I marvel at some men and women who have suffered sometimes severe illnesses or handicaps, but who have gradually come to accept and embrace them. Several years ago I was invited to Montreal to meet men and women with physical handicaps. I had been asked to talk to them but when I met them I felt unable to speak until I had listened to them. I asked them to tell me their stories and how they had suffered. Each one explained the bitterness they had experienced. One said, "I had polio when I was seventeen. To begin with, my school friends supported me. Gradually, they stopped visiting me. Now I have no friends." One after another they talked about their pain and their anger with society. Then one woman with polio spoke up, "How can we criticize people in society for not accepting us if we fail to accept them in their non-acceptance of us?" Suffering had brought her to a wisdom so beautiful. She radiated love.

- Jean Vanier, Our Journey Home, p. 164

I don't have personal experience with this program specifically, but can appreciate the sentiment and mission of the work:

The Art of Living Foundation was inspired by the programs of spiritual leader and humanitarian His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar that began in 1982. It has been a nonprofit 501(c)(3) educational and humanitarian organization in the U.S. since 1989. Accredited as a United Nations Non-Governmental organization in 1996, it is now one of the UN's largest volunteer-based NGOs. It works in special consultative status with the UN's Economic and Social Council, participating in a variety of committees and activities relating to health, education, sustainable development, conflict resolution, and disaster relief.

Our Mission

To strengthen the individual and society by offering programs inspired by His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar that eliminate stress, create a sense of belonging, restore human values, develop life to its full potential, and encourage people from all backgrounds to come together in celebration, wisdom, and service.

The Foundation engages in a wide array of educational and humanitarian programs that uplift individuals, make a difference in local communities, and foster global change.

An excerpt from Biodiverse Resistance:

In a comment on another disability blog someone recently mentioned the website "Disability is Natural", so "naturally" i went to have a look at it...

I had actually seen someone wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Disability is Natural" and the red and green apple logo at 2 different disability events (i believe it was the Liberty Festival in London, either in 2005 or 2006, and the protests against the Welfare Reform Bill at the Labour party conference in Manchester in 2006), but hadn't realised it was a website. At the latter, i think i tried to argue with him about the slogan, but didn't get very far with it...



I see the point that the slogan is trying to make - that disabled people are a natural part of human diversity, and deserve to be accepted and accommodated rather than "cured" or eliminated, and of course I wholeheartedly support that - that's the basic foundation of the social model of disability. But the use of the slogan "Disability is Natural" betrays a clear lack of understanding of what the social model is truly about.

Under the social model, a clear distinction is made between impairment and disability, which the medical system and the individualised models it promotes conflate into one thing. Impairment is a physical or mental difference which prevents a person from being able to carry out daily activities considered "normal" for humans to be able to do - eg. standing/walking, seeing, hearing, feeding oneself, reading and writing, understanding verbal and non-verbal forms of communication as used by most people, etc. Disability is the lack of equality in society caused, not by impairments themselves, but by the failure or refusal of society to accommodate people with impairments - eg. by not making buildings accessible to wheelchair users, not providing information in formats accessible to people with visual or hearing impairments or learning disabilities like dyslexia, not allowing people who need help with personal care to have choice and control over what support they recieve, assuming that everyone "should" be able to understand all forms of communication in the same way, etc.

(It's worth noting that, while impairment is therefore something with a "concrete", outside-of-society existence, and disability something that exists because of and depending on social factors, what is and isn't an impairment is still contested, especially in the neurological area, where the distinctions between, for example, preferring one method of communication over another, and actually being unable to use one form of communication, get kind of blurred - and what constitutes an impairment still depends to some extent on what is considered "normal" for people to be able to do - eg. dyslexia wouldn't have been an impairment for many people in societies without widespread literacy. But this is a tangent...)

Physical and mental diversity is natural. Impairment is natural. But the social model states quite emphatically that disability isn't natural - it's socially constructed, and can be socially deconstructed. (It's also worth noting here that being socially constructed, despite what a lot of people seem to think, doesn't necessarily mean that something "isn't real". It's very real, but it's society and not nature that makes it real.)

Several quotes from the disability history page of the website make it clear that, when the author says "disability", ze actually means "impairment":

From the beginning, mythical perceptions and stereotypical attitudes have portrayed individuals with disabilities as different, aberrant, deficient, incompetent, and more. But like gender and ethnicity, a disability is simply one of many natural characteristics of being human... There have always been people with disabilities and differences in the world, and there always will be.

...

