In 2007, I joined L'Arca in Boston—a household where four residents with intellectual disabilities lived alongside assistants like me, people who had chosen to share their lives. We walked together, laughed, prayed, cooked, ate, and went to hear live music. We spent time in the simplicity of encounter, of being together, of sharing small things. It was a profound community experience—joyful in its ordinariness, yet exhausting on difficult days. That time taught me something vital about our shared humanity: the core truths that bind us as human beings, with or without intellectual disability. At L'Arca, we speak often of vulnerability as deeply human, as the foundation of community life. Everyone is fundamentally a fragile creature who needs others. And meeting people with disabilities, we learn to live from the heart, without hiding behind ideas, power, or productivity.
Later, at L'Arca in Chicago, I met friends who revealed something simple and profound: the human being is, at heart, a being who loves. Reason matters, yes—but the heart comes first. (Too many philosophers and theologians, I think, have overstated the intellect as the defining human trait.) We are all precious in our very being. This is a liberating truth that transcends what we do or don't do, our abilities and disabilities.
One evening, after a community gathering, I was sitting near Jennifer, a friend with Down syndrome and a deeply spiritual woman. I began talking to her about faith, about belief, about a moment of doubt I was living through. As I spoke, Jennifer looked directly at me over her glasses and, before I could finish, said to me twice with profound conviction: "I believe in you. I believe in you." Belief isn't something we reserve only for God. It's something we can give to ourselves and to each other. To believe, really, is to trust. Do we trust in our own worth and preciousness as human beings?
When I meet a person with disability, I meet an individual, not a diagnosis
When I meet a person with disability, I meet an individual, not a diagnosis
Albert, a friend with Down syndrome, greeted me when I returned home after a few days away. "Did you miss me?" he asked. The question, underneath, is: "Am I important to you? Did you feel my absence?" Both of these moments—Jennifer's "I believe in you" and Albert's "Did you miss me?"—point to something fundamental: the primacy of love. It is so thoroughly human as to be divine (if we are made in the image of a God who is love).
When I meet a person with disability, I meet an individual, not a diagnosis. Genuine encounter in community is encounter between persons—each with a story, gifts, vulnerabilities, abilities, and limitations. Meeting someone with a disability is meeting a "you."
Yet it is undeniable that people with disabilities have often been approached in deeply reductive, damaging, and negative ways. The person with disability is constantly seen as the poor one, the suffering one, the unfortunate one, the needy one—and in some contexts, as cursed or the fruit of sin. This mindset hides in phrases we hear often, phrases that seem harmless: "That person suffers from autism," as if disability itself must bring suffering (when we know well that a person with disability can be happy or unhappy, just like anyone else). Yes, we are all poor in an existential sense—we all have needs. We all suffer. It matters not to deny these things; they keep us close to our fragility and our limits. But no person, no group, is only poor, needy, and suffering. We all carry an inner richness, a spark of life, something to offer others—with or without disability.
Theology, at times, has emphasized the suffering aspect of disability, even framed it negatively. In the ancient world, people with disabilities were seen as errors of the gods. Some Christian fathers saw rationality as the defining human trait (though we know people with intellectual disabilities are not "less human" because of it). Various saints and mystics of the past would today be identified with disability—Margherita of Città di Castello, born blind, small in stature, with spinal curvature, founded a school for children—yet in traditional Christian imagination, the person with disability has often been portrayed as passive, waiting for others' pity. In recent times, Christian thinkers have enriched disability theology with new images, freeing it from overly hostile and sorrowful meanings. Think of Nancy Eiesland's theology of the disabled God, or Jeannie Weiss Block's theology of the accessible God. Recently, I have sensed a deep hunger for a disability theology that is inclusive and energizing—one that fosters respectful, dignified, inclusive encounter.
My time with people with disabilities in community has done more than help me appreciate the humanity hidden in small acts of kindness. It has opened a vision, an aspiration: to see disability at the center of our culture and our spiritual life.