An Obadiah Slope column
The place to be this week: This column comes to you from Launceston, on which town Obadiah bestows the temporary name ‘Neurodiversity-Ville” – the Special Olympic national games are on in Town.
Obadiah is a proud parent at this event. I will be cheering on the light blue basketball team. They play with grace and style. Especially one of them!
Spectating Special Olympics is like watching school sport. But instead of for a few years, parents do it for decades. (But serving Jesus is for even longer.)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver greatly favoured the world when she held the first Special Olympics in her rather huge garden. People living with intellectual disabilities are great people, including some of the best followers of Christ I have known.
Special Olympics is still needed because our society is not as inclusive as it can be. But there is great joy in not having to pass in the ‘normal’ world. It is a place where you don’t have to pretend or be stared at.
I am a better Christian for being part of the Special Olympics.
Back home it will be back to picking up the tennis balls, Oh, so many tennis balls.
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The last first: “Losing at sport gave her far more than winning,” Mrs Slope observes as we walk up one of Launceston’s many hills, talking about our daughter athlete at the games. “It gave her emotional regulation, it helped her get to where she is today.” In Intellectual-disability, my daughter is a superstar, living independently, and holding down a mainstream job. Obadiah has told you already he is proud of her.
But the idea that losing is essential in life. Maybe that’s a helpful thought for Christian leaders feeling a bit battered by events.
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Tales from the air: As I settled into my aisle seat, seat D, one of the first to board the plane, my temporary companions E and F arrived. As I stood up, I noticed they had many go bags and spread them into the overhead baggage compartment across the aisle.
You have probably predicted what happened soon after. A family arrived to sit in my row’s seats A, B and C. It was the mother (why the mother?) who was left harassed looking for a place to put her case. No room upstairs. She wandered up the aisle.
Dilemma: Do I stay silent and polite? I don’t know seats E and F. They are of different ethnicity. If I say something will it appear as racist?
I quietly say “there’s meant to be one bag for each person, up there”. Pause.Another pause. Then the guy next to me says “I will move one of my bags”. I get up from the aisle seat to let him out. He says “thanks” as he gets up. “I say “that’s being very kind of you”. The mother arrives and thanks him too as she hoists her case into the space he has vacated.
And then we silently wait for takeoff.
And so I muse., it’s a bit like the current Christian dilemma. We have a message that some, maybe a lot of people will find offensive. Do we remain silent? How do we speak up?
PS – we met again on the airport bus….
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Instant contact: Obadiah walked into The Gospel Coalition national conference and thought – these are my people. Then he thought ‘you can’t think this! Where’s your journalistic objectivity?’ But Obadiah loves Christians! He has had the same response to meeting people at Hillsong conferences and on five continents.
Stop him if Obadiah is being too much of an old bloke, but this reminds Mr Slope of meeting Christians across the political divide at the Australian Union of Students (this ages him.) Whether they were members of the faction led by one Tony Abbott, or Christians in a Labor group, these were my sisters and brothers.
And they felt different to me than the ‘nons.’ Still do
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Quote of the week: “Ambition is a many-splendour, much–maligned thing. Your take depends on what demons you are trying to exorcise. If you are surrounded by prideful, power-hungry egomaniacs bent on making a name for themselves through Balian endeavours, ambition looks ugly, monstrous, and domineering. But if you are surrounded by placid, passive, go-with-the-flow, aw-shucks folk who are leaving unused gifts on the table and failing to respond to their calling, then ambition looks like faithfulness. Sometimes ambition is ugly; sometimes the critique of ambition is uglier, as when powerful white men worry that others (brown women, say) are getting ‘uppity’.
On the Road with Saint Augustine; a real-world spirituality for restless hearts by James K A Smith, Brazos Press.