In the Fik of it

I was asked my opinion on an issue that a local news outlet had posted.  The article centered on the topics of physical accessibility, human dignity, and financial responsibility. Those subjects were offered in the context of the needs of one student with a medical condition. My introduction to the article was a big headline about a lawsuit with a primary visual being the offending building and a secondary, smaller, poorly composed image of a student that appeared to be harvested from a social media channel.  The bias was immediately established. Issues aside, the thing that smacked me in the face were the responses that people offered on the motives, needs, and realities of physical difference in our society.   If a society is truly judged by how it cares for the least of its members, then this small society of opinions is doomed.    Now, I know better than to ask a crowd a complex question, and while Malcom Gladwell takes pride in his book “The Wisdom of Crowds” , I see crowds a

The quiet surgeon went on to explain how his life had gone from being the doctor to being the patient in a span of about 60 minutes.   One moment he’s a surgeon doing what he believed God had designed him to do, the next moment he’s looking at his own x-rays which reveal that he’s now a cancer victim with less than 3 years life expectancy.   Somehow, at the end of all this he was able to say “I thank God for the cancer”.   From that sobering testimony, the pastor turned to face a tent full of individuals who have their own sobering realities stuffed into bodies that are “imperfect” by conventional standards.   He was able to face them and with words that defy logic, speak how each developmental difference was in fact more special than different, more a gift than a curse.   That one set me back a bit.   The tent was alive with human movement but little of it would be welcomed as special in most of the world.   Jesus’s absurd metaphor came to mind, the one where he says “no loving