#julia watts belser

[a-queer-seminarian]

Rabbi Julia Watts Belser in short film "Shaping Tradition: Queer Disability and Torah"

ID in alt text and under the readmore.

Screenshots from a wooded scene where Rabbia Julia, a woman with light skin, shoulder length gray hair, and glasses is saying, "Queer and disabled folks, we live in a world that wants to shrink us. And I want us to live lives that are as wide as the sky." As she finishes saying this, the camera has panned out to show her in a wheelchair, rolling across a parking lot with the woods behind. Next screenshot, the camera has zoomed onto her hand on a wheel as she continues, "And I bring that feeling to Torah." The last screenshot is back on her face; she's smiling as she says, "Why shouldn't I be here?"

[sopranoentravesti]

I have no way of getting to either Poznan, Poland or Oslo or way to stay there but I would definitely sell my soul for a ticket to see Claire Cunningham’s Thank You Very Much. I’d even settle for any kind of recording.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Join me and my friend Laura as we explore biblical and artistic images of God on wheels — from the wheeled throne of Daniel 7 to art of Jesus in a wheelchair.

Drawing from the writings and lived experiences of Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, a teen named Becky Tyler, Professor Nancy Eiesland, and Laura themself, we make a case for why such images matter in the face of stigma, inaccessibility, and unsolicited prayers for "healing."

As Rabbi Watts Belser puts it, in a world where some bodies are assumed to be "incompatible with the sacred," it is vital theology to "name and claim our bodies as close to the Divine."

[anniekoh]

Disability and Climate Change: A Public Archive Project bears witness to the harms disabled people face amidst climate disruption—and it documents the wisdom disabled people bring to navigating this crisis.  The stories in the archive are fresh conversations with disability-identified activists, advocates, artists, first-responders, policy makers, and other communal leaders. 

Disability Wisdom for Disaster Response

Grappling with Pandemic

Spiritual Practice for Navigating Crisis

Desert Kinship with Naomi Ortiz

Earth Care and Environmental Activism

Announcement on the launch:

Professor Julia Watts Belser launched Disability and Climate Change: A Public Archive Project. The site chronicles the wisdom and expertise of disabled activists, artists, and first responders working for climate justice, with whom Prof. Belser has had deep conversations over the past two years. After the release of the first nine pieces, new contributions will be added over the years to come, with the ongoing collaboration of Georgetown undergraduate research assistants.  One of the core commitments of this project has been to prioritize equity and access. Therefore the archive includes a plain language guide to climate change and plain language versions of the conversations. The archive also includes Spanish-language versions of several pieces.  

2020 article by Dr. Watts Belser at Disability Studies Quarterly

Disability, Climate Change, and Environmental Violence: The Politics of Invisibility and the Horizon of Hope

I argue that disability politics offer vital resources for grappling with climate change. Applying insights from disability studies and disability activism to the analysis of environmental damage reveals the political stakes of diagnosis—the way power contours how, when, and to what ends we recognize human and ecological impairment. Disability insights illuminate pervasive cultural patterns of invisibility and climate denial. Disability critiques of futurity and cure can also reconfigure the way we approach hope and help fashion a new narrative of what it might mean to live well in the Anthropocene.

[quotesfromall]

But the forcible separation of spirit, body, and flesh is not solely a matter of Jewish-Christian difference. A similar rhetoric of exalted spirit and deviant carnality underscores the relations between Judaism and paganism. In popular Jewish and Christian discourse, the divine call to Abraham heralded a spiritual revolution that transformed the ancient Near East. According to this view, the ethical monotheism first articulated by Judaism and later exemplified through Christianity served as spiritual corrective to the hypersexualized hedonistic culture of Canaan. The subjugation of sexuality, the body, and its flesh comes part and parcel with another triumphalist paradigm of religious evolution. Like fantastical and demonic caricatures of the Jews, the rhetorical portrayal of paganism becomes a dangerous specter with little grounding in historical reality.

