez agmoni it's. It makes me wonder how many parents they have in their community as well, because I can certainly attest that pushing a pram up a ramp is a lot easier than getting a pram into up upstairs, right? And I mean isn't that a great metaphor for how 150
Amy Kenny (she/her): access really helps us all. And
Amy Kenny (she/her): yes, there being a ramp allows for me to access a building. But it also allows for, you know, folks with prams and strollers for anyone with sound equipment. If you're pushing, you know large scale speakers up
Amy Kenny (she/her): a ramp. That's a lot easier than lugging it up and downstairs.
and I think
Amy Kenny (she/her): if we do actually stop to meet the access needs of disabled folks, we will come to find that more and more people have their access needs met who just didn't know that wasn't an option.
Chris Porter: Yeah. And I guess that brings to mind as well the the systemic nature of discrimination in in all all its regards. the the lack of a ramp in this case
Chris Porter: benefits
Chris Porter: discriminates against a lot of people. A lot of people can benefit from a ramp.
Chris Porter: Certainly the church that I did my curiosity as a priest we
Chris Porter: had
Chris Porter: because of a fire we had to we developed part of the site, and we had installed ramps as part of that. and yet the Council, the City Council actually said, No, you can't have a ramp here, because one
Chris Porter: it's obscuring the access to the building for able-bodied people.
Chris Porter: i'm wondering that sort of very strange inversion of
Chris Porter: ability and disability. There.
Chris Porter: it strikes me it as always strike me, struck me as something done is completely bizarre. but
Chris Porter: i'm wondering, do you see that also occurring in other parts of the church. I mean physical access is one area which is very
Chris Porter: easy to see, because it's it's often a physical object which which we can relate to
Chris Porter: in in order to to reckon to remedy the the the disability. But how? How is that happening? More in visible ways, do you think?
Amy Kenny (she/her): And whereabouts is this, Chris?
Chris Porter: This is in Melbourne, Australia.
Chris Porter: wonderful City Council. I won't name. Which Council.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Yeah, that'd be interesting. I Haven't lived in Australia for quite some time, but that would be interesting to compare notes on
Amy Kenny (she/her): the ways that the laws and churches interact, because here in the States churches are exempt from following Ada, the Americans with Disabilities Act, because some church communities actually
Amy Kenny (she/her): petitioned against it. So even now churches are not legally required to have ramps, accessible bathrooms, cab cuts
Amy Kenny (she/her): for any accessible features, because they said some churches said it was too costly.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and a burden to religious exercise to include us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): So
Amy Kenny (she/her): that reveals so much about how people understand disabled folks and the systemic segregation that that has been of disabled folks.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And Ada is just a floor and not a ceiling.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and it doesn't
Amy Kenny (she/her): really account for
Amy Kenny (she/her): many accessibility measures that we know unnecessary for folks to participate.
Amy Kenny (she/her): So a lot of times People think of ramps as access, and they are but so to visual descriptions, sensory rooms, captions asl interpreters.
to name a few.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and the more that we can
Amy Kenny (she/her): destigmatize disability the more that we can make folks understand that everyone has access needs, regardless of whether they are disabled.
Amy Kenny (she/her): The more I think we will, we will hopefully see
Amy Kenny (she/her): folks start to acknowledge their access needs. And then the hope would be that church communities would also meet them
Chris Porter: just in case you wanted to follow up, it's.
Chris Porter: It was city of Melbourne. So since you's Carlton, was the the church that was that we can cut this from the podcast. John definitely. Don't put this out there, but they refuse to have
Chris Porter: allow us to put a ramp in
Chris Porter: So
Steph Judd: Amy something that I've grappled with in in the course of my life I have a an acquired physical disability has been
Steph Judd: the way in which we understand healing in the context of pain. So something that I really appreciate about you, because the way you I mean, i'm. So i'm deeply sorry for the experiences that
Steph Judd: you've had with unsolicited offers of prayer for healing.
Steph Judd: But
Steph Judd: I wanted to hear your wisdom on how you navigate the kind of
Steph Judd: between the train of yes, the cult of normalcy and the presumptions that are freighted in that, in in those presumptions.
Steph Judd: in in that assumption of normalcy and
Steph Judd: the
Steph Judd: you know the good impulse behind wanting to be free of pain.
Steph Judd: Could you just speak about some of your experience and wisdom in in that space?
