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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 14 2025

Join the Pilot Cohort of the Beloved Community Lab

Monthly on Tuesdays, 11:00AM–2:00PM | Starts September 16 | $750 Stipend | Application Due August 15

 – Do you long to be in a community of Boston-based leaders from a variety of Christian traditions and backgrounds?

 – How do we follow Jesus’ call to love our neighbors – and our enemies – without losing our convictions?

 – Do you want to explore how conflict can strengthen our connections to one another instead of fracturing us apart? 

 – Do you long for the Church to be known for what we are for, rather than what we are against? 

 – Do you desire to be an ambassador of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:20) and want to grow in learning how to lead your community in the peacemaking, reconciling Way of Jesus?   – 

If these questions stir up something inside you, then the Beloved Community Lab might be for you!


A New Kind of Leadership for our Divided Time

Despite Jesus’ clear mandate for unity and welcoming all to the table, churches remain some of the most divided institutions in our society. With over 45,000 Christian denominations and countless divides over race, gender, theology, and politics, the Church’s fractured witness stands in stark contrast to Jesus’ prayer that we would be one (John 17).

A team of diverse Christian leaders in Boston recognized this gap and came together to ask:

What kind of discipleship is needed to form leaders who uphold God’s call for unity and oneness in today’s world?

Through prayer, study, and listening, UniteBoston has been on a two-year journey of developing the Beloved Community Lab, a unique opportunity for Boston-area Christian leaders to come together across lines of difference to learn and practice unity, justice, and reconciliation in their leadership contexts.

We call this a “lab” because it combines core theological concepts with real-world application through case studies, interactive exercises, and spiritual practices. This cohort is a space for spiritual formation—shaping leaders into peacemakers and reconcilers, growing into the life and way of Jesus. 

The things that are keeping us part are deep-rooted: we need a vision of togetherness that doesn’t only lean into our differences but also brings about holistic gospel transformation. If we want to see a different kind of world and a more embodied Christian witness, we must become different kinds of people. Our pilot Beloved Community Lab cohort is an experiment in Christian unity that seeks to change not just what we know, but how we live.


Details 

WHEN: Tuesdays from 11:00AM–1:30PM
FORMAT: Monthly gatherings in-person (Greater Boston Area) or Zoom
STIPEND: $750 for full participation
APPLICATION DEADLINE: August 15, 2025
WHO SHOULD APPLY:
Christian leaders in Greater Boston who value unity, reconciliation, and justice—and want to grow in living these out. We are seeking to convene a cohort community of stakeholders that come from a wide range of denominational, theological, racial/ethnic, and generational backgrounds to shape the curriculum during its pilot stage.

Click here to see the Beloved Community Lab Cohort PDF to learn more about the vision, dates, core competencies, and more. We will be choosing 15 pastoral leaders from diverse backgrounds and we do have $750 stipends to honor leaders for their time and participation.

We believe there’s no better time than now for Christ followers to prioritize the ministry of reconciliation by engaging well across our deep differences – serving as peacemakers in our fractured world. Today’s algorithms and silos will seek to keep us fractured and divided, but God calls us to a different way. 

Apply by August 15 to join the Pilot Cohort! 

We look forward to learning with you! 

Written by uniteboston · Tagged: christian unity, peace, reconciliation, uniteboston, unity

Jul 07 2025

Support Theology Students in Crisis

UniteBoston, in partnership with Students in Action at the Boston University School of Theology, has launched an urgent GoFundMe campaign to raise $70,000—providing $2,000 in emergency support for 35 international students.

Due to the current U.S. political climate, these students have been advised not to return to their home countries over summer break, for fear of being denied re-entry. Without access to federal aid, work authorization, or family nearby, many now face a summer of housing, food, and insurance insecurity.

While this fundraiser will not meet all of their needs, it will help fill the most urgent gaps—offering a lifeline in a difficult time.

Check out this VIDEO to hear stories about the those who need our help.


As Galatians 6:2 reminds us,
“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

These students are not only studying theology—they are future leaders, pastors, and peacemakers who carry the promise of ministry and justice to the world. This moment is our opportunity to say: We see you. We support you. You belong here.

How You Can Help

  •  Donate any amount: Whether $5, $50, or $500, every gift matters.
  •  Sponsor a student: Churches and organizations can cover one student’s summer needs with a $2,000 donation.
  •  Spread the word: Share this campaign with your community, congregation, and friends.

All donations are tax-deductible.

“Faith on its feet is not expressed through words alone. We are ONE—and in this critical moment, it is imperative that we show up well for one another.”

GIVE THROUGH GOFUNDME

GIVE NOW THROUGH PAYPAL/CHECK

Let’s rally together as one body, lifting up students in need and putting our faith into action.

Thank you for your generosity,

The UniteBoston Team

Written by uniteboston · Tagged: community, peace, uniteboston, unity, university

Jul 05 2025

Join M.O.V.E, a Powerful Faith Cohort for Nonviolence & De-escalation Training

Join M.O.V.E, a Powerful Faith Cohort for Nonviolence & De-escalation Training

Saturday, July 12th | 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM EST

In-Person, Boston, MA

Episcopal City Mission and the Massachusetts Council of Churches invite you and your congregation to attend an important Nonviolence and De-escalation Training. In a time when tensions are high and public witness is critical, this training offers tools to stay grounded in peace, solidarity, and moral clarity.

This peaceful collective action training is being offered free of charge to individuals affiliated with faith communities, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the teachers’ union hosting the event. We are deeply grateful for their solidarity and support.

👉 Register here (faith cohort portal): https://www.tfaforms.com/5184960

Please share this invitation with leaders in your faith community who are ready to deepen their public witness and nonviolent engagement.

Written by uniteboston · Tagged: boston, community, lent, peace, unity

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

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