In November, Community UCC will vote on a resolution proposing that we apply to be a UCC-designated Accessible to All (A2A) congregation. As we discovered at VBS, drawing the circle wide is joyful, but it also requires us to understand what is keeping people out of the circle.
CUCC’s A2A Working Group invites all of you – teenage and older – to read the book “My Body Is Not a Prayer Request,” then join in a 3-week discussion as we explore together the ways we unintentionally exclude people with disabilities at CUCC and throughout our lives. If you plan to vote on the A2A resolution, we hope you will attend the discussions as we prepare together.
Author Amy Kenny writes with humor and a bit of snark as she tells stories from her own life about her experiences as a person with a disability. She shines a light on the ways church people, unintentionally, inflict pain and cause damage. Underlying the well-told stories, disabilities rights lessons, and “top ten” lists is her belief that we can do better if we know better. We will use the book as a spring board to tell our own stories and to imagine what CUCC and we individually might do differently.
Read the book on your own, then participate in the Tuesday or Sunday series.
Tuesdays: September 17, 24, and October 1, 7-8PM on Zoom
OR
Sundays: September 22, 29, and October 6 9:15-10:15AM Vaughan Fellowship Hall. Childcare provided on request to Pastor Lacey by Monday, September 16.
If you would like to participate and there is something we could do to make that possible, please let us know and we will do our best to find a solution.
Where to find the book
Purchase your own copy of the book, whether paper, eBook, or audiobook and begin reading right away.
If you are approved to use the NC Accessible Books and Library Services free audiobook library, the audiobook is available there. [If you don’t know about this free NC service for people with disabilities, talk to Robert Parrish. Here is the application information.]
If the cost of a book (whether “print” or audio) would keep you from attending, please contact Pastor Śānti. We want everyone to be able to participate.
[NOTE: The free copies of the book have been taken. Again, thank you, St. Paul’s Christian Church, for passing your extras along to us.]
Childcare
If you plan to attend the Sunday series and need childcare, contact Pastor Lacey by Monday, September 16.
Trigger Alert
Sensitive readers should be aware that this book contains descriptions of suffering at the hands of medical personnel, gaslighting, and lack of support from loved ones.
The A2A Working Group hopes this book study will help members explore why CUCC might want to pursue the A2A congregation designation and why we might aspire to be an ever-more accessible church.