Micaela asked, "What will happen when Katy grows up and can’t work?"

"What do you mean?" Jory asked wanting to get at what was behind the question.

"Katy can’t work...nobody will be able to talk to her."

Jory tries to instill in both of her daughters that they can grow up to be anything they want to be. Still, when she asks Katy what she wants to be when she grows up, Katy always answers, "A mother."

It’s amazing that, even as a four year old child, Micaela already perceives the barriers that her sister will face throughout her lifetime. Jory assured Micaela that Katy will be able to work, and that she’ll find ways to communicate with others through sign language and other methods.

This morning I’m going to attempt to fill a very tall, if not an impossible order. Last spring at our service auction, as is my custom, I placed upon the auction block the opportunity to choose a sermon topic. Frank and Mary Anne Kowalczyk had the high bid and, true to their passion, they informed me that the topic would be on deafness. One Sunday this past autumn Frank handed me a copy of the 500 plus page book, A Journey into the Deaf-World (by authors Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister and Ben Bahan). "Here’s your reading for the sermon," he said.

I have to admit, the book, along with a few supplemental materials, has provided me with quite a journey, much more so than I had expected. I’m no expert, and am hardly qualified to serve as your guide into this world. I have learned some things though, that I’d like to share with you.

I’ve become aware of an oppressed culture that has historically been far more oppressed than I’d ever imagined. I’ve learned something of its character, of its history and struggle, something of its internal and external challenges, and something of its hopes for a more perfect world.

My wish this morning is to share some of what I’ve learned with you within this context of our worship service. First, this topic asks us to consider a moral matter, to take note and to respond responsibly when any of our brothers or sisters are being downtrodden by anyone. This is especially true when we, or those who speak for us, are the ones who are doing the treading.

Second, it’s a spiritual matter — a soul building experience — to connect with others at the point of their disconnection. We are all disconnected, incomplete, in some ways. We take a step toward completion though, toward wholeness, when we reach across that chasm of disassociation to be with others. We need to remember that the strongest spiritual bridges are not constructed on foundations of superiority or patronization or even of isolation.

They’re built upon the bedrock of a compassion composed of conscience, concern and humanity. They’re built upon a foundation of serving witness, being there with others in the midst of their story. Besides, our religious community and the Deaf community hold something quite religious in common — a hope for a more perfect world.

So I invite you to journey with me this morning, to try to imagine for yourself what it might be like for the Deaf to be amid the hearing. Maybe you’ll learn something you didn’t know; maybe not. Even more important though, is that maybe you will be changed by the journey you begin today, and then the world, too, can be changed.

The Deaf-World (referred to with a capital D and a capital W) is the term by which Deaf people designate themselves in American Sign Language (ASL).

There are approximately one million citizens in the United States, whose primary means of communication is visual, who are a part of the Deaf-World. It has its own language and its own culture.

The Deaf-World’s language in this country is ASL. There are a number of other signing systems that are sometimes used, such as SEE-Sign, which is Signing Exact English. There are some major differences between these systems.

SEE-Sign and many of the other signing systems are based on the English language. ASL is not. For the most part, SEE-Sign and many of the other systems were developed by the hearing world in order to enable Deaf people to function within the hearing world. ASL as an organic and complete language that evolved within the Deaf community to enable Deaf people to communicate among themselves. There are many controversies over what is the appropriate language for the Deaf community; the point here is that the Deaf-World is a culture, and it does have its own language.

It has other cultural characteristics, as well. It has a place where it exists. The most common place for adults in the Deaf-World is at the local Deaf Clubs, which are organizations scattered in cities throughout the country. For children, the culture exists mostly within residential schools for the Deaf. It can also be found in some Deaf Day-Schools. And finally, the Deaf-World culture exists in homes where Deaf children are the offspring of Deaf parents.

Like other cultures the Deaf-World has social and political organizations. Sports play a large role in the social life; advocacy is a basis for its politics. The Deaf-World has a rich life of cultural arts including visual arts, performing arts and literature. Its signed literature is a well-developed tradition of story telling and humor.

There is a great deal of diversity within the Deaf World. To a large extent this diversity mirrors that within the larger culture. There is one major difference though, that doesn’t translate into the larger culture. Between five to ten percent of Deaf children are born to Deaf parents. This means 90% to 95% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents. The vast majority of Deaf people are born into homes that have no connection to the Deaf-World and most often to parents who, because of fear or denial, want nothing to do with it.

Finally the Deaf-World is a culture that has a strong identity. It sees itself as a language minority and not a disability group. It’s generally considered among the Deaf that they are disabled by the dominant culture’s response to their deafness, rather than by the deafness itself. It follows that a major characteristic of the Deaf-World identity is one based in oppression.

We need to have some sense of the historical events that had a great deal to do with shaping the Deaf-World and its relations with the larger cultures. There is evidence that in the advent of spoken languages, human communication was accomplished through signed language and gestures. Throughout history, Deaf communities continued to use and develop these visual language systems that were very regional in dialect and expression.

In the 1760’s a French priest, Abbé Charles Michel de l’Epée, was exposed to a Parisian Deaf community and its visual language. Misunderstanding it for a poor attempt at grammatical French, Abbé de l’Epée began his life’s work at "restructuring" this signed dialect to be in compliance with his own spoken language. His success in this effort set a precedent for the hearing world’s supposed "responsibility" in establishing the standards for Deaf language and communication.

