By Jennifer Ji-Hye Ko

Dance was an inborn talent swimming under my skin waiting to be discovered. I was carrying mounting traumas that had tied strings to undiagnosed Autism rendering me a puppet - trapped in someone else's show unable to speak or express myself. But, for eight brief years, every flick of a finger, every curl of a toe told my story without words.

Suddenly, an unreliable speaker spoke volumes. Dance was my freedom and healing before I knew Christ. Yet like ships passing in the night, Christ entered in with bushels of hope while a litany of undiagnosed illnesses lurking in the shadows of my blood carried  off with my movement, trapping me yet again in silence. 

Once an athletic dancer now bedridden, my definitions of art and movement needed to change. Grande jetès and fouetteès were no longer in my repertoire, but the gradual movement of my soul in the practice of lament became a space for creating.

Every groan and painful cry were utterances too deep for words brought into existence by my being. They were designed to intermingle with the Holy Spirit who moved my soul and the heart of Yahweh into each other. Every response to pain, whether vocalized or not, was artful lament swept up to the throne of grace.

This changed my idea of movement from the movement of my body, to the movement of my soul, to then ripple out into the movement of culture. You see, this human project, created to reflect the perfection that exists in heaven is hindered by a failure of imagination leaving God’s image bearers wounded, myopic, and stagnant. God gifts us lament, not as a science but an art of guiding our souls away from despair toward the heart of God.

The movement of just one soul ripples out into the community—changing the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and values of society. As my body lay still, surviving a myriad of debilitating symptoms, my soul oscillated in tumult and elan. Its effects could not remain hidden for long. 

As my inner being stirred, my lips moved in slurred speech to text on the page. Informed by the psalmists, I began charting the territory of deep grief and loss while reaping bushels of joy in its midst. What materialized wasn't a movement I expected. Each cry in solidarity with the scriptures found my soul carried under the shelter of God’s wings, stretched therein and birthed into a new dance. I had coaxed the presence and might of God who verberated the atoms around me releasing in my midst the inexpressible joy of his presence.

This immaterial dance of Spirit and soul culminated in the creation of my book A Lamenters Pathway to Joy: Devotional Journal. This book holds my journey, tracing the paths of the psalmists—led by David the shepherd king—as they model for us the practice of lament that heals and emboldens those who would so draw near. I had learned how to lament on purpose which armed me with deep, lasting joy. 

Now armored like David, the man after God's own heart, my soul continues to dance on. I find that just as lament is not a science but an art, so too is Disability justice. I found myself a disabled human created in the image of God, breaking my back attempting to keep up with the pace of the Church, but ultimately left behind.

Not only did physical inaccessibility make entering the house of worship painful, but I was also regularly wounded by the Sword of the Spirit mishandled. Some saints forcibly prayed over me with scripture out of context. Some suggested that I would be healed if I had more faith like the woman who bled, or confessed my sins like the paralytic, inadvertently blaming me for my disabilities. Others exhorted me to exercise biblical principles that I was disabled from resulting in a prosperity gospel effect on my faith when I failed. An entire Christian culture—in my community and spread far beyond—was unknowingly against me. I now approach Christians with caution, prepared to defend my faith or escape as I am able. 

Ability privilege is so pervasive in our culture, and the Church is blind to the depths of her ableism, giving Satan a foothold to spread an undercover prosperity gospel. But our God can do more than we can think or imagine, graciously leaving us with an inexhaustible surplus of creative imagination to aid us in inclusion and reconciliation.

So how does the movement of my soul translate and reverberate in a way which builds a bridge across the chasm existing between the Church and the Disability experience, resulting in the movement of others towards a holy discontentment of the way Disabled saints are treated? It is an art. Art of a movement. A movement not always seen by the naked eye but felt like the wind and carrying on into eternity.

Let there be movement.

Let our souls move and dance in a way that will ignite creativity in a fatigued and disillusioned world.

Let our lips and hands coalesce in the movement of creative imagination.

May we discover the artful movement of souls after God's own heart, even in the stillness of these bodies.

Jennifer Ji-Hye Ko

https://msha.ke/jennifer.jihye.ko/

Jennifer is an author, poet, bible teacher, and disability advocate with a passion for bridging the knowledge gap between the ability privileged American Church and the Disability experience.