Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

287relationship of I and the other, in which “God is portrayed as both yearning itselfand the object of that yearning.” 710The moment is also impregnated with grace. By grace, the Thou, or theGod, in the person with intellectual disability, approaches me whilst I wait in astate of being. Whilst the one who waits is liberated from an objectifying agendathis posture does not assume a completely passive guise, for the one who waitsremains wholly attentive to the coming of the Thou. As Simone Weil states,We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search ofthem but by waiting for them ... This way of looking is, in the firstplace, attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents inorder to receive the human being it is looking at, just as he (sic) is,in all his truth. 711The Thou has graciously approached me out of regard for me as a flawedyet forgiven and loved person created in the image of God. Likewise, I see thatthey have only come close to me because they too are similarly created in God’slikeness. As the Thou comes near to me I can but choose to engage inrelationship with them with the whole of my being. 712 This giving of my wholeself to and reception of the Thou is assisted through waiting with a focus on thepresent moment, casting aside past or future considerations.It is in the realization of being flawed yet forgiven and loved that therevelation of our shared God-given mutual identity is affirmed. It is an identitythat is truly egalitarian in nature. It is an identity that makes real the presence ofshared, God-given love. As feminist theologian Beverly Harrison asserts,“[w]henever one party is invulnerable, and therefore unwilling or unable to beaffected by another, there is and can be no love present.” 713 However, through aconfessing spirit that leads to repentance, the objectifying effect of institutionallyrealizedIt-ness is cast aside in the interests of unconditional love.Fundamentally I realize that I do not see myself through the prism ofprofessional status or assumed competency. Nor do I see myself through anyother objectifying effect that serves to disempower the one before me who is trulymy sister or brother in Christ.710 Haslam, Molly. A Constructive Theology of Intellectual Disability: Human Being asMutuality and Response. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 108.711 Weil, Simone. Waiting on God. (London: Fontana, 1959), 169.712 Buber, I and Thou, 11.713 Harrison, Beverly. Justice in the Making: Feminist Social Ethics. (Louisville & London:Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 59.