Amy Kenny (she/her): What I received so much from that question, aside from you, calling me wise, which is nice to to receive. But what I received so much from that question is this desire for us not to have binaries for everything? And I think that's one of the issues here is that
Amy Kenny (she/her): the moment that someone thinks of disability or talks about disability, it becomes conflated with a bunch of other things, and these issues are complex and nuanced and contextual, and too often with conflating disability and pain, as though everyone who lives with chronic pain is always disabled, and that's just that just doesn't matter
Amy Kenny (she/her): up in people's lived experiences.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Something I have found great comfort in
is that
Amy Kenny (she/her): my disability is dynamic. The you know how much pain i'm in one day versus the next. What I
Amy Kenny (she/her): can physically do one day to the next really fluctuates. Some days I need help getting dressed other days. I
Amy Kenny (she/her): I don't, and that idea of disability being dynamic
Amy Kenny (she/her): is for me really connected to
Amy Kenny (she/her): the different forms that we experience got in
Amy Kenny (she/her): disability. I think of as a form outside the norm that shifts over time.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and when I think of God, I think
Amy Kenny (she/her): you know God is burning bush and rock and cloud above and fire.
Amy Kenny (she/her): God is in the still small voice and pregnant belly, and the stars above, and that fluctuating way that we get to experience. God
Amy Kenny (she/her): allows for us to understand a different aspect of God in each of those
Amy Kenny (she/her): forms
Amy Kenny (she/her): while still retaining
Amy Kenny (she/her): the divine.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And I like to think
Amy Kenny (she/her): of
Amy Kenny (she/her): my disabled body fluctuating in that same kind of way.
Steph Judd: Yeah, thank you. And I think that that in it links up with
Steph Judd: something that you you've spoken about, and some of the other guests in this series have also pointed out the difference between curing bodies and healing lives, and what what? What? The wholeness that is held out in those 101
Steph Judd: quote unquote healing narratives. What fullness of life looks like? Is there such a diversity in in that?
Steph Judd: Something that
Steph Judd: that
Steph Judd: I
Steph Judd: wanted to ask you about?
Steph Judd: Was that you, you
Steph Judd: you point to the
Steph Judd: the the scars in the body of the resurrected Christ, as
Steph Judd: as you know, subverting our assumptions about what
Steph Judd: the resurrection. Hope he is.
Steph Judd: I've heard some people say that. that
Steph Judd: there's a difference between a wounded body and a disabled body, and that that should affect the way that we understand resurrection. Hope. Could you talk to us about how, when you think about
Steph Judd: the new creation? What are some of the
Steph Judd: the guiding principles that you think we should
Steph Judd: hold on to, because it obviously it's such a speculative endeavor. But, what are some of the like? The hand holds that you take when you think about what that hope is, because I think that hope does shape how we treat people.
Steph Judd: Now. so, For example, when you look at Paul, and he says all our bodies will be transformed. What does that mean? And how do we? How do we interpret and apply that to our own discipleship and also discipleship in the context of communities.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I think Luke 14 is really
Amy Kenny (she/her): central for me here in imagining new creation. This is, I mean, generally taken to be eschatology; and this great banquet.
Amy Kenny (she/her): where Jesus describes that poor and disabled people will be invited first, and dine at this banquet, where there is enough for everyone.
is really
Amy Kenny (she/her): significant. There's no talk of Qa. There's no talk of critique.
Amy Kenny (she/her): There's no condemnation. There's just community.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and is enough.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I also really
Amy Kenny (she/her): relate to the
Amy Kenny (she/her): the Scott resurrected body of Christ, because it does so that what we expect is beautiful and holy and perfect.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and those are all concepts that have been weaponized against me.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And so to
Amy Kenny (she/her): get to revel in
Amy Kenny (she/her): the scars.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and for those to be the mocks about healing, and for that, to be the example of the imperishable form that Paul talks about is really significant.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Now this
Amy Kenny (she/her): this image, as well in Daniel and Ezekiel of God reigning on
Amy Kenny (she/her): a chair with wheels. And that sounds a lot like a wheelchair to me.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and it also just gives me an imagination. For
how new creation
Amy Kenny (she/her): is. Probably nothing like what any of us picture, because how could we fad them? The depths of its splendor?
Amy Kenny (she/her): But
Amy Kenny (she/her): I know that there won't be paying.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and Ableism is painful.
