Click here to read Distantia ..a ‘lens’ for the soul

I have enrolled on a Protactile Language Theory Certificate with the University of

Oregon USA. Why, I am both sighted and have hearing? When I started to read

about the Protactile movement in the States I was profoundly moved. Each form of

social bigotry has its distinctive personality and its unique set of intertwining evils

states John Lee Clarke, the poet who has coined the word ‘Distantism’ to describe

how the deaf / blind community, his community has been marginalised and

separated from the language of the heart. Distantia is an attitude and a behaviour, it

describes how sighted society have divided and conquered the deaf/blind

community, seeking to maintain the view that it is only with sight and vision that the

world can be interpreted.

As Clarke quotes "The loss of both sight and hearing constitutes one of the severest

disabilities known to human beings. Essentially, it deprives an individual of the two

primary senses through which we acquire awareness of and information about the

world around us, and it drastically limits effective communication and freedom of

movement, which are necessary for full and active participation in society." 1

The deaf/ blind community took back control developing their own language,

Protactile, learning through what can be directly touched and experienced with the

body. As the deaf/ blind were separated from themselves and the Earth by

Distantism, isn’t it the same for us? The Church prioritises power (money) and ‘the

collective ego’ of white privilege, seeing the world as defined through this lens. This

modality has separated itself from the ‘love of the Father ‘and the language of the

heart, the words of Christ, the love and connection with the Earth by employing its

own ‘Distantia’ methodology.

I sit on the Advisory Board of a new movement, The Living Experiment.

God is a verb, the Living Experiment is an analogous deaf/blind community,

embracing and internalising the Love of the Father by focusing on ‘touch’ rather than

the norms of sight and vision. This really is a ‘through the back of the wardrobe

‘moment, to reference CS Lewis. The privilege of power/ money and the collective

white ego fall away when people have the courage to step ‘through the back of the

wardrobe ‘this is what The Living Experiment is about, learning a new language.

The capitalist Church and prevailing world view means we are being fed with food

from our ‘interveners’, the sighted and hearing. The focus on ‘distantism’, the

privilege of hearing and vision over touch, marginalising the deaf blind community

relegating it to be viewed as ‘other’. I know it’s radical but let’s cut off our ears and

pluck out our eyes metaphorically so that we can focus on ‘touch’. Our souls heart

felt response, when the ‘known’ is removed allowing us to see through the lens of a

‘Protactile’ approach.

Actually, it’s been there all along right in front of us, but perhaps we have been

steadily going blind over time. This isn’t an intellectual exercise, we need to travel

what some would call the longest road known to man, the 18” from our heads to our

hearts. The love of the father is ‘touch’, taking it as a given by the sighted and

hearing community that vision and sound are omnipotent has blinded them to this

‘touch’. The words of Christ upon the heart.

Entering the world of the deaf/blind learning their language means embracing ‘the

other’. As if by magic I am connected through love (touch) to the Father, the planet,

this Earth, as I enter Lewis’s Narnia and come face to face with Aslan. The barrier of

viewing sound and vision as all powerful is removed. In March of this year, I sold my

possessions and walked with no money just faith and the words of Christ upon my

heart. I walked for 6 weeks from Brighton to Vezelay in central France. I was also

diagnosed with Level 1 Autism with elements of Level 2 at the age of 65. I had

stepped through the back of the wardrobe and become ‘Other’. The recent upheaval

in the Church is just a reflection of a community that had dismissed ‘touch’ and

ignored ‘the other’. We are all ‘other’, we have always been there but have been

dismissed by the powerful sighted and hearing people. Perhaps it takes ‘the other ‘to

show how powerful the language of touch is and to embrace this language through

this lens of the heart and the words of Christ.

It’s a simple solution for complicated people, we must learn the language of the heart

and start to speak the words of Christ so that we all can become ‘other ‘.

The Living Experiment sets out to teach a new language, a through the back of the

wardrobe experience, its radical, a turning of the tables again but perhaps that is

what our Church needs, a dose of what Bonhoeffer 2 would describe as ‘costly grace’

God is a verb 3 …

Andrew Meikle

Info@thelivingexperiment.org

www.thelivingexperiment.org

(1) Word gathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. 2019.

(2 )The Cost of Discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer MACMILLAN PUBLISHING CO., INC. NEW YORK 1960. Reprint.

(3) The Humble Church (2021). Professor Martyn Percy. Canterbury Press.