Julia Watts Belser, Returning to Flesh

[medica-pseudoacademica]

Popular accounts of disability and disaster usually follow one of two scripts. Disabled people are either used to sell a story of triumph over adversity, to showcase the possibility of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds; or we serve as icons of disaster, as visible embodiments of tragedy and vulnerability. All too often, that tragic story makes disabled people seem like natural victims - “expected losses” [link] of climate crisis.

While these two stories feel like opposites, the political work they perform [link]  is strikingly similar: They focus our attention on the individual, rather than the political. They veil the effects of structural inequality and injustice. They turn our gaze away from the problem of power.

Working for climate justice requires challenging the root causes of vulnerability, rather than treating disabled people as the inevitable casualties of climate change. It also means interrogating the realities that keep some of us farther from the storm.

- Julia Watts Belser, “Disabled People Cannot Be ‘Expected Losses’ in the Climate Crisis” on Truthout (September 20, 2019) (link)

[hymnsofheresy]

“The Gospel narratives mark Jesus’s opponents as Jewish by identifying them  as Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, Jews, or elders in the synagogue—and the sensitive preacher may also stress Jesus’s Jewish identity. But the Jewishness of Martha and Mary, the Jewishness of the blind man or the prostitute, and the Jewishness of the disciples are rarely named by preachers. This selective identification of “Jews” with “the religious leaders” misrepresents vital problems of power in first-century Judea. While those Jewish leaders may still have exercised repressive authority in their own spheres of influence, the larger social position of many of those leaders was tenuous and imperiled. The misnaming obscures how intensely Roman domination shaped the political realities of first- and  second-century Judaism, especially after the  destruction  of  the Second Temple. It also silences the profound impact of Roman conquest and the effect of structural and systemic violence on the lives of Jews during the period when the Gospels were composed.”

Julia Watts Belser | What No Longer Serves Us: Resisting Ableism and Anti-Judaism in New Testament Healing Narratives

[queerprayers]

If I’m really made in god’s image, why would he make me so dumb, so disabled, why would he make me like this? Do you think maybe the god’s image thing isn’t true? I look at the terrible people of the world, why would god have made this?

Hello beloved,

I'm so sorry it's taken me a bit to reply to this—this ask really hit me. I've been here (or at least somewhere close—obviously I don't know exactly what you're feeling). "Why would he make me like this?" was something I used to ask myself over and over, either about my queerness or my disabilities.

To be honest? I don't have an answer. Not a clear/easy one, anyway. I could say that we have unique gifts, or that suffering teaches us something, or something else that's technically true but that you've probably heard before and might end up being pitying or cheesy.

Disability is a fact of life. (Or at least, different kinds of functioning are; "disability" is a social label we created.) Your experiences may be painful or isolating, but God is with you. I don't know if you're seeking that affirmation or if you'll shrug it off, but it's true.

I don't know why God made us the way They did. The only thing I do know is that They did. And yes, I do firmly believe that you and I were made in God's image. All the ways in which we're different or unique or confusing? They're all from God. I don't think our brains are even capable of understanding why? And I'm not sure "why" is the right question to be asking. How about, "how?"

I'd also encourage you (and all of us) to think about why we need a reason for everything. Maybe we don't need a reason or a purpose for this pain. Maybe we're hurting and beloved by God and in need of saving and already whole.

"Christ, God's image, models God's embrace of disability on the cross . . . through a resurrected but wounded body. All humanity shares in such woundedness and vulnerability in a variety of forms—physical, mental, moral, and spiritual—without losing the dignity of being created in the image of God." (Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God by John Kilner)

"Our bodies participate in the imago Dei, not in spite of our impairments and contingencies, but through them." (The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability by Nancy L. Eiesland)

From the ELCA's message on disabilities:

"Human beings are part of a world in which a variety of abilities and skills, impairments and disabilities are a common feature of life. Vulnerability to and the risk of disability are a natural part of the human condition for all people. While most people may assume that they never will become impaired and disabled themselves, many individuals, in fact, will be impaired or disabled at some point in their lives. For some, these impairments and disabilities will be temporary or moderate-term conditions, perhaps occurring near the end of life; for others, these will be either long-term or lifelong.