I know that they won't be
Amy Kenny (she/her): suffering.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and so many of us have suffered from the ways that churches have treated us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and so I think
Amy Kenny (she/her): I also think this
Amy Kenny (she/her): God is big enough
Amy Kenny (she/her): that it can be different for each person. I don't think that
Amy Kenny (she/her): necessarily we all have to have the exact same image
Amy Kenny (she/her): as long as that image is celebrating
the
Amy Kenny (she/her): way that each of us are created in God's image.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And hello to Chris.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Hey.
Kris Song: hey? I'm so sorry I'm jumping in late. I just needed to make sure that I said, Hi to Amy, how are you doing, Amy. It's really good to see your face. You, too. I'm. Good. Now that you're here, none of these clowns. How are you?
Kris Song: I'm doing really good. you know we all miss you at the Park, and maybe I should give my friends some context. Amy and I we met do during
Kris Song: doing a out outreach ministry over at Hart Park and Orange
a ministry
Kris Song: focusing on some of the homeless community that lives out there in Orange.
Kris Song: especially at the time that Amy and her husband Andrew got started.
homelessness was, and it still is. It's a significant problem in Orange County, California.
and Amy and Andrew were one of the the folks that really
spearheaded and made that ministry
I keep going, and
and it's still the momentum of all that is still still going on. So
Kris Song: we we still talk about you. Your name comes up all the time out there.
and
Oh.
Kris Song: no, all good, all good.
And
Kris Song: yeah. So
Kris Song: I don't even know. I I hope that it isn't duplicative of anything that was shared before. But
I think it. It definitely
Kris Song: gives a little bit more to to Dr. Kenny, and
kind of what makes her tick
and the way that she
is kind of constantly reaching out and and hope helping folks out in the margins.
John Anthony Dunne: I don't know who wants to. Oh, go ahead.
Chris Porter: Well, actually what what Chris was saying. We actually fits really, really Well, with what I was about to ask Amy. but I was gonna say, you know now that Chris is here. It's not just dominated by the Australians.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I actually prefer it that way. Yeah.
Amy Kenny (she/her): being dominated by the
Chris Porter: there's a danger there.
Chris Porter: A. And and I don't. So, John, are you gonna
Chris Porter: cut what Chris has just said? And in here, or are you going to put it somewhere else, or
John Anthony Dunne: I I wasn't assuming that we were using what? Chris what? Chris said. if Christmas turn it into a question or something, then feel free.
John Anthony Dunne: Well, no, I I as Chris. I thought you were just giving us context, because
Chris Porter: you cause you I I wasn't sure so just because it part of it when you when you
Chris Porter: if it towards the end of what you're saying, Chris.
Kris Song: it sounded like it something that would actually fit quite well in somewhere in the pod. That's all sure. Yeah, I don't know if I should give it another go or not, and it might just turn out that it was just better the first time around. I don't know we'll have to to hear it back. But
John Anthony Dunne: That was just my long long-winded way of saying Hi to Amy. That's what I took it to. Maybe i'll ask the question without reference. What you're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think Chris song, if you want to, maybe include that in the introduction. You know that we could. We could do that as well. Sure, you know some context for how you know, Amy etc.
John Anthony Dunne: Yeah. Great
Chris Porter: I mean a a few times. you've talked about the the nature of having people around you and and building community and and that nature of of the community of the saints. I i'm sorry if you can talk a little bit more about that. What that actually looks like, within the the disability context what it looks like
Chris Porter: with
Chris Porter: bringing people together in support for each other. And and also then what that looks like in as a model for the church community as a whole.
Chris Porter: So you can see that where I was riffing off what Chris is saying, because he was talking about where you are, I'm: trying to people together. Yeah.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Think Sometimes when we talk about community, we picture it being this really pristine and perfect thing. Or we talk about church churches as though they are families, and we forget most of our families are a mess, and I think that community is messy.
Amy Kenny (she/her): It's delightfully messy. It's it is healing, but that takes time, and it takes
Amy Kenny (she/her): investing in people. And I talk in the book about this idea of crypt time that time doesn't necessarily
Amy Kenny (she/her): happen in a linear incremental fashion for disabled folks. It happens in a way that's messy and complicated and cyclical, and I relate that to this idea of the way that God might experience time.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And
Amy Kenny (she/her): I think about this notion of moving at the speed of love
Amy Kenny (she/her): that some theologians talk about, and what that would actually look like in practice if we did that for one another.
