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Discussing this play and the field trip in class made me think…a lot.  One thing that really hit me on the field trip was that these were not kids- they are full grown adults.  Some even looked about 60 years old.  Also, before reading the play I expected them to be young people.  I don’t really think of older people having mental disabilities.  This made me realize though- this isn’t something that goes away.  Over time, people fortunate to not have disabilities grow in mental maturity, but these people don’t really have the opportunity to.  Having a disability is not something that will get better by learning over time and maybe eventually go away, these things last forever.  Like my friend I talked about in my last blog post, he does mentally mature, but just at a slower rate.  Will he get to a point where he stops maturing as a grown adult? I hope not.  It is just sad to see older people with disabilities because, at least it seems like, they don’t have the potential to live the full life…but then maybe they are, maybe they live the full life God intended them to have.

I like in Dr. Fettke’s essay he wrote “if no one can help how he/she is embodied in creation, including the disabled, then it seems very unjust to single out the disabled for their inability to adjust their embodiment.”  I enjoyed this essay as it brought out a lot of things I was unaware of, like how the church doesn’t respond correctly to brothers and sisters with mental disabilities.  God has created them with purposes just like you and me.  They are still created in God’s image and they should be treated as such.  It is looked at to be a mistake or imperfection when somebody is born with a handicap, but only God knows and sees what is truly perfect and he makes no mistakes.