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Jul 18 2025

Guides in the Darkness: A Disability Pride Month Reflection

By: Maggie Austen

Content warning: This piece discusses grief, loss, and death.

TL;DR: As someone who is legally blind, I’ve learned that navigating darkness – both literal and metaphorical – is a skill. The disability community has wisdom to offer about surviving difficult times, finding community in grief, and discovering light gradually rather than demanding it immediately. This Disability Pride Month, let marginalized voices guide you through the darkness we’ve been practicing in our whole lives.

July is Disability Pride Month, and as someone who lives with disability, I’ve been reflecting on what our community has to offer the world – especially during dark times.

This past Sunday, our worship leader Caleb McCoy preached on Ephesians 5:8-20 about living as children of light, letting God’s love shape every part of us as we leave behind old ways and walk in what is good, right, and true. One of his analogies resonated with me in an unexpected way: he mentioned how we’ve all stubbed our toe trying to navigate to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

If you’re not into Jesus and have never heard of Ephesians, stay with me – this isn’t really about theology. It’s about what marginalized communities can teach all of us about navigating hard times.

My instinctive reaction was: Actually, no, I don’t.

As someone who is legally blind, wandering around in the dark is surprisingly easy for me. The way my eyes work means darkness is sometimes more comfortable than light. My parents and others in my life have often walked into the kitchen to find me elbow-deep in chopped vegetables and immediately started turning lights on. It almost never occurs to me to do so myself.

Of course, this isn’t exclusively true – right after the sermon and my mental celebration of being great at operating in darkness, I did in fact stub my toe going to bed. But the irony got me thinking about something deeper.

Learning to Navigate Darkness

People with disabilities live life with our scars on our sleeves, navigate a world that wasn’t designed for us, and we know intimately what it means to find our way when the path isn’t clear. And I believe this is where the disability community – along with other marginalized and oppressed peoples, whether Black, poor, female, or queer – has something profound to offer: we can be guides in the darkness.

This is a dark season politically, globally, and for me personally. On June 13th, my Nana passed away at 84, after a full and adventurous life and 64 years of marriage to a man who adored her, following a short battle with pancreatic cancer. My retired guide dog, a 13 year old German shepherd named O’Bella, is struggling with numerous health conditions, and I am struggling with anticipatory grief and how to best care for her in this final season of her life.

Living in the disability community for the past five years has made sickness and death all too familiar. COVID-19 brought forward conversations about pre-existing conditions and ventilator priority protocols that meant friends with chronic illnesses and disabilities affecting their respiratory systems became increasingly cautious and afraid. So while much of my healthy, non-disabled community found creative ways to socially distance during peak pandemic, the disability community stayed online and inside – still finding ways to “meet” and be together from afar. In 2020 and ‘21, my Facebook and Instagram feeds became memorial walls of disability activists and community members passing away – whether from COVID, limited access to care, or tragic coincidence.

Content creator Molly Burke recently shared a similar experience of navigating darkness during the California wildfires – the power went out and they were packing to potentially evacuate. She was unphased; navigating darkness is not new to her. While her boyfriend used his cell phone flashlight to try to light a candle, draining the battery they couldn’t charge, she could find and light the candle with no flashlight at all.

So in 2022, when my Aunt Elizabeth, my Pop Pop (Nana’s beloved), and my dear friend Bob all passed away in October, November, and December respectively, I wasn’t prepared, but I was primed. I had a community of people who understood the complexities of grief. Their posts, liturgies, songs, and prayers from the past two years had given me a library of comfort to turn to. I had learned ways to metabolize grief that didn’t leave me stuck under the covers for weeks or neck-deep in a party-sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. And I had a faith community with leaders who embraced practices of lament and held grief circles that created spaces to just be in the darkness together. Instead of ignoring the darkness, I learned to walk through it in community.

Perhaps most importantly, I learned the power and importance of telling our stories – not polished, tidy versions like AI-generated TikTok reels, but authentic, complicated moments. The disability community doesn’t shy away from the messy reality of living with chronic illness, navigating grief, or dealing with systems that weren’t built for us. We share the real stuff: the stubbed toes after bragging about navigating darkness, the days when the covers feel safer than the world, the simultaneous grief and relief when a beloved guide dog’s suffering ends.

Rethinking the Light

I think sometimes Christians believe our faith means there’s a glowing sword (yes, I’m imagining a lightsaber now) we can brandish upon invoking the name and power of Jesus. My disabled, broken, bruised, sacrificial Jesus just doesn’t seem to work at my beck and call.

I believe Jesus is a light in the darkness, but I think it’s more like the way rhodopsin in our eyes eventually adjusts to the darkness and starts seeing the light that was there all along. (Thanks to my roommate Elizabeth Bonnice for this rhodopsin reference – after a long chat in our kitchen over a glass of wine, I was able to detangle some of my thoughts for this piece.) The adjustment takes time (like breaking in a new pair of shoes – going back to Caleb’s sermon analogies for a moment). The seeing happens gradually. And sometimes, we need guides who are already comfortable in the dark.