Human life emerges from within the natural world and is limited and conditioned by it. Physical, sensory, intellectual, mental and developmental disabilities arise within the natural and social worlds from factors that are genetic, chemical, behavioral, social and accidental. A number of disabilities appear to result from various combinations of these factors.

Whatever the causes, a disability or impairment requires a person to exercise [their] abilities and skills in ways affected by that reality. . . .

Medical cures and assistance are blessings, but cures are rare and, sometimes, not desired. Like all aspects of health, living with a physical, intellectual or developmental disability is a fact of life, calling for the resourceful and determined exercise of one’s other abilities and freedom for relationship."

"The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ . . . demonstrate that all aspects of life, including disabilities and impairment, are encompassed in God’s loving care. In being born of Mary and living among us, Jesus took on all the risks and vulnerabilities of being human, including those of suffering hate, rejection, cruelty, injustice, disability and death. Jesus did not do so for the purpose of suffering these things for their own sake. Rather, his suffering was a necessary consequence of his walking the way of the cross (Luke 24:27) so that all might be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:19)."

Christianity has done so much harm to disabled people: misrepresenting scripture about healing, blaming people or their sin for their health issues, not making worship spaces or theology accessible, and so much more. It's no wonder that we have so much trouble finding peace in our identities. Overwhelmingly, it seems, the many of the issues disabled people face are not from their disability, but how society treats their disability. (Check out the social model.) I believe in justice and liberation under God, including for the disabled.

You're probably carrying internalized ableism, from society and perhaps also the church. I'm with you there.

Additional Resources/Further Reading:

Our Bible App has several disability devotionals

"A Biblical View of Disability," Ros Bayes, bethinking, 2015.

Disabling Lent: An Anti-Ableist Lenten Devotional, Unbound.

"Moving Toward a Better Theology of Disability," Jil Vandezande Western Theological Seminary, 23 Nov 2015

"God on Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology," Julia Watts Belser, Tikkun Magazine, 2014.

"This week my Episcopal priest said disabled persons are disabled because of our sin . . .", Twitter thread by Jonathan "Jack" Bates (@/jackmb), 20 Mar 2021

Heart and Soul: "Pick up your stretcher and walk!," BBC Sounds, 26 Apr 2019

"Stop trying to 'heal' me," Damon Rose, BBC News, 28 Apr 2019

"Is God disabled?" Ian Pauk, Psephizo, 27 May 2019

"The Full Affirmation of Disability Justice," Shannon Dingle, Sojourners, 20 Jun 2019

"Can the Church View Disabled Bodies as Jesus' Body?" Amy Kenny, Sojourners, 30 Apr 2020

"Liberation theology of disability and the option for the poor," Scot Danforth, Disability Studies Quarterly, Summer 2005.

The Disability & Faith Forum

"Out of the Darkness: Examining the Rhetoric of Blindness in the Gospel of John," Jennifer L. Koosed, Disability Studies Quarterly, Winter 2005

"Theological Accessibility: The Contribution of Disability," Deborah Creamer, Disability Studies Quarterly, Fall 2006

Copious Hosting: A Theology of Access for People with Disabilities by Jennie Weiss Block

A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability by Kathy Black

Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability, and Inclusion by Mark I. Pinksy

Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability, and the Body of Christ by Brian Brock

The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God by Amos Yong

The Bible and Disability: A Commentary by Sarah J. Melcher

Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics, and the Good Life by Shane Clifton

I think I got a bit off-topic. I don't have enough time to edit this. You're just receiving a lot of my thoughts. Hopefully something will be meaningful. Over and over, I prove to y'all that I don't have answers, but I do have a reading list.

I leave you with a prayer by Mary Batchelor:

God, we lift up to you all who are disabled - in hearing, in sight, in limb or in mind. Save them from bitterness and frustration, and give them joy in the midst of their limitations. May they find peace and fulfillment in knowing you and discovering your will for their lives. We pray for special grace for those who care for them. Give them your love and kindness and understanding of the real needs of those they look after. For Jesus' sake, amen.