Amy Kenny (she/her): If we slow down from our busy schedules, and we actually invested in one another.
Amy Kenny (she/her): If we recognized that
Amy Kenny (she/her): someone is worth changing our language over or changing our our practices over that, we can stretch ourselves enough
Amy Kenny (she/her): to include someone in the community who makes us feel slightly uncomfortable, or who we're not used to. We can get to know them.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And I think in those small acts of faithfulness we're helping create that co- flourishing, that that restoration of the goodness between us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): we're helping
Amy Kenny (she/her): make
Amy Kenny (she/her): community with one another where we can all thrive.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And we're really practicing what we see in the life of Jesus, that the everyday food of bread and wine and nothing Fancy
Amy Kenny (she/her): is
Amy Kenny (she/her): the setting
Amy Kenny (she/her): for
Amy Kenny (she/her): the sacred being in the mundane
Steph Judd: really like the way that you
Steph Judd: talk about how
Steph Judd: disability presents an opportunity
Steph Judd: for holy disruption in our communities. And when you sequester that off into the segregated services.
Steph Judd: we're all the poorer for it. Something that's come up a little bit in our series has been that question of
Steph Judd: you know. Ha! You know, in trying to accommodate people with different needs in our church communities.
Steph Judd: You know what the is. Is there ever a role for kind of having different services that a tailor in in the way that they
Steph Judd: a structured. Ge. If you have thoughts on that in the way, in the sense that
Steph Judd: you know, on the one hand, yes, you want to be
Steph Judd: ensuring that people have a place to belong.
Steph Judd: But then,
Steph Judd: we we we're we're robbing ourself of the opportunity, for
Steph Judd: you know we can't get the full body of Christ unless we're all there.
Steph Judd: Do you have any thoughts on on that question of this? Having separate tailored services.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I generally think separate is not equal.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I think we have lots of historical examples to show that. And even when we try to say that there's a service that is just as important, it often isn't.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And I also think that
Amy Kenny (she/her): body of Christ example that you are referencing is so important. The non disabled folks cannot say to the disabled folks. I have no need of you.
Amy Kenny (she/her): How preposterous would that be! And that's really what we're doing in the body we aren't. Allowing for the holy disruption the disability brings. We often have idols of certainty and order
Amy Kenny (she/her): and silence, and not the kind of knowing silence and the you know the holy work of silence. But the Don't disrupt the silence. Yeah, exactly. And we are more interested in controlling than in community.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Disability is often
Amy Kenny (she/her): the source of people's discomfort. Not just because of the reasons we've already talked about, but because it makes people recognize that
Amy Kenny (she/her): they aren't in control; that by either age or accident you may join us one day with only
Amy Kenny (she/her): marginalized group that you can join at any time. That's how inclusive we are.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and I think a lot of what's happening in those interactions where people are uncomfortable with my disabled body, with other disabled folks, is that they don't want to reckon with the fact that they aren't in control, not just of the service, but of their very lives.
Steph Judd: There's something
Steph Judd: sorry. Yeah, Kristen, You want to go. Go ahead, Steph. Just follow up, please.
Steph Judd: Oh, I I just wanted to ask a
Steph Judd: a a question that I've encountered in
Steph Judd: in in the sense of
Steph Judd: kind of creation
Steph Judd: a creation ethic
Steph Judd: in the sense that
Steph Judd: there's an argument that
Steph Judd: when we, when we look at
Steph Judd: on the created world.
Steph Judd: there's a normativity into how the creation is structured, and then that should inform the way that
Steph Judd: we understand it, that
Steph Judd: eschatology and what we're hoping for. So in the context of a like that in me. So. The fact that I have 2 arms
Steph Judd: means that normatively the hope I have is that you know.
Steph Judd: I I should be able to. It's intended that in an ideal state i'll be able to use both arms now. I can't. I can't use my right arm. So
Steph Judd: do you think it's always able to say that
Steph Judd: I should hope that in the new creation that use of both
Steph Judd: those limbs
Steph Judd: is something I should hope for.
Steph Judd: in the context of
Steph Judd: when we observe, you know the created world, and what what we, what we perceive there.
Steph Judd: What are your thoughts on that?
Amy Kenny (she/her): I'm gonna pull a Jesus and not really answer
Amy Kenny (she/her): and tell a story.
Amy Kenny (she/her): When I observe
the community of creation.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I notice how much of it is disabled.