Some people are born with conditions we label as disabilities; others may acquire a disability through an accident or illness; and, if we live long enough, many of us will acquire a disability through the aging process. Disability does not discriminate!

...

But the problem never has been the disability; the problem is (and has always been) society's beliefs about disability. People with disabilities are not broken, and they don't need to be fixed!

Old attitudes and perceptions—not the disability itself—constitute the greatest obstacle facing people with disabilities. This attitudinal barrier may not always be visible to the naked eye, but it rears its ugly head across all environments and results in children and adults with disabilities being socially isolated, physically segregated, and excluded from the mainstream of American society.

Of course, in a social model understanding of the term "disability", "attitudes and perceptions" are "the disability itself"...

(edit: the author is Kathie Snow, who wants quotes to be attributed, and who is the non-disabled parent of a disabled son. I was kind of curious as to whether the author was a disabled person...)

by Jean Vanier

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT the liberation of the human heart from the tentacles of chaos and loneliness, and from those fears that provoke us to exclude and reject others. It is a liberation that opens us up and leads us to the discovery of our common humanity. I want to show that this discovery is a journey from loneliness to a love that transforms, a love that grows in and through belonging, a belonging that can include as well as exclude. The discovery of our common humanity liberates us from self-centered compulsions and inner hurts; it is the discovery that ultimately finds its fulfillment in forgiveness and loving those who are our enemies. It is the process of truly becoming human....

This book is not essentially about the formation and organization of society; it is not essentially political in scope. But since society is made up of individuals, as we open up to others and allow ourselves to be concerned with their condition, then the society in which we live must also change and become more open. We will begin to work together for the common good. On the other hand, if we commit ourselves to the making of a society in which we are concerned only with our own rights, then that society must become more and more closed in on itself. Where we do not feel any responsibility towards others, there is no reason for us to work harmoniously towards the common good.

Over the last thirty-four years, my experience has been primarily with men and women who have intellectual disabilities. In August 1964, I founded l’Arche: a network of small homes and communities where we live together, men and women with intellectual disabilities and those who feel called to share their lives with them. Today, there are over one hundred l’Arche communities in the world. Living in l’Arche, I have discovered a lot about loneliness, belonging and the inner pain that springs from a sense of rejection. Community life with men and women who have intellectual disabilities has taught me a great deal about what it means to be human. To some, it may sound strange for me to say that it is the weak, who have been my teachers. I hope that I can reveal a bit of what I have learned - and am still learning - about being human, and about helping others to discover our common humanity.

It was only in l’Arche that I really discovered what loneliness is. There were probably many times before l’Arche when I had felt lonely but until then I had not seen loneliness as a painful reality, maybe because I had succeeded in keeping myself busy by doing things. Perhaps I had never named it or needed to give it a name.

When I started welcoming those with intellectual disabilities into l’Arche, men and women from institutions, psychiatric hospitals, dysfunctional families, I began to realize how lonely they were. I discovered the terrible feeling of chaos that comes from extreme loneliness.

A sense of loneliness can be covered up by the things we do as we seek recognition and success. This is surely what I did as a young adult. It is what we all do. We all have this drive to do things that will be seen by others as valuable, things that make us feel good about ourselves and give us a sense being alive. We only become aware of loneliness at times when we cannot perform or when imagination seems to fail us.

Loneliness can appear as a faint dis-sease, an inner dis-satisfaction, a restlessness in the heart.

Loneliness comes at any time. It comes in times of sickness or when friends are absent; it comes during sleepless nights when the heart is heavy, during times of failure at work or in relationships; it comes when we lose trust in ourselves and in others. In old age, loneliness can rise up and threaten to overwhelm us. At such times, life can lose its meaning. Loneliness can feel like death.

When people are physically well, performing creatively, successful in their lives, loneliness seems absent. But I believe that loneliness is something essential to human nature; it can only be covered over, it can never actually go away. Loneliness is a part of being human, because there is nothing in existence that can completely fulfill the needs of the human heart.

Loneliness in one form is, in fact, essential to our humanity. Loneliness can become a source of creative energy, the energy that drives us down new paths to create new things or to seek more truth and justice in the world.

Artists, poets, mystics, prophets, those who do not seem to fit into the world or the ways of society, are frequently lonely. They feel themselves to be different, dissatisfied with the status quo and with mediocrity; dissatisfied with our competitive world where so much energy goes into ephemeral things. Frequently, it is the lonely man or woman who revolts against injustice and seeks new ways. It as if a fire is burning within them, a fire fuelled by loneliness.

