More Dreams Of A Building.

Over the last couple of posts I've been trying to put some flesh on the bones of the idea that we have a building, here are a few more thoughts to be going on with.

In the first of these posts I told you about the old Guide Dog centre in Midlesborough and what an influence that was on me because it was a "thin"place built by the love of so many that it exuded from the very wood and stone of the place. 

The building was built in a square round a central courtyard, it reminded me of a monastic cloister. Cloisters always feel special to me so this week I have spent a little time wondering why that might be and here's what I've come up with. 

Buildings with cloisters are safe spaces and what disabled people who are struggling need is that safe space. However cloistered buildings despite being safe do not cut themselves off from the outside, on the contrary, they bring the outside right in to the centre, the space in the middle of the cloister allows God in whilst still allowing those in the building to feel safe and looked after. 

So I'm dreaming of a modern accessible building on one level, built around a cloister, a safe space where his spirit can blow through the corridors. 

I'm praying for the opportunity to sit with an architect and to draw out the plan I am forming in my mind of how it would be and them to throw those plans out there and see if they attract enough interest to actually make it happen.

More later.

Blessings 
Dave & Jarvis

Dreaming the dream. 

Let me try and expand a little on my last post.

When Disability and Jesus began three years ago, it grew out of a feeling that there was no one out there doing what we do. Of course in the course of the last three years we have since met several individuals and small organisations doing if not the same thing then certainly work that compliments ours.

None of these organisations or individuals are well known throughout the church, nor are any of them well funded and resourced. All are run by dedicated volunteers who not only give their time but are also largely self funding.

It seems wrong to me that such an important ministry is so under resourced, that such dedicated, professional people should have their gifts taken for granted in such a way. The church spends fortunes on debating LGBT issues, it has spent a fortune in recent years on safeguarding of children but when it comes to the disabled it always feels the church wants something for nothing. 

So my dream is to have a building where these people can work from, to see them well funded and resourced and to get the church to take this work seriously. 

It would be a house of prayer, a place of learning and retreat, place for others to pilgrimage to and a place from where we can send out those who work in the mission field of disability.

Please join me in praying about this and if you feel God is giving you more insight in to what this might look like and how it could come about please, please get in touch.

Expect to hear more on this later.

Blessings
Dave & Jarvis.

I promised you all that after Lent I'd make the occasional post and true to my word here is the first of what I hope will be a fairly regular stream. 

What I'm going to attempt to share with you today are a bunch of ideas that have been haunting me, many of them for many years, which although they are beginning to take shape are far from being fully formed so please stay with me as I share them with you all and maybe you can help me make sense of them. 

For a large part of my adult life it has been my prayer that one day the church would value the ministry that disabled people can bring, not just the priestly role but right across the broader field of ministry. I myself have over 40yrs experience in music ministry, yet when Jarvis and I turn up to play at an event younger band members give us the head tilt of compassion and you can tell they are thinking this poor blind guy will be no good but we have to humour him for fear of causing offence. After the event they often seem genuinely in shock that a blind guy can also be a gifted musician.


Hold on to that for now and let's move on to the next group of random thoughts. 

I have always been someone who has put a lot of sore by what are known as "thin places". For me these had always been places with obvious spiritual connections such as Lindisfarne, Durham Cathedral, Minsteracers Monastery, Old Bewick church etc, these are all places where the only way I can describe it is that the prayers of generations have seeped in to the very stones of the place and reflect those prayers back out at the modern visitor. 

As you all know by now I spent years avoiding facing up to my blindness and avoiding becoming a guide dog owner. Imagine how shocked and surprised I was then back in 2001 when I walked in to Midlesborough Guide Dog Centre, a building I was expecting to be the most basic and functional of secular buildings only to be struck immediately by that hair on the back of the neck feeling. However until this point I had only ever associated such feelings with places of spiritual significance so to experience this feeling in a place with no obvious spiritual connections made no sense to me. 

Over time I learned that the building had been built, funded, maintained and staffed by volunteers. Then it began to make sense to me that what I was feeling was the love and commitment, the hopes, dreams and even prayers of all those involved had seeped in to the very fabric of the building and radiated back out on all those that entered. 

So how do these strands come together?