Amy Kenny (she/her): so kangaroos can't walk backwards. They can only go forwards
Amy Kenny (she/her): in the Australian metaphor. Here
Steph Judd: love it, and
Amy Kenny (she/her): that in a different framework in a different context is a disability.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Elephants are born blind titles.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Our desk
Amy Kenny (she/her): shocks and nonviolent
Amy Kenny (she/her): trees are bent and crooked
Amy Kenny (she/her): and jagged.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and their very twisted curvy. Nature
Amy Kenny (she/her): resembles
Amy Kenny (she/her): what many of us have been told by the white coats. You're too crooked, or you're out of alignment.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And
Amy Kenny (she/her): I wonder when I look out at the splendid and the radiance of the community of creation.
Amy Kenny (she/her): how I can so easily
Amy Kenny (she/her): find something praiseworthy in the lion who sleeps most of the day, but it's still fierce.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and we don't call the Lion lazy. We don't say the lion has chronic fatigue syndrome. But why is that more like a sunnis than
Amy Kenny (she/her): then? You know very productive folks?
Amy Kenny (she/her): And why can't we do that
Amy Kenny (she/her): for our disabled body.
Amy Kenny (she/her): It was actually in
Amy Kenny (she/her): modeling at creation
Amy Kenny (she/her): that made me start to think
Amy Kenny (she/her): well how much the more
Amy Kenny (she/her): if i'm created in the image of God.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and in that practice of
Amy Kenny (she/her): considering the lilies of the fields
Amy Kenny (she/her): that I started to actually believe.
maybe that was true.
Thank you so much, Amy, that's a really beautiful picture. I'm sorry, Chris, to delay you again.
Kris Song: Not at all. And I totally agree that there's something.
Kris Song: And you you talk about this in your book and in some of your other
statements that you've done on social media. Just
this tendency that we have as as people of Scripture, and as Christians
to to feel the need to erase or to correct all the wrongs and creation
As though.
Kris Song: as though there there's something that inherently needs to be straightened.
and yet reminded of the Scripture that who can straighten what God has made? Crooked.
that there is something
as the things that you've pointed out, and that we can see in creation.
that just aren't.
maybe ideal, maybe
maybe corrected. And into all of its efficiency.
And I think we we rush to to credit all of this as an aspect of the fall.
rather than understand
something providential.
and not all of the pieces
fitting together the
that we might expect, or that we might consider to be beautiful.
I've never thought about kangaroos not walking backwards.
Kris Song: I think about. zoo, Lander, who can't turn left?
Just the the things that we might consider to be
Kris Song: something off rather than embracing what
is exactly what is and how all of the pieces can fit together.
Hmm.
Amy going back a little bit to what you said earlier.
I I really appreciated you bringing a light to.
Kris Song: maybe some of the
Kris Song: well-meaning, but maybe dumb things that people say to disabled folk
and exceptional people
Kris Song: is there.
Kris Song: you know, and I think all of us are guilty of it to some extent. But
Kris Song: That also may may give some some kind of tendency to freeze us from from engaging in conversation, or wanting to say the wrong thing.
Kris Song: Are there some helpful.
helpful ways that you can sort of help us rephrase or approach these types of situations a little bit more artfully.
Maybe some examples, or just anything that comes to mind that
Kris Song: might help us engage that conversation in a way that's that's a little bit more
more opening and and and positive.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Yeah, that's a great question
Amy Kenny (she/her): I really appreciate. When people ask if I need help before just assuming that I do so. When i'm using a manual wheelchair, I often just receive people pushing me from one side of the room to the other without asking consent.
Amy Kenny (she/her): That's cringe. Let's let's not do that. We can just simply say, do you need help? Can I support you, and then believing us when we say yes or no, and then what we need help with.
Amy Kenny (she/her): There's a certain type of infantilization that as well that we don't even know what we need. So
Amy Kenny (she/her): ask, then believe us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): i'm not sure I can really clean up the one that I received often of I'd rather I'd tell myself if I had what you have
Amy Kenny (she/her): that's just probably we should. We should leave that to the inside tool and share that with our therapist so unpack that a little bit more.
