Q4 Should Deafhood Have “Churches”?
What are the places that discuss Deafhood? At conferences? At universities? At deaf schools? Inside DeafRead vblogsphere? Yes to all and more. What about churches, mosques, and temples serving deaf people? Those established and ministered by dDeaf people. Do they mull dDeafhood?
This blogsite does raise spiritual and religious issues being dDeaf. It is so new for many of us. Should there be Deaf “churches”? The quotation marks are stressed. Religious edifices all over the world house sacred spaces. Do the Deaf World have a sacred space? There is almost nothing like this being contemplated by dDeaf people today. We will realize it is inside us, restlessly percolating. Yes, DeafHood will eventually set up a “church” but in a form so different, yet so natural to us.
The “church” of dDeaf Peoples, simply, is a Deaf Circle. Anywhere on earth you can create a circle of Deaf people. Use a chalk or your pointing finger to draw a circle on the ground. Or set up chairs in circular formations to draw one. Many of us experience education in rooms with desks and chairs in semi-circular formations. dDeaf people could not communicate with one another if everyone is in any straight line formations. We will be unable to see each other. We need to move our bodies toward one another, forming a “D” circle, to use our beautiful visual-spatial languages.
Google “spirituality” and we find sites extolling the use of the circle in religions. The American “Indians” gave us the circular sweatlodge. Our planteary home, the only one we have, is a circle. We live in a circular mother shrine we need to viligantly protect. We need to celebrate mother earth and our “D” lives on/in it. With the civil right movements of our blacks, the deafs, and the queers in America, there is something promising, a resurgence of mother earth spirituality to heal our home. Deafhood and its hearing comrades will unveil our secret to the world, our languages to be more visual-based.
If we do end up establishing “churches” extolling and celebrating Deafhood, what will it be? We saw the joys and horrors religion and political institutions had produced in the history of humanity. Should Deaf Peoples start setting up “churches” modeling after one of them? No, DeafHood will go pagan-like. Just get together in a “D” circle and discuss how to celebrate dDeafhood. That s it.
We, dDeaf people, will create a sacred space of a “D” circle in order to delve into this new concept, DeafHood, or being dDeaf. Again to quote one of our sages, Paddy Ladd . . . .
The setting up of Deaf churches from 2010 onwards was a crucial development, The new concept of a Diety as consisting a set of guiding spirits of Deaf elders from centuries past, who were celebrated and prayed to for guidance, was at first laughed at, until it was pointed out that in many of ther world’s religions, beliefs like this were not uncommon. Once the concept was accepted, it spread like wildfire through the lands, til we have today at our conferences, our own ceremonies for honouring those who led us here and who still guide our way.