Opening our ears

Two days with a friend with adult-onset hearing loss leaves me sensitized to this impairment, especially to its myriad negative psychological and emotional consequences. My friend is neither part of the hearing world nor part of the deaf culture. She lives somewhere in between, I suppose. She reports feeling isolated much of the time, of no use most days, and over the course of the past several years she finds that it’s easier to stay away from social gatherings, including church. So yesterday at worship, at the Church of Saint Lawrence in Alexandria Bay, New York (the Diocese of Central New York) I paid close attention to how well people read, the degree to which the sound amplification system was used effectively, and generally whether people could pick up on the nuances in communication and patience which are required to make people with hearing loss welcomed and integrated. Evidently the folk at the church did well because my friend said she was able to hear. 

In the mid-1800s there was an Episcopal Church established in New York, called St. Ann’s Church, still very much alive today, and is given the moniker “the mother church” of all congregations of deaf people in the United States. 

Thomas Gallaudet

Henry Winter Syle

Today,  August 27th, the church commemorates two men, Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle--considered the founders of the Episcopal Church’s ministry to and with deaf people. Thomas Gallaudet was born in Hartford in 1822 to a deaf mother and a hearing father. He later married Elizabeth Budd, who was deaf. It was Thomas who started St. Ann’s Church, and from that genesis there sprang up congregations for the deaf throughout the country. One of Gallaudet’s students, Henry Winter Syle, who became deaf at an early age, was the first deaf person to be ordained to the priesthood (in 1876). 

I’m glad to be part of a church with this history.  But, I wonder about those of us who serve countless people who are not deaf, for whom sign language isn’t possible. What will the church’s response be to the ones among us who have hearing loss? What shall I do to make certain the doors of my church will be open to my friend? Jesus said (Mark 4:9), “let those with ears, hear.” 

Let us pray.

O loving God, whose will it is that everyone should come to you and be saved: we bless your Holy Name for your servants Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle, whose labors with and for those who are deaf we commemorate today; and we pray that you will continually move your Church to respond in love to the needs of all people; through Jesus Christ, who opened the ears of the deaf, and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.