Amy Kenny (she/her): but just asking, and then believing us when when we tell you, is probably the the most important thing.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and then
Amy Kenny (she/her): responding with compassion and grace, when we ask you not to do a certain behavior.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I have often asked folks not to say lame. I am lame. It. It means unable to walk. It's not great being. Everyone's go to
Amy Kenny (she/her): dig or go to line, you know, to put something down or to say something's, cheesy or undesirable. It's even in that Taylor swift song now, so everyone sings it all the time.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and most of the time when I say, oh, hey! Not cool. I'm lame. Someone responds with defensiveness or shut down. Oh, it doesn't mean that anymore. You're being too sensitive, Don't. Take it that way. Not Everything's about you instead of just saying, oh, okay.
Amy Kenny (she/her): sorry, or I won't. Say that anymore.
Amy Kenny (she/her): or just not saying anything at all. Silence is golden
Amy Kenny (she/her): and duct tape is silver. So you know, I think
Amy Kenny (she/her): just actually listening when we share our experience with you.
Madison Pierce: Thank you so much, Amy. And yeah, I mean just a side comment on that. I mean, it's similar. When people talk about these kind of midwestern, or where out slings like the you guys.
Madison Pierce: you know, people say Well, that doesn't mean that anymore. And in the same way it's probably rooted in sexism and ableism. The reason that you say you guys and women just have to go. I guess that's me is because there's an expectation that nail is default and normal
Madison Pierce: in the same way that at some point
Madison Pierce: sadly, there was this stigma around lameness? And so it's. It's it's absurd to me that that argument continues to happen. But anyways i'm sorry
Madison Pierce: I have a question, and I think it we might wrap here. this comes back to some of what maybe stuff was asking, and some of our
Madison Pierce: prior conversations
it
Madison Pierce: so at an earlier point in my life I have. I do have long term, health, care, condition, and it's sort of cyclical. And so I I resonate with what you're saying about seasons and things like that, because there have been seasons that have been quite difficult.
Madison Pierce: and in one of those seasons
Madison Pierce: I found myself quite often very
Madison Pierce: frustrated
Madison Pierce: by certain Christian messages, and and I can't remember if I've shared this on the pod before, so i'm sorry everybody but one of those was this picture of Paul, and the thorn and the flesh.
Madison Pierce: and this my grace, is sufficient for you.
Madison Pierce: And then the song, you know, my graces, and for your Grace is enough. And this kind of call, and I found myself bawling in these in these church services, asking
Madison Pierce: sufficient for what
Madison Pierce: and kind of wondering like, what God are you promising?
Madison Pierce: And so I think
Madison Pierce: this long-winded question, I think it comes back around really to the title of your book.
Madison Pierce: You know your body is not our prayer request, but what does flourishing, and goodness and sufficiency look like? What what
Madison Pierce: is your hope for us?
Amy Kenny (she/her): Yeah, isn't that the West, when someone singing a song, and everyone around you seems to be getting a lot out of it. But you and you're just internally
Amy Kenny (she/her): screaming slash, crying, slash, punching the app.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I have been there I have. I have been that often, particularly with this song about in heaven. There will be no lame, and will be healed and whole.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and I've been a part of many a church service, so that's been sung, and everyone's like looked at me and thumbs up and winked. And yeah, I I
Amy Kenny (she/her): i'm receiving the song it doesn't mean what you think it means
Amy Kenny (she/her): I think my picture of
Amy Kenny (she/her): of co- flourishing
Amy Kenny (she/her): is that banquet in Luke 14,
Amy Kenny (she/her): and is the goodness between us restored?
Amy Kenny (she/her): Is a world where
Amy Kenny (she/her): we allow for that to be complexity and nuance. Instead of pushing each other into these binaries.
Amy Kenny (she/her): that
we
Amy Kenny (she/her): are willing to be messy with one another, instead of needing to control one another.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and that we are willing to move at the speed of love, and stretch ourselves enough to love one another.
Amy Kenny (she/her): I also think some of that will come by way of
Amy Kenny (she/her): celebrating the gifts that disability can teach us the prophetic witness that it can be in a church community.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and by recognizing that there's so much that we don't know about our body minds.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and I celebrate the fact that my body is so rare that science is still discovering the secrets that she contains.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and the more that we can really believe that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Amy Kenny (she/her): the more that we can make room for that for that to be true about our disabled bodies
Amy Kenny (she/her): or
Amy Kenny (she/her): disabled bodies, are made of the same stuff as stars.
and I think
Amy Kenny (she/her): the more that we can recognize
Amy Kenny (she/her): that shine.
Amy Kenny (she/her): the more that we can actually be community together.