A Challenge for Disability Pride Month

This month, my challenge to my Christian comrades is this: stop weaponizing Jesus’ light. I’m not asking you to stop hoping that darkness will flee or praying for dawn to come (or even police your vocabulary). But while we sit in the darkness of the world today, remember your disabled and marginalized neighbors. This wisdom is especially needed now, as wars around the world continue to be mass disabling events, while rhetoric from leadership continues to scapegoat us, and policies further marginalize and oppress. 

And for my friends who don’t share my faith – the invitation is the same. In these dark times, consider what wisdom might be found in the voices of those who’ve been navigating darkness all along.

Maybe we have something to teach you about surviving in the dark. Maybe we’ve developed skills, communities, and spiritual practices that can help you navigate when the lights go out. Maybe our scars aren’t just marks of what we’ve survived, but maps of where we’ve learned to find our way.

I’m not saying that chopping vegetables isn’t easier with the light on, or that darkness isn’t challenging to navigate. The season of grief I am in – and quite frankly have been in – has been exhausting. I am still learning to embrace moments to hide under the covers (rather than sign up for one more well intentioned commitment), indulge in the decadent pastry when I just need a little something sweet in my day (instead of shame myself into another kale salad), to be kind to my body (instead of expecting it to roll with the punches), and to not push community away in favor of independence or isolation. It is not easy, it is messy.

But when we stand next to a mountain with a friend, the mountain does not seem so tall. When we stand in the darkness with someone who can chop veggies with the lights off and who lets guide dogs help them cross chaotic city streets at midnight, the darkness might not seem so dark after all.

We’ve been practicing this our whole lives, learning to navigate when the path isn’t clear. Let us be your guides.

What might that look like practically? Invite people with disabilities to serve on advisory boards and decision-making committees. Ask us how we feel about policies that affect us, rather than deciding for us. Support disability-led organizations and activism financially and through amplifying our voices. Listen to our stories (plug for JustBook-ish and DotOut’s Disability themed Dot Stories event on July 17th) – the real, messy, complicated ones – rather than the inspiration porn versions. And when the lights go out in your own life, remember that some of us have been finding our way in the dark all along.


This Disability Pride Month, I invite you to listen to the voices of disabled people in your communities, to learn from marginalized voices, and to discover what wisdom might be found in the darkness – not as a place to fear, but as a place where we can learn to see differently.

Written by uniteboston · Categorized: Blog · Tagged: christian, community, jesus, light, unity

Jul 11 2025

Boston Citywide Alpha – Training Day

We want to invite the entire city to join a conversation about life, faith, and Jesus.
 
Join leaders from all across the city for a time of connection, equipping and mobilization as we prepare for a unified Alpha launch in Boston and the surrounding area this fall. This growing movement of churches, organizations and individuals will be coming together to train, pray, promote, invite, launch and finally come together for a united Alpha day away.
This gathering is perfect for leaders who have never run Alpha, as well as those who have been running Alpha for years!
Bring your team members to connect with the wider church, learn more about the fall launch, and hear tips from a variety of pastors and practitioners.  We’ll end the day praying together for the Lord to empower and lead our efforts.
 
Come learn more about how you can be part of this Boston invitation. 

Written by Andrew Walker · Tagged: boston, city, gathering, jesus, united

Jul 03 2025

Join the team at The Garden Church Boston!

The Garden Church is a small but vibrant community of everyday people being shaped by and sharing the love of Jesus in Boston’s South End and beyond. Our community is growing, and we’re looking for a new Kids’ Ministry Lead to help nurture and grow our ministry with little ones! In this part-time role (10 hours per week), you will prepare playful and enriching curriculum for Sunday Kids’ Church, offer training and encouragement to volunteers, and maintain a safe and welcoming environment for our kids and families. We are looking for someone who’s passionate about sharing God’s love with kids and families, and who can bring care, organization, and reliability to the role. At The Garden Church, we are committed to creating a safe, joyful, and spiritually enriching space for kids to encounter the love of Jesus—and we’d love for you to join us!

Written by Andrew Walker · Tagged: community, jesus, jesus in boston, south end, unity

Jun 20 2025

Juneteenth and the Unfinished Work of Freedom

In this Sunday’s newsletter, our featured blogger is Rev. June Cooper, who is an alum of the UB Sankofa Cohort and Theologian in the City at Old South Church. Rev. June Cooper offers a stirring reflection on the legacy of freedom and the unfinished work of justice in our nation, based on a Juneteenth sermon she preached at Old South Church. Drawing from scripture, history, and present-day challenges, she invites us to remember, rejoice, and recommit towards God’s vision for justice and liberation for all people.

P.S. Special thank you to the Boston Faith and Justice Network for sharing this moving reflection with us!


Juneteenth is upon us! And boy, do we need it now!