<3 Johanna

[gostaks]

In this lecture, Julia Watts Belser brings disability dance into conversation with Jewish story to explore the creative potential of queer crip Jewish culture. She examines the biblical tale of Jacob wrestling the angel, alongside a contemporary performance piece that she draws inspiration from, The Way You Look (at me) Tonight, an intimate duet between two acclaimed artists: San Francisco-based choreographer and performer Jess Curtis and UK disabled artist Claire Cunningham. Using dance as an invitation to create disability midrash (commentary/interpretation), Julia Watts Belser opens up a space to explore innovative readings of Jewish story that center the ethical insights, political sensibilities, and luminous sacrality that emerge out of queer disability communities.

very cool talk I just stumbled across

[yidquotes]

As queer folk, many of us carry deep wounds around judgment. Coming out and being out leaves some tender places in our lives open to public scrutiny. For many of us, Yom Kippur gets tangled up with our own memories of being judged – often by those who claim to speak for God. As we take stock of own lives and try to make amends for where we’ve fallen short, most of us face the harshest judge of all: ourselves. Humans have a hard time expressing love and limits simultaneously. As children, many of us found “being good” the best road to love and approval, while “doing bad” made love harder to find. But on Yom Kippur, we have the chance to submerge ourselves in a different story. For the Holy One loves with a love that cannot be withheld. The Holy One loves with a love that cannot be undone. For all our power to inflict harm and pain on one another and ourselves, we cannot separate ourselves from God’s compassion. We can deny it, forget it, or ignore it – but we cannot shatter it. No matter what you or I do, the love bond between us and God endures.

Julia Watts Belser

[dmnsqrl]

Julia Watts Belser considers how religious communities can better support people with disabilities during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. She notes how allies must acknowledge the root causes of vulnerability and should stand in solidarity with vulnerable populations.

[a-queer-seminarian]

My dear friend Laura joined me on YouTube to look at cool artwork of God/Jesus in a wheelchair!

Drawing from the insights of wheelchair users like renowned theologian Nancy Eiesland and Laura themself, we discuss how such images can transform how wheelchair users see themselves, and show faith communities how critical it is to ensure disabled people experience full access and belonging.

As Rabbi Julia Watts Belser puts it:

"We live in a world that consistently devalues Black and brown bodies, fat bodies and femme bodies, queer, trans, and disabled bodies. We live in a world where those bodies are too often held as incompatible with the sacred, a world where those bodies are imagined as the antithesis of God. 

Theology requires a reckoning with politics. It requires that we confront the question of who has been afforded the power to name and claim our bodies as close kin to the divine.”

ID: thumbnail of a YouTube video titled "Holy Roller: The power of a wheelchair-using God. There's an illustration of Jesus sitting in a wheelchair next to text reading "God in a wheelchair?" / end ID

[hierology]

Ack. Another great thing from Guide Gods...

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

“Whirlwheel” by Olivia Wise

[image description: a painting of a person with deep brown skin and upraised arms wearing a long red dress seated in a wheelchair. The art style makes the dress seem flame-like and lends to the feeling of movement, as if her arms are swaying and wheelchair rolling. The canvas is colored in pinks, reds, yellows, and white. /end id]

_______________

“When I think of God on wheels, I think of the delight I take in my own chair. I sense the holy possibility that my own body knows, the way wheels set me free and open up my spirit. I like to think that God inhabits the particular fusions that mark a body in wheels: the way flesh flows into frame, into tire, into air. This is how the Holy moves through me, in the intricate interplay of muscle and spin, the exhilarating physicality of body and wheel, the rare promise of a wide-open space, the unabashed exhilaration of a dance floor, where wing can finally unfurl.” 

- Julia Watts Belser in “God On Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology”

[shofar-brasil]

Environmental harm intensifies structural violence, so acting for justice in an age of climate change means fighting all forms of oppression. Read more >>

[juprog]

Environmental harm intensifies structural violence, so acting for justice in an age of climate change means fighting all forms of oppression. Read more >>