John Anthony Dunne: Thank you, Amy. That's beautiful. Yeah, it was fantastic. I I think, Chris, Chris is going to ask the the the actual final question about what you're currently up to saying that'd be a great way to sort of land the plane, and then and we'll thank you for for for joining us.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Well, I just moved to Washington, DC.
Amy Kenny (she/her): And I am
Amy Kenny (she/her): here to help start a Disability cultural initiative at Georgetown University.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and this is
Amy Kenny (she/her): exciting and messy and sacred work in that it's helping give folks an imagination for celebrating disability and for disability to be a culture and art and community.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and it is
Amy Kenny (she/her): there are only a handful of these in the country.
Amy Kenny (she/her): and the hope is that there continue to be more.
John Anthony Dunne: Well, Dr. Kenny, thank you so much for joining us. Just appreciate all of your wisdom and insight, and some fabulous one-liners I think the the line that will stick with me the most, though, is, is what you said about the lack of pain and new creation. And how able is is painful. I thought that was a
John Anthony Dunne: particularly poignant comments especially up ending the way that we think about disability and new creation, and what your your books title is is directly and strongly pointing us again. So I just really appreciate everything you had to share with us, and thank you so much for your time.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Amy.
John Anthony Dunne: See how beautiful!
John Anthony Dunne: Thanks so much, Ivy. That's great. You seriously had so many zingers like, I mean. I was like dying over here like some of them. Were just like, you know, super hilarious, and some of them were like, you know, cut straight to the heart. It was just like oh, so good
thanks!
John Anthony Dunne: I really really enjoyed it.
Chris Porter: The the phrase that silence is
Chris Porter: I was. It sounds golden, but it's so good, so good. I've always had that in. Look whatever anyone says, go on, my my brain says, and duct tape and silver, and I've never had the guts to say I, I've never heard that before. Is that a. Is that a common saying? I have never heard that that's brilliant.
John Anthony Dunne: Is it in the straight, or is it it? It must be, I mean, I've heard it before. I I certainly didn't come up with it. I think it might be. I think it might be an Australian thing, because
Chris Porter: we
Chris Porter: now duck, cause we but also we have ducked because of the phrases duct tape and silver.
Chris Porter: whereas in America you don't have ducks type. You use this
Chris Porter: metallic type. It's like a it's a weird column, but it there's a brand of Gaffer type called duck brand.
Madison Pierce: so I suspect it might be actually Australian. So we do have de. It is decked tape here, but there is a brand that it's duck.
John Anthony Dunne: decked tape. Oh, okay, so it's great. But is it the same stuff, or is it we can? We can start this out later? Yeah, any any, Thank you so much for joining us. this is delightful. This will come out in a few weeks, because we we kind of have kind of like a a couple of different like
John Anthony Dunne: mini-series, if you like, within our broader series, where we're kind of addressing different sub topics and so we'll let you know when this is coming out. And again Thank you, so much for your time. We'll record the the proper introduction to the episode. just just momentarily.
Amy Kenny (she/her): Oh, yeah, thanks so much for having me. And
Amy Kenny (she/her): you know, I think I don't know if this is helpful to say, but it's so interesting the responses I've gotten to the book, you know. There's been lots of me, too, from disabled folks, and lots of people calling me a heretic about calling, and so you know there's always those nicks. But it's interesting how much
Amy Kenny (she/her): folks who are calling me a heretic have interpreted as
Amy Kenny (she/her): I'm saying, this is what everyone needs to believe. I'm just sharing my story, and I think the book is called My body is not a request. I don't think i'm saying no one's bodies should ever be prayed for ever again till the end of time. Amen. So I think that
Amy Kenny (she/her): for whatever that's why I just feel compelled to say that to this group
they yeah, no, that's wonderful.
Steph Judd: What's the classic thing that you know there's such a diversity
Steph Judd: of experience, and we're called just to pay attention to one another.
Steph Judd: Yeah.
yeah.
Amy Kenny (she/her): yeah. And just to my 2 guiding questions the whole process has been, you know. Have I been faithful, my faithful to
Amy Kenny (she/her): my experience, to the people in my community, to how I have experienced God, and then have I have joy and those that that's all I can control people's, responses.
Steph Judd: A really none of my business
Steph Judd: born witness to your experience. It's been a real gift to many
Amy Kenny (she/her): right, thanks. Everyone
John Anthony Dunne: cheers