Well what I've been dreaming of is a building where we can demonstrate to the wider church what disabled people can bring to ministry, a building where those people struggling with feelings of anger and rage at their disability can come to a safe space where it will be seen as OK to work that anger out. Above all a building that feels thin, where the presence of God feels near. 

I feel strongly that this can not be done by simply asking for cash and throwing that cash at it. All the thin places I have listed were built out of love and labour that was given as gift, they were buildings built out of love and if my dream is ever to happen it must happen in the same way.

So you may think I'm a fool but there it is, my dream. I have many more detailed thoughts and ideas but for now let me simply pit that out there and see if it strikes a chord, ion it does please pray about it, talk to me about it, circulate the idea and let's see where God might take us, or not as the case may be, I simply put it out there as a way of trying to discern what He might be saying. 

So we've made it, this is the final blog of Lent although as I have promised I will carry on with the occasional post just not on a daily basis. 

Time to reflect and recap. In 1987 when I first got news of my sight loss my life fell apart, I lost my career, my home and came close to losing my marriage. Much of the next ten or so years are simply wiped from my memory as I lost myself to a world of anger, rage, drink, blame and simply running away, not just metaphorically but physically.

Why did I choose to link this blog which is largely about sight loss and guide dogs to the season of Lent? Well quite simply because the most unexpected part of guide dog ownership for me is what I have learned from Abbot & Jarvis about faith. 

I now believe that faith is about hurling yourself in to the unknown trusting in a God that loves you to keep you safe, Abbot and Jarvis taught me that. Faith is about journeying, pilgrimage, sharing the journey, another lesson learned from my boys. There is no plan, there is simply trust. God simply says to us "come" and when you ask him why he simply asks us to wait and see, to join the adventure, the not knowing where we are going should be part of the fun.

This journeying together has become central to the life of Disability and Jesus. We are learning that it is all about interdependence, again a lesson I first learned from my boys, the relationship I have had with both of them is based on that. I look after their welfare, their needs and they look after mine. I've said it before, my boys have been free thinking sentient beings who have worked for me out of love, a love that is deep, mutual and very much heartfelt. The kind of love that Jesus demands we have for one another.

Let me leave the final word to the Abbot of our little community as he offers you his blessing. 

May your bowl always be full

May your walks be long and happy

May there always be space in front of the fire May there always be someone to hold your paw In return you must lead gently, guide true. And remember... forward, always forward. 

As I sit here this Maundy Thursday evening keeping my own vigil I can't but help reflect the many nights back in the dark days where I had mot come to terms with my sight loss where Jesus was the only one between me and oblivion. 

It was at those times that he kept watch over me, he did not fall asleep.

He stood in that gap between me and my monsters, he did not let them overcome me,

Life now with Jarvis is very different, by rights I should not be here, how I got to such a safe place, a place of healing is a mystery to me, it's certainly not down to me. 

I'm here because of love, the love of a saviour that was there even when I was unaware of his presence.

A love from my wife which kept faith in me even when I lost faith in my self.

The love of Abbot and Jarvis who's care and attention have been constant and abiding. 

I'd like to thank all of you have followed this blog, the  fact that so many of you have followed it amazes me. Your comments have encouraged and supported me. 

Tomorrow will be the last daily post, I hope to make it a good one but after Lent I shall carry on, not on a daily basis but with the odd random post as inspiration strikes. 

In the meantime be assured that as you wait for his coming Jarvis and I are there with you, full of hope and anticipation for what he has in store for us as we journey this pilgrim road together. 

Peace to you all.

So through this blog I have tried hard to give you some insights in to the story of a stubborn old blind man. However there is absolutely nothing wrong with his hearing, but he will often simply refuse to listen. He doesn’t want to and you can’t make him. That man is me, David Lucas, a man who has gradually lost more and more of his sight. I’m the hero of my own story and instead of being tall, dark and mysterious, as I’d always intended, it turns out I’m rather short, fat and grumpy. Ah well!

This blog has not always shown me in a good light. Indeed, it will sometimes have shown me as a bad-tempered old fool, full of self pity and more than a little bitterness. You might ask why I would risk being seen in this way... Well, above all I wanted to give you an honest account of my experience of sight loss, warts and all. The world of the severely sight impaired (who used to be called ‘blind’) is strewn with obstacles, often placed there by sighted people who are simply unaware of the effect their actions can have on the life of a sight impaired person. You have heard me rant and rave and generally stamp my feet about these things and I know this may be difficult. At one point, I thought about removing all such material from the blog and had often gone as far as highlighting huge tracts of text, ready to delete them. Then I realised there would be very little left as I rather like ranting and in any case it would in no way represent my true feelings as they arose along this journey.

