In the Christmas story, there’s an image that I find particularly compelling. It’s the inn-keeper who tells the weary travelers that there is no room at the inn, then directs them to a place where they can stay with the animals. I read the story as an assurance that even those whom we treat like animals have stories that must be heard. Who is the inn-keeper? George W. Bush? Stephen Harper? The West? All of us who enjoy the fruits of capitalism? What is the inn? The United States? Canada? An economic system regulated by international treaties and monitored by the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO? An ideology that privileges unregulated trade? And who gets turned away to stay with the animals?
At Christmas, the question that picks away at my brain is this: who will tell the stories of those turned away at the door?
I would never have thought of Christmas in these terms, I would have gone on blithely oblivious (unconscientized?) if it weren’t for something that happened to me one Christmas a number of years ago, something I would have regarded as unthinkable: I spent Christmas in a psychiatric ward. I discovered that I am not exempt. It’s a difficult thing to reconcile yourself to the discovery that your privilege is illusory. What makes this difficult is the fact that privilege is only partially determined by the outward indicators like money and education and race and nationality; it is also determined by an internalized view of oneself: “I am the sort of person who …” Privilege is a term of identity, which is why its surrender is so difficult. We cannot willingly give up our personal (and collective) identity without first substituting a “something else” as we begin to construct a new story of who we are. For me, this has been a private struggle, as I straddle two identities, slowly, sometimes painfully, surrendering a sense of myself that I know is untenable, and moving (though sometimes feeling adrift) toward a new story of myself.
Even in my moment of conscientization, I could not claim that I was sent to stay with the animals; I skirted along their margins, but (keeping with the inn-keeper metaphor) the inn-keeper sent me further down the road where another inn-keeper opened his doors to me and received me with compassion. I was vulnerable, but I was treated with warmth and respect for my dignity as a person. However, in the world of mental health care, such treatment is still rare.
While it has been 60 years since the adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, only now are we beginning to give international recognition to the view that human rights should be extended to those with disabilities and, in particular, to those with mental disabilities. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into force earlier this year on May 3rd, 2008. (Sadly, though not surprisingly, the U.S. refuses to be a signatory to the Convention.) The inclusion of mental disabilities in the Convention is, in part, the result of story-tellers – individuals and NGOs committed to ensuring that those without a voice will be heard. One story-teller is Mental Disability Rights International. This organization has documented abuse of mental health patients whose treatment is sometimes comparable to the abuse of animals documented by animal rights activists. Some of the abuses have been documented on video and can be viewed at the HUB. See in particular this video submitted by MDRI documenting the handling of mental health patients at a neuro-psychiatric hospital in Paraguay. This is not easy to watch. Nevertheless, I urge you to remember your brothers and sisters who will be detained in psychiatric facilities this Christmas.
Locally (I’m writing from Toronto), consider buying a robe or toiletries or slippers and pajamas for a mental health patient through the CAMH gifts of light program.
As I view it, Christmas is about unexpected love, the embrace of the strange and of the stranger, and a grace that springs from compassion. May you all know these things this Christmas.
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January 28th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
a beautiful …twist? interpretation? new light? on an old story… thank you.