Becoming Friends of Time: 2014 J.J. Thiessen Lecture Series

2014, 3:01:22 min

October 14-15, 2014

How might the experience of profoundly disabled people impact our understandings of God, creation, and the meaning of humanness?

Dr. John Swinton explores that question in Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefulness and Gentle Discipleship, a three-part lecture series

Swinton, Professor and Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, will discuss the nature and purpose of time, and the ways in which certain forms of disability draw attention to forgotten aspects of time and timefulness.

The lectures will focus particularly on people with profound intellectual disabilities and people with cognitive disabilities such as advanced dementia. People with such life experiences perceive and live out time in ways that are quite different from the expectations of our speed driven culture.

People with profound disabilities draw attention to the significance of time and point towards the fact that true knowledge of God and faithful discipleship is slow and gentle; not bound by the assumptions of speed, worldly success, and the quickness of one’s intellect.

Swinton hopes that people who attend will walk away with an understanding that people with profound intellectual disabilities and people with advanced dementia are disciples with a God-given vocation.

Lecture 1 | Time and Disability: Why Disability Is Fundamentally an Issue of Time

October 14, 2014
Time is the mysterious underpinning to everything we do, and yet despite its power and influence over us, we rarely reflect on its implications for the ways in which we understand and structure our lives. This lecture will examine St. Augustine's idea that time is fallen and needs redemption. It will explore ways in which "clock time" is measured by productivity and has been made into "real time" in ways that are deeply problematic for everyone, particularly for those deemed unable "keep up." Time and disability are intimately connected, not only because disability challenges the idea of time but because certain key assumptions that comprise the category 'disability' are premised on mistaken and dangerous understandings of time. In these ways time has fallen and has become the oppressor of all who fail to meet the criteria for living well in a world ruled by clocks. Time needs to be redeemed.

Lecture 2 | Slow and Gentle Discipleship: Discovering Vocation in Worlds Without Words

October 14, 2014
What does it mean to redeem time? This lecture will examine a theological understanding of time through a critical reflection on the ideas of Sabbath, providence, slowness and gentleness. Furthermore it will develop a model of discipleship which reclaims the power of timefulness and the significance of inactivity. It is through the recognition of the gentle, slowness of God that the prophetic witness of disability can be understood.

Lecture 3 | Becoming a Timeful People: Disability and the Art of Being With Jesus

October 15, 2014
What does discipleship and vocation mean for people living with profound intellectual disabilities and people living with advanced dementia? What does it mean to be a slow and gentle follower of Jesus and not to comprehend intellectually who Jesus is? This lecture will explore the idea of discipleship without words. Can the body of Christ be whole without the discipleship of all of God's people? What is the vocation of individuals with profound cognitive or intellectual disabilities within God's Kingdom? It is hoped that through examining these questions the debates around inclusion can be turned into a conversation around discipleship rather than identity politics.

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