I eventually decided to give you the unedited version – including the tears and tantrums, the anger and joys – and let you form your own opinion. Sometimes what I have said may have surprised you. Sometimes it may have made you sad. Sometimes it may have shocked you. I suspect it will even caused offence to some. (I don’t really write off whole groups of people, as you might sometimes suspect... but I have made this mistake at various times in my journey.) Occasionally, my thoughts may have given you a laugh. And I earnestly hope and pray that just once or twice they might have just inspired you.

This blog won’t provide you with all the answers about sight loss because as yet I haven’t found them. What I have done, however, is reach an accommodation with my sight loss so that I’m no longer at war with it. I’m now able to wear the label of a blind man and not feel embarrassed or hurt by it. It has taken well over 40 years to get to this point... Even if I had known years ago what I know now, I cannot honestly say that I would have done things any differently.

Through this blog I want you to gain a sense of what life is like for sight impaired people in the UK in the early 21st century. People with sight impairments still face prejudice, abuse and ridicule on a daily basis, causing them to lead lives of segregation, isolation, fear and – all too often – loneliness. I long to see many things but more than anything I want to see a world where opportunity is open to sight impaired people on an equal basis. I’m sad to say, we still have a way to go.

If more sight impaired (and severely sight impaired) people are to achieve their full potential, then society needs to change. This will only come about when we’re able to face the issues honestly, all of us together, sighted and sight impaired. This little blog is simply one man’s attempt to create a debate about how that will be possible.

As a sight impaired person, life isn’t perfect. But it can be such fun. And it really can be fulfilling and worthwhile. Sight impairment is bearable and it is possible to lead a full life despite it. Believe me, I do and I thank God every day for brining Abbot and Jarvis in to my life. The journey so far has been a thrill and here we are close to starting a new adventure when Jarvis retires and a new guide dog comes along.

I've no way of knowing what lies ahead on the journey but I look forward to meeting some of you on the way. 

Like many disabled Christians I have often felt the very subtle, unspoken pressure to be cured of my disability.

In my time I have been accused of a lack of faith, of simply not praying hard enough, I have been told that there must be some unacknowledged area of sin in my life and that if only I would repent and confess then I would be cured.

I have to tell you I think this all comes from a lack of understanding of the difference between healing and cure. 

For the ten years or so after being diagnosed I simply ran away, the prospect of my onsetting disability was simply too much for me to contemplate so for years, I ran, I lied, I hid, I refused help, I refused to talk about it. All of this behaviour did untold damage to all my relationships, with my wife, my parents and family members and most of my friends. After tea years of this the truth is that I found myself late at night, standing in the middle of the Tyne Bridge, very seriously contemplating suicide. 

After standing there for well over an hour, I lost my nerve and walked home. 

The next day I began a long process of exploring what help and advice might be out there for someone losing their sight. I told not a soul about this process for fear I might not be able to go through with it, I wanted to know I could deal with it before telling anyone. 

After searching through local blind societies, charities like RNIB and Guide Dogs I was eventually offered an assessment to see if I would get a guide dog. It was at this point that I told my wife Denise what I'd been up to, she could not believe it. 

While all this was going on I was an active member of the Northumbria Community, a Celtic Christian, a new monastic. Imagine then my joy when eventually I was matched with my first dog, a dog called Abbot, me a new monastic being guided by an abbot, here was God telling me very loudly that this was the right thing, I've never looked back.

Getting Abbot and now having Jarvis has been the single most transformative experience of my life. Have I been healed of my disability? No, indeed it is in real terms far worse now. Have I been cured? Absolutely without doubt YES! My blindness holds very little fear for me now, in the 16yrs since Abbot arrived I have rebuilt my life, I've done an MA, changed career, moved house and my marriage has been totally transformed. To all those people back then who were demanding a miracle, all I can say is I have had not just one but many. 

This video was made for another organisation that Bill and I used to run, not all of it is relevant here but so much is.