This Juneteenth marks the 160th anniversary of the day Union Major General Gordon Granger led soldiers to Galveston, Texas to proclaim that the enslaved people in that state were now free. After the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, and the official end of the Civil War on May 26, 1865, Confederate states, including Texas, had been attempting to keep hold of their slaves for as long as possible. Many of the slaves had not been informed that they had been freed or that the Confederacy had lost the war. Union soldiers were then sent to physically go to each of the Confederate states to inform everyone that enslaved people had been freed. June 19th, or Juneteenth, was the day that Major Granger and his soldiers made it to Texas, the last Confederate state on their tour, to declare that the Emancipation Proclamation would be enforced, whether Texas slaveholders were ready for it or not. Rest assured that the “enslaved individuals” did not receive a check for their back pay. They were freed with just the clothes on their backs!

Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American poet, and member of the Old South Church Meeting House, and now our Patron Saint at Old South Church in Boston, wrote these words in 1774, “in every human Breast God has implanted a Principle which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance, and the same Principle lives in us.” For those who had been denied freedom it finally came. For the nearly 250,000 enslaved people, they realized that their cries and prayers for liberation had indeed been heard.

Free at last!

In a perfect world we might be able to say that slavery and oppression ended on Juneteenth. But that is not the case. Brian Stevenson, founder and curator of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, highlights and documents that slavery evolved rather than ended in 1865. Yet, even in the face of attempts to keep black people enslaved through systems of oppression, the black community continues to rise with grace and dignity- from championing civil rights advances that we all enjoy today, to the integrating of the Boston Public Schools in 1974 to exposing police brutality through the Black Lives Matter Movement. The black community continues to forge a path forward achieving momentous gains and achievements. A little over 142 years after the first Juneteenth, American elected its first black president who asked us to choose, “hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

This year Juneteenth comes at a painful time in the history of our country as the devolution of democracy is at hand. Across this nation there are efforts to forget those achievements. Our government has escalated its efforts to erase Black history from public institutions, targeting museums, libraries, and digital archives that have long preserved the truth of America’s past. Government programs and policies that provide a safety net for the more venerable in our society have been dismantled. Critical medical and public health research projects that advance health care and our educational institutions are under attack, while our siblings are being rounded up and detained by ICE without due process.

Juneteenth offers us a moment of joy and sacred remembrance. It is indeed a time to remember and celebrate the named and unnamed heroes and sheroes on whose shoulders we stand. We honor them for their commitment to freedom and the sacrifices that they made. They were not passive recipients of freedom because they knew that real change demanded courage and persistence. We have come so far, by faith, and we honor those who never stopped believing in a better future. And it is with songs of joy that we proclaim God’s faithfulness in providing deliverance.

For people of faith, Juneteenth invites us to reflect on what freedom really means.
Is it merely the absence of chains or is it the presence of opportunity and justice?
Is it simply about independence or is it about interdependence and kinship,
where every person’s humanity is valued and respected?

Freedom is not a destination we have reached, but a road we are still walking. As we walk this road, we do not walk alone. In Luke 4:18, Jesus announces to all people of all generations that God “ anointed Him and sent Him “to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1). As followers of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord is upon us now! We are anointed to finish God’s unfinished agenda of releasing captives, restoring sight to the blind and binding up the broken hearted and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor. As the hands and feet of God, Howard Thurman reminds us to find our path and passion, “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive!”.

As we walk or march, let us claim the power of the Holy Spirit, so we can pick up the sacred work of finishing God’s unfinished agenda. The more we understand the power of our freedom through Christ, hope rises, we face our fears with courage, and we can walk together with honesty, truth-telling and love with an unwavering belief that liberty and justice must be for all.

Our God is marching on.

Click above to watch the worship service at Old South Church, with Rev. June Cooper’s powerful preaching, spoken word, and special music by Donnell Patterson, Ida Kamrara, Chibuzo Dunun, and Black Like Crystal.


Lift Every Voice and Sing – James Weldon Johnson (1899)

Let us lift our voices and sing till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty: Let our rejoining raise High as the Listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling seas.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brough us.

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.


Written by uniteboston · Categorized: Blog · Tagged: boston, community, jesus, light, unity

Jun 05 2025

Navigators Disciplemaking Network

Jesus said to go and make disciples of all the nations.

The Boston Navigators are building a network of believers who desire to grow in knowledge and skill as disciplemakers.

We meet quarterly in different locations to offer practical content, real life stories, and the opportunity to build friendships and partnerships in ministry. This quarter we are focusing on disciplemaking in our neighborhoods.

The cost is free but we ask that you register. Breakfast snacks and coffee will be provided.

Written by Andrew Walker · Tagged: boston, boston christians, christiansinboston, friends, gospel in action, hospitality, jesus, Life Together, love thy neighbor, ministry, movement, neighborhood, neighborhood dinner, neighborhood outreach, neighboring, new england

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