(RNS) — The Rev. Sarah Lund describes her deeply non-public fifth e book, whereby she tells the story of how her religion interacts alongside with her neurodivergence, as a “call from God.”
“Storytelling in the well-known particular person helps save a face and a body into the info, into the statistics, into the total stigma. I feel like it’s a highly efficient manner to pronounce our pronounce,” said Lund, the senior pastor at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Indianapolis.
Lund’s most up-to-date e book — “Blessed Minds: Breaking the Silence About Neurodiversity,” characteristic to be revealed March 24 — explores what it technique to welcome neurodivergent americans into religion communities and the draw church buildings can develop their definitions of inclusion.
“As we glance to fragment God’s fancy with all americans, we ought to be more mindful of a few of the crucial barriers americans will be experiencing, ranges of discrimination they’ll skills,” Lund said.
Lund has lengthy been an imply for incapacity and mental health justice in religion areas. As a minister for disabilities and mental health justice and the well-known woman to be named senior pastor at First Congregational UCC, Lund felt it used to be her calling to make exhaust of her writing to aid destigmatize incapacity, mental health and neurodiversity in the religion community. Nonetheless she moreover hopes the e book will encourage any individual who picks it up to contain their identities and discontinuance hiding who they if truth be told are.
“I’m engaging us all to rob off our masks, to possess fun who we entirely are and to inaugurate up sharing more of our tales about what it technique to be made in God’s image by the neurodivergent God who created us to be blessed in our minds and our bodies, spirits and our body minds,” Lund said.
Lund defines neurodivergency — which affects up to twenty% of American citizens — as “having a brain that choices otherwise from the bulk of oldsters” and neurodiversity as “the fluctuate of variations in brain characteristic and habits amongst all humans.” Nonetheless for religion communities to if truth be told contain neurodivergence, she believes they need to rob an even bolder step: recognizing God as neurodivergent.
“Regardless that the Bible does no longer exhaust the word ‘neurodivergent’ to record God, in my prayers, meditations, and reflections in regards to the spirituality of neurodiversity, I’m coming to skills the Spirit of God as neurodivergent,” Lund writes. “The Spirit of God is sportive, whimsical, imaginative, complex, compassionate, deep, highly efficient and exact.”
Her e book encourages readers to rob into yarn how neurodiversity looks at some level of Scripture, significantly in the foundational tales of Genesis.
“I invite a good deal of oldsters to rob it from there and be taught at how neurodiversity reveals up at some level of the Bible, because it definitely does,” Lund said.
Lund said she hopes the e book is known as a resource for religion groups to have interaction with and explore. She entails a replace of fine guides — including Lund’s Ten Commandments of Neurodiversity, Ten Core Values of Neuroinclusive Ministry and Ten Steps for Creating a Neuroinclusive Ministry in Your Congregation — that she says also can aid as a roadmap to inclusivity.
“I would fancy to compare americans adapt it, mediate it, quiz it, pray about it and research it themselves,” Lund said. “It’s my possess increase as a particular person and moreover the save I contemplate the church is rising as we prepare for who God’s calling us to be appropriate now to aid meet the wants of the sphere.”
Even the construction of the e book is intentionally designed to be accessible for neurodivergent americans, including Lund herself.
“As soon as we accomplish issues accessible for folk with disabilities and folk who’re neurodivergent, it’s if truth be told more accessible for all americans,” Lund said. “The dwelling quo is neurotypical. So, what wouldn’t it be taught desire to intentionally dismantle that and accomplish issues accessible for all americans.”
To perform the e book more enticing and digestible for neurodivergent readers, Lund entails haikus written by neurodivergent americans, parables inspired by tales of Jesus in the Bible, lists of key phrases from the chapter, illustrations and reflection questions. Every fragment is moreover marked with symbols: haiku (coronary heart), key word (key), prayer (dove), story illustration (infinity) and reflection query (query impress).
Lund said she looks to be like forward to the conversations around her new e book, engaging new questions that foster non secular increase and religion formation.
“These a good deal of ways of thinking can disclose in a new level of view about our relationship to God, to the sacred textual deliver material, to our sacraments and to baptism and communion,” Lund said.
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