The first permanent public school for Deaf students in the United States was established in 1817. About 40 years later, Abraham Lincoln authorized the Board of Directors of what is now Gallaudet University to grant college degrees to Deaf students. Throughout this time de l’Epée’s precedent of paternalism continued to guide the education of Deaf students. The hearing community felt that it was their responsibility to establish standards for the non-hearing. But remember, roughly 90% of the Deaf are born to parents who are hearing.

In 1880 a conference was held in Milan, Italy that has continued to plague the Deaf-World even to this day. It was determined at the Milan Conference that, if a Deaf person were allowed to use sign language, they would never learn to speak. Of course there was never any scientific basis for this determination. Still, from that time until recently, oralism ( the practice of acting like a hearing person through methods of lip-reading and verbal speech) was the proffered method of education and communication for the Deaf. It was imposed by the hearing world. There has been some recent success in reversing the impact of this philosophy. Still, it continues to have a great impact on Deaf education.

For over a hundred years, Deaf children were (and many still are) forced to limit their communication to a nonfunctional auditory channel. They have been refused the right to speak in the only language medium in which they have full access — visual language — sign language. They’ve been punished, even threatened by the prospect of having their fingers chopped off by misinformed teachers who thought they were promoting the child’s best interest.

Things have been changing for the better, but things change so slowly. Since the 1970’s and 80’s, there has been a growing acceptance of bona fide data that shows clearly that there are developmental thresholds for the acquisition of language in all children. Deaf children who are allowed and encouraged to sign by their Deaf parents are fully conversant with their parents by age four. After learning the fundamentals of language through ASL, they are far better equipped to also learn English or any other language. There is a great need for the Deaf to be bilingual in order to prosper in the larger world.

When Deaf children are refused access to their own visual system of communication during infancy and early childhood, important thresholds are missed. The child often has only limited access to communicate wants, needs, ideas and even love until later in life. Deaf children must often wait until they are in the consistent company of other visual communicators in residential schools or clubs. It’s no wonder children and parents are often hopelessly frustrated; no wonder that Deaf children often develop disruptive behaviors.

Hearing parents are typically ill equipped to care for their Deaf children. They often can’t even communicate. Can you imagine the heartbreak of not being able to explain the simplest of things, or of not understanding your child’s efforts to tell you how they are feeling?

Parents often blame themselves for their child’s condition and they blame themselves for having inflicted a burden on their other children and on society at large. All of this self-blame is based on a negative model of hearing loss instead of a positive model of visual orientation. The professional advice they often receive comes from the medical model, and consists of efforts to make it all better.

Attempts to remedy the "problem" foster the "fix-it" responses of oralism. There has been much press on the invention of the cochlear implant, which is just such an attempt. In a recent article, Deaf writer, Mark Drolsbaugh reminds us, "…as exciting as technology may appear to be, there is nothing out there that turns Joe Deaf into Joe Hearing. There is no … cure."

Cochlear implants and other technologies are helpful to some people, but a Deaf person with a cochlear implant will always be a Deaf person. To understand astrophysics one must be conversant in arithmetic. To be fluent in English a Deaf person must have a grasp of his/her own language. The Deaf language is a visual one. The best-case scenario from the new technologies is to provide Deaf persons greater access to being bilingual, not monolingual. Technologies cannot take away the need for the primary language of sign, at least not yet they can’t.

There are so many aspects and struggles of the Deaf-World that we would do well to know — not because they’re interesting. If we are going to be about creating amore perfect world, one that lives up to our religious principles and aspirations, we need to know these things in order to act.

• We need to know that Deaf militancy grows out of repeatedly frustrated efforts at self-determination. In growing numbers and with a more fervent militancy, Deaf people are demanding a greater voice in determining how they will learn, how they can work, and how they will participate in the larger culture.

• We need to know how to assure that parents can learn how to communicate with their children.
• We need to know that Deaf people are not dumb in any sense of that word, and that they have the same needs to connect with others and to be appreciated, just like anyone else.
• We need to know that if we want to make our church Deaf friendly, we’ll need to make our church a place where Deaf people want to be, not in isolation, but where there are other deaf people with whom to communicate. That also means always having an ASL interpreter.
• We need to know that acceptance of deafness allows the individual, the family and even the culture to move ahead with intentional life.
• We need to know that denial causes the child to feel rejected, and the parent to feel like a failure, and it causes the culture to miss the opportunity to promote the well being of all.
• As religious persons, we need to recognize the denial of deafness as missing the spiritual opportunity to promote a soul building experience to connect with others at the point of their disconnection.
• We need to know that Deaf people are approachable, and that our own lives are enriched when we connect with others who are on this incredible journey of life. Our Unitarian Universalist Principles encourage us to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth.

As part of my preparation for this sermon, I watched again the movie, Children of a Lesser God, with Marlee Matlin and William Hurt. The very religious message of the Deaf-World came clear when the character Sarah signed to James, "Until you let me be an I, the way you are, you can never come into my silence and know me. And I won’t let myself know you. Until that time we can’t be joined."

The religious life is about recognizing the connections and the potential connections in this world. It is about drawing on the resources, so abundant in the universe, in order to strengthen ourselves and each other. It is not for the sake of ourselves, but for the sake of all that is. For as it says in Isaiah, "Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly."