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These readings have altered the way I am looking @ the world. I was telling Kristin that last Sunday I went to Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. Early into the Meeting for Worship, someone told the inspirational story of having heard a magnificent pianist in New Orleans--who had a club hand. Then someone else stood and spoke of how similarly inspired he was to hear another famous pianist play @ the Kimmel Center, here in Philadelphia--w/ only his right hand--after a stroke had incapacitated his left one.

Rather than emphasize the distance between spectator and spectacle, as Garland-Thomson does, these messages were all about how "miracles can happen": the triumph of [the human] spirit" in which we can all participate.

So: I was sitting there stewing, thinking of how I could give an *appropriate* (i.e. not lecturing/teaching/shaming) message about the  first of the "rhetorics" Garland-Thomson describes: that pre-modern construction of the "wondrous," "courageous overcomer"...

...when another f/Friend stood to muse about how much the stories in the Bible are actually the stories of each of us. He'd heard a talk about gender varient people in the Bible, in which Joseph was identified as  transvestite (I'm going to have to check that one out....). And then he described his boyfriend, a "'deaf-mute' who is not @ all mute" --wondering if there are disabled people in the Bible who do not have to be cured, who are alright as they are.

And so: message given.