Yesterday I went to mass in Chicago and before the service in the restroom some guy with Down syndrome splashed me with water, soaking my shirt, let out the biggest laugh I’d ever heard, then ran out.
I had so much on my mind, I had just prayed the rosary, I felt very spiritual and serious, then this dude just drags me back to reality and throws a giant wrench into my day. It was amazing.
Later, during mass, the “peace” lasted about 10 minutes because everyone in his group of about 15 people with disabilities ran around greeting literally everyone in the church. It was normal to everyone. This is what they do. It was beautiful.
I worked with people with disabilities for 15 years. One of the things I miss most was the beautiful anarchy. They humble you, drag you into reality. Hauerwas calls them “friends of time” because, to be friends with them, you must enter into their rhythms, their sense of time.
We spend so much time thinking we don’t have enough time, and so we violently cram others into our schedules and treat surprises (like getting soaked) as intrusions. Which they are! But living at peace with others requires welcoming such intrusions with hospitality.
Much of my hostility to modernity/liberalism stems from my time spent with people with intellectual disabilities. The liberal idea of personhood simply doesn’t apply to them and our way of life renders them burdens and excess labor. My college thesis was on the history of this.
Selective abortion has nearly eradicated Down syndrome in much of Europe, but related conditions will always be with us. It branches out to how we regard children and the very old. Often as “burdens.” But we are all burdens. We were once burdens and we will be burdens again.
Anyway. If you’re Catholic, please support places like @LArcheUSA. If you’re Muslim, support @MUHSENORG. Hope you have a good day.
PS: For why liberalism cannot give an adequate account of the mentally disabled, see Hans Reinders’ “The Future of the Disabled in Liberal Society.” Root problem is defining personhood in terms of independence and reducing social responsibility to contracts between individuals.
And given said individualism, if the only goal of ethics is relieving human suffering, the government will eventually authorize and then enforce the destruction of lives we deem worthless. All in the name of compassion, of course.
And so the future of the disabled (and everyone else) in liberal society requires a great many people who believe in the great enemy of liberalism: the existence of enforceable unchosen responsibilities. 
And even deeper, I see our culture’s inability to welcome the intrusion of children, the elderly, people with disabilities, etc, is related to our inability, unlike Mary and Joseph, to welcome God, who has shown himself to be nothing if not intrusive.
