Mr. Rodgers of the long running children’s show “Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood” (1968-2001) had some meaningful words in regard to children (and adults) with disabilities. For instance, from the “Fred Rodger’s Productions website:”Fred Rodgers on Disabilities
Some Personal Stories:
A visit with Jeff Erlanger (1981).This is a segment of one of his shows in which he talks with a 10-year-old boy in a wheelchair:
The First four posts on this theme are from the blog of Mary Evelyn, a Greek Orthodox Christian mother who has a son named Simeon who has spina bifida. The first post is by a young lady, Kathleen Downes; the last picture displayed on the post is a recent picture of her with big smile. The next three posts relate Mary Evelyn and Simeon’s developing relationship with his wheelchair. Mary Evelyn is a gifted writer and very funny. The last two posts are from other sources. The first is about a very generous man who made a big difference, and the second relates the value of a wheelchair to the life of Senait Melesse, from Ethiopia.
Then, four you tube videos are featured, two starring Kathleen Downes and two featuring joyful Africans in wheelchairs (The second one features the ministry of International Orthodox Christian Charities).
Imagine – you’ve reached the age when you need help with daily living tasks, and you either don’t want to be a burden on your family or
Not Dead Yet UK
your family isn’t available to help you; would you prefer to have a person come to your home to assist you, or would you prefer to be placed in a nursing home? Most older people dread the thought of being placed in a nursing home. Unfortunately, many insurance companies will not pay for home assistance. And so there is no choice. People with disabilities are in the same predicament.
But this may change, The Disability Integration Act, which has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, would require insurance companies to pay for both nursing home care and home assistance. It has 232 co-sponsors, but the Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Frank Pallone (D), is blocking the Act. The following article is a call enlist the support of your local U.S. representative, and also to change Frank Pallone’s mind.
The Quality Adjusted Life Year calculates the value of disabled life as a percentage of the value of the life of a non-disabled person. This is blatant discrimination against people with disabilities! It has been rejected by the state of Oregon and by the Affordable Care Act, but New York State has allowed it’s use in a roundabout way. This article explains the situation in more detail:
NDY (Not Dead Yet) is a news source for the Disability Resistance Movement (DRM). One of it’s major goals is to fight against the
Euthanasia advocacy in the halls of government. Some hospitals have been using their view of “Quality of Life” so that they can save money by “pulling the plug” on people with disabilities. Their argument is that people with severe disabilities do not have quality of life, and are not worth the effort and subsequent costs of the continued use of life-saving treatments. So when a disabled person’s desire to live is weighed against these costs to the hospital, the pleas of the person as well as those of their family and friends are overruled by a hospital committee!
This NDY article by Diane Coleman call for this resistance to sustained!
Here is a short synopsis of a chapter from the publication Healing in Byzantium: Faith and Science, in which we find the Orthodox Christian monastic roots ofthe social inclusion of persons with disabilitywithin the community both within the monastery and in the society at large:
The Monastic Health Care System and the Development of the Hospital in Late Antiquity
A deep concern with the medical, religious, and social aspects of illness runs throughout early monastic literature. A concern with illness and health, and indeed a focus on the body, is by no means unique in late antique ascetic literature, but is a common feature of late Roman philosophical and ethical belles-lettres. But in contrast to the medical obsession that so consumed members of the Roman aristocracy, monastic leaders wrestled less with the interpretation of sickness within their own bodies than with the treatment of the sick within society. Such an overriding concern with the care for the sick, and also with the social inclusion of the sick and disabled within the community, pervades monastic rules, letters, homilies, and biographies from the fourth and fifth centuries.. . . .
They were offered material and emotional comfort in their time of need, and were exempted from their normal responsibilities of work, diet and prayer. . . .
The innovative approaches to healing within early Christian monasticism would bear a significant influence on the development of the hospital in early Byzantium. . . .
by Andrew Crislip, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in Honolulu, where he teaches courses in Biblical Studies, Early Christianity, and Theory and Method in Religious Studies. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2002.
Faithtree is an Orthodox Christian organization which seeks to help and enable priests and lay leaders for the ministries of the parish church. This article deals with our attitudes toward people with disability and questions we need to ask ourselves in order to prepare ourselves to love people with disabilities and their families, while at the same time beginning our approach by seeing the personhood rather than their disability. If we see them as a helpless charity case they will realize that they are being looked down upon. We all yearn to be treated with dignity and respect, and so do they.
children (and adults) with disabilities. For instance, from the “Fred Rodger’s Productions website:”Fred Rodgers on Disabilities
Here is a short synopsis of a chapter from the publication 
Arms Open Wide 
