Spirituality in Being Deaf

First of all, we pray to the planet earth, the only home housing our bodies, AND to the Holy Spirit inside all our souls. Then, we look at the Deaf (visi-centrality) dimension inside us, along with other dimensions – gender, racial and others.  This might appear odd to you at first. This does not necessarily mean getting to the ground and prostrate, kvetching to some deaf entity/diety for advice and help. No, no. What we, the living deaf people, need to do is to beseech those deaf people from our sacred past for help in our constant struggle to better the world we live in.

Would we love to ask George Veditz for his opinion on cochlear implants and AVT? Would we love to ask Laurent Clerc to join the Deaf Bilingual Coalition and listen to his sagacious advices? Would we love to ask Edward Miner Gallaudet for advice about our communication method, a new “mask” for the same old combined method he fought valiantly for into his sacred grave? We would, very much so, sit down on the ground in a sacred circle and watch them with reverent awe. After absorbing new scientific information on sign languages, cultures, and communities (including cochlear implants), what wisdom would Alexander Graham Bell sign to us, deaf, Deaf and hearing people, in our sacred circle? Would he dig deeper his Victorian spurs? Or would his humane heart take over and proclaim something new?

Every being is spiritual, deaf people no less. Every deaf person feels differently on the role their deafness play in their lives. Some piously devoted to ASL while another person, few miles away, strongly feel that she would perish without her cochlear implants. Both feel strongly about something related to being deaf. We are now starting to ponder on “being deaf”, now termed Deafhood, with our rainbowe-colored thick crystal-glasses we now putting on in front of our eyes.

Who should the Deaf pray to? In every culture, they have older people to impart their wisdom on how to raise our children {our future} to critically continue our humynity.   Our Nelson Mandela is now involved in establishing a new Council of Elders to give wisdom to us all. What about for us, the deaf? Where are our Council of Deaf Elders (including hearing persons)? We do have those people ourselves but they are not yet elevated to higher realms deep inside our lives. We need to sprout and share more stories about them, our Elders, our Deaf brothers and sisters, now departed. The more we think about that, the more we probably will feel spiritual. We need to start working on making changes in our lives for our deaf children, or the Deaf Child Within us.

Until very recently, we do not use those words in our current signing parlance. Elders. Wise Old Wo/Myn. Our Deaf Grandfathers and Grandmothers. We do behave in reverence and awe, without realizing, toward our current living deaf Elders. At our gatherings of all kinds, we give tributes to those older Deaf people who are about ready to depart. Should all that remain the same? Or should we show more appreciation and awe? Only with Father Time, Mother Gaia will tell us.

Should we not only continue revere them and ask them for advice but elevate the way we ask. We close our eyes and beseech. Would that be considered praying? If so, then we should pray to our Deaf Elders, in addition to the Ultimate Reality in us all.

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 deaf people. Do they mull on deafhood?

This website does raise spiritual and religious issues being deaf. 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 deaf 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 deaf Peoples, simply, is a Deaf Circle.  Anywhere on earth you can create a circle of Deaf people.  Conversations in sign language with more than two people require a circular formation.  Many of us experience education in rooms with desks and chairs in semi-circular formations. Use a chalk or your pointing finger to draw a circle on the ground. Or set up chairs in circular formations to draw one.  Deaf 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 sweat lodge. Our planetary home, the only one we have, is a circle. We live in a circular mother shrine we need to vigilantly 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 our deafhood. That’s it.

We, deaf people, will create a sacred space of a “D” circle in order to delve into this new concept, DeafHood, or being Deaf. 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 Deity 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.

From Ladd, Paddy. (1993). The DeafHood Papers, Volume One. From Garreston, M. (Ed.) Deafness: 1993 – 2013. A Deaf American Monograph. Silver Springs, MD: National Association of the Deaf. pp. 69 – 72.