The Medicine We Bring

I believe what Native Americans believe: that every person born to this earth is born with gifts. It's totally impossible to be born without them. No one's birth was a mistake. We all come here with something to give. And it is in the giving that these gifts become medicine, for the world, for the tribe, for the family the school, the agency. The health and the wholeness and the vitality of any community requires 100% participation of every member of that community. 

Denise Bissonnette in Citizenship and Person-Centred Work

This is a hard truth. It demands that we ask ourselves what has been lost and what will be lost every time a child with a disability is terminated before its birth, or killed just after its birth. What is lost every time an older person or a person with disabilities is 'hurried towards death' or is just left, segregated, within a care home.

It seems that society doesn't always want to take its medicine.

We are choosing to be the kind of society that only values the shallow and the temporary. We want to be happy, at any price; but we don't want to have to show love, pay attention or take care. Perhaps we think we already have all that it takes to be human within ourselves - we just don't need other people. Or perhaps we only value the famous, the rich and the powerful.

But, if this is so, we are on a long journey to deep disappointment.

True value cannot be found within inevitably scarce and fleeting moments of celebrity or in the enjoyment of rare pleasures. True value lies all around us - in every moment, in every person - but it can only be found in love - not self-indulgence.