Loneliness is the fundamental force that urges mystics to a deeper union with God. For such people, loneliness has become intolerable but, instead of slipping into apathy or anger, they use the energy of loneliness to see God. It pushes them towards the absolute. An experience of God quenches the thirst for the absolute but at the same time, paradoxically, whets it; because this is an experience that can never be total; by necessity, the knowledge of God is always partial. So loneliness opens up mystics to a desire to love each and every human being as God loves them.

Loneliness, then, can be a force for good. More frequently, however, loneliness, loneliness shows other, less positive faces. It can be a source of apathy and depression, and even of a desire to die. It can push us into escapes and addictions in the need to forget our inner pain and emptiness. This apathy is how loneliness most often shows itself in the elderly and those with disabilities.

It is loneliness we find in those who fall into depression, who have lost the sense of meaning in their lives, who are asking the questions born of despair: What is left?

I once visited a psychiatric hospital that was a kind of warehouse of human misery. Hundreds of children with severe disabilities were lying, neglected, on their cots. There was a deadly silence. Not one of them was crying. When they realize nobody cares, that nobody will answer them, children no longer cry. It takes too much energy. We cry out only when there is hope that someone may hear us.

Such loneliness is born of the most complete and utter depression, from the bottom of the deepest pit in which the human soul can find itself. The loneliness that engenders depression manifests itself as chaos. There is confusion and coming out of this confusion there can be a desire for self-destruction, for death. So, loneliness can become agony, a scream of pain. There is no light, no consolation, no touch of peace and of the joy life brings. Such loneliness reveals the true meaning of chaos.

Life no longer flows in recognizable patterns. For the person engulfed in this form of loneliness there is only emptiness, anguish, and inner agitation; there are no yearnings, no desires to be fulfilled, no desire to live. Such a person feels completely cut off from everyone and everything. It is a life turned in upon itself. All order is gone and those in this chaos are unable to relate or listen to others. Their lives seem to have no meaning. They live in complete confusion, closed up in themselves.

Thus loneliness can become such uncontrolled anguish that one can easily slip into the chaos of madness.

Let me tell you some stories, from my own experience, of the damage loneliness can create. I met Eric for the time in 1977. He was in the children’s ward of the local psychiatric hospital, 40 kilometres from the l’Arch community in Trosly, France. He was blind and deaf, as well as severely intellectually disabled; he could neither walk nor eat by himself. He came to l’Arche at the age of sixteen, full of tremendous needs, anguish, and fears. He often sat on the ground and whenever he felt someone close by, would stretch out his arms and try to clutch that person and to climb up on them. Once he succeeded in getting someone to hold him, his actions would become wild: he would lose control, struggling to be held and at the same time, jumping up and down. Holding Eric under these conditions became intolerable for anyone and, inevitably, it ended in a struggle, trying to get rid of him as he fought to remain held. He was someone who seemed to be living in immense anguish.

Anguish is inner agitation, a chaotic, unfocused energy. Anguish breaks sleep and other patterns and brings us to a place of confusion. To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore unloveable. Loneliness is a taste death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget their inner pain.

Eric was a terrible lonely young man. He needed to be loved but his needs were so great that no one person could fulfill them. It took a long time in l’Arche before he found inner peace. Little by little, as he learned to trust those around him, he discovered he was loved.

By way of contrast, Pierre was the seventh child in a family of thirteen, a man who had spent seven years in prison. I met him in Montreal. He had run away from home when he was twelve years old because he felt unnoticed and unwanted by his family. So, for a long time he lived with gangs on the street. In his heart, Pierre was a lonely man who felt lost. He had no where to go, no meaning in his life. He needed a friend, a teacher, someone who could help him find himself and a sense of purpose.

When he was sixteen Pierre committed a crime, which I believe was a cry for help. He went to jail for it. While he was there, he fell in love with a woman who regularly visited the prison. They got married and his life took on a new meaning; he finally had someone and something to live for. It was the beginning of his process of becoming human, and it happened because he felt loved.

In our l’Arche communities we experience that deep inner healing comes about mainly when people feel loved, when they have a sense of belonging. Our communities are essentially places where people can serve and create, and, most importantly, where they can love as well as be loved. This healing flows from relationships - it is not something automatic.

I have come to learn that embodied in this approach there is an important principle: the necessity of human commitment to the evolution of the new, the necessity of accepting constant movement as the key to our humanity and as the only road to becoming truly human.

In Eric and Pierre, there were chaos and disorder. Yet in the midst of the chaos there was a way out. Are not all our lives a movement from order to disorder, which in turn evolves into a new order?