Fully human: what people with disabilities can teach us about God--and about ourselves.

I attended the Christmas Vigil last year with a Hindu friend who had recently gone through a painful divorce. He had come to spend the holiday with us and, enchanted by all the preparations we had made and the rituals we practiced, he was determined to come to the midnight Mass as well.

Just before Communion the priest announced that the Eucharist was only for Catholics and that non-Catholics should please refrain from approaching the altar. I glanced quickly at my friend and saw that he looked as if someone had slapped him. I murmured my apologies as I stepped out of the pew to get into the line and went up to receive, thinking about inclusion.

I'm still thinking.

As the director of a foundation in India for children with special needs, inclusion is a second religion for me. When disability is the excluding factor, the way forward seems self-evident: build ramps, install elevators, mainstream kids with autism, train teachers, hire slow learners to bag groceries. And that is precisely the way many disability activists approach the issue: Checklist in hand, they lobby, advocate, raise awareness, and get laws passed. Inclusion happens.

But why then are so many people with disabilities so lonely? Why are mothers like me, with a daughter who has a profound mental and physical handicap, seen as saints? Why do people call the work I do "noble"?

Inclusion is too intricate a task for a lobbyist with a checklist to accomplish. At one level, inclusion is about much more than disability. It goes to the heart of the human condition, touching upon our place in the cosmos and our eternal yearning to belong. But at another, more fundamental level, inclusion is only about disability. It is only when we understand brokenness that we can understand the mystery of redemption, of becoming whole in Christ, of being named, of being included. It was through his embrace of disability that Jesus won our salvation. It might help to think about why that was his choice.

Our religion is based on a physical maiming of catastrophic proportions, but as Christians we avoid the reality of that disability, preferring to focus on the sweet little baby in the manger, the spellbinding leader during his three years of public ministry, or, best of all, the transfigured Savior. But when the resurrected Jesus first appeared to his disciples in the upper room, what he asked them was this: "Why are you frightened? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see" (Luke 24:37-39).

I have always read this passage as a simple account of the identifying sign, the proof that this was indeed the same man who had been crucified and had now returned. Now I wonder if Jesus wasn't saying something much more significant, if what he meant was that we can only recognize him by touching his wounds, that we can only know who he is by acknowledging both our own wounds and those of the people we meet.

When I was growing up, my family was part of the "underground church," and home Masses were frequent events. Each Mass had a theme, usually something upbeat and positive: joy, resurrection, celebrating life. I still remember the awkward silence that greeted my mother's announcement of her choice for one week's theme: failure.

I am 47 years old, about the age my mother must have been at that Mass. The older I get, the more clearly I appreciate how untidy, complicated, and tangled life is. There are no clean edges, no bright white lines. We make mistakes. We say and do things we wish we hadn't, and we do not speak or act as we know we should. We have lapses of courage, of judgment, of kindness, of courtesy, of common sense.

Sometimes we make mistakes and get away with them; sometimes the consequences of our actions can change life forever--and not only for ourselves. Perhaps the hardest consequences to accept are the ones that we cause and that others must live with.

So many of us worry. I do, and I know that I am not alone. I lie awake at night and go over events long past, replaying them again and again, wishing I had said this, not done that, not been there at that particular moment, not exploded, not resented, done more, done less, minded my own business, been a better person.

But for all of this swirling inner life, inevitable for just about everyone, it is still possible to pretend otherwise, to go on through the days making polite conversation, wearing pretty clothes, preparing nice meals, bringing up good children, and seeming to do all the right things. Although we are all, at some level, desperate housewives, we can disguise the extent of our failures, the depth of our self-deceptions, at least for part of the time of with some people.

Not so with disability. You can't hide it if you are blind or in a wheelchair or have a mental handicap. It's right out there in the open. "Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see."

And so it is no wonder that Jesus began by saying, "Why are you frightened? Why do doubts arise in your hearts?" For all our brave efforts at inclusion, we still don't actually like meeting people like him, people with disabilities. We are still awkward around them, not sure where to look or what to say. There they are, naked before us, their wounds all on display--how are we supposed to feel?

In our awareness work we often ask people how they respond to those with disabilities. The first answers are predictable: pity, admiration, a desire to help them. But when we probe deeper, the more honest ones in the group will often admit that their strongest reaction is fear. They don't know what to expect and so they expect the worst. Maybe the person will become suddenly violent, maybe she will need help that is intimate and embarrassing, maybe he will say something inappropriate and offensive. Equally likely, maybe they will do or say something to offend the person with the disability. Excluding such people in subtle, not obviously deliberate ways, seems the easiest solution.

It might surprise us to consider instead that our situation is not so different from that of the apostles confronted with the living Christ, miraculously restored to them, wounded yet whole. How bewildering it must have been for them to see him, disfigured and yet still so dazzling and sure. What is wrong with this picture? What is he telling us by conquering death but not concealing the cost? He not only refused to conceal it but seemed almost to revel in it: "Touch me. Put your hand in my side. It is I myself." What is he so eager about? Where are the white garments, so brilliant we cannot look at them? Who wants to put a hand into a wound, for Christ's sake?

It reminds me of the curious mixture of admiration and revulsion many of us feel (but will not admit to) watching contestants in the Special Olympics. We think, but we will not say, that while it is praiseworthy and understandable for handicapped people to want to run, to swim, to race, to celebrate their bodies and the power that is in them, there is still something awful about doing it in public. "Please," we say, turning away, hating ourselves as we do, "don't do that."

We believe, in our heart of hearts, that only the beautiful and the whole should be seen, and knowing ourselves to be neither, we feel confused and frightened, as if our own secrets will be revealed in the presence of anyone whose flaws are obvious. We have put so much effort into hiding ours that it is unsettling to be with people who can't--or won't.

And then Jesus--the disabled God--rises victorious from the tomb, and with the marks of his torture and death still on his body, says calmly, "This is who I am. I have been beaten and killed, but I have nothing to hide."

What Jesus did with pain and suffering was not to triumph over them but to weave them seamlessly into his life, to demonstrate through his own experience that grief and sorrow, confusion and despair are part of what make us human. In one of her most poignant reflections Dorothy Day wrote, "We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community."

Brokenness comes in many guises; people with traditional disabilities have a jump on the rest of us because dependence is a necessary condition of their lives. Those who value their independence and self-reliance above all often suffer needlessly, excluding themselves from the human community and the "solution of love" that it provides.

In the Taoist religion, people with disabilities are honored. This is a principle based on the deepest possible understanding of reality, yet one which runs counter to what we think we know. So often it is the missing part, the window in the wall, the space in the handle of a teacup, that makes the whole possible. Seen in this way, of course, nothing is missing at all. The window is not a missing wall; it is what allows us to look outside and see the world. The space in the handle of a teacup is not missing china; it is where our fingers fit so that the cup can be lifted. It's all in the way we look at things.

Jesus, the disabled God who saves, takes our lives as they are--with all their griefs and sorrows, joys and triumphs--and calmly embraces us, excluding nothing. We would do well to do the same, both for ourselves and for others.

By Jo McGOWAN, a writer living in India, where she is executive director of a foundation for children with disabilities.