John Beauchamp reflects on his 30 years of ministry as a blind priest.
I was born with a genetic eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa. This is an inherited condition that results in sight loss at some time during a person’s life, although exactly when it will have significant effect is variable. I was a fairly clumsy and uncoordinated child, incapable at ball games and most sporting activities and experienced significant night blindness from my early teens. Beyond being short-sighted though, nothing was noticed or diagnosed about my eyesight. So, much of my childhood was spent believing that I was somehow incapable of achieving what others seemed to be able to do with ease, but with no understanding of why this might be, beyond my assumption that I was just not as good or as clever as other people.
It wasn’t until I was 23 and working as a music teacher, that RP was noticed and diagnosed, and I was given the news that I had already lost over 50% of my sight and would continue to lose it until I was blind. That is exactly what happened over the next 10 years and by the late 1980s I was registered as blind, had given up my teaching job, and was feeling pretty hopeless.
It was in the middle of all of this though that God began to whisper a sense of calling to ordained ministry. A feeling that at first I tried to push aside but, when I eventually found the courage to share it, was surprised to find that others responded to with support and encouragement. I began my diocesan discernment process and was surprised at every stage when I was recommended to continue.
My first selection conference, something I approached with confidence and expectation, was though not what I expected. I was not recommended for training for ordination. Had I heard right? Was the sense of calling I felt just my imagination? Was it just wishful thinking? Or had God led me to a place only to abandon me with more disappointment and hopelessness? It seemed to me that if ordination was God’s calling on my life, God would first have to heal me as ministry was not possible as a blind person. So, caught up in the charismatic healing ministry revival of the late 1980s and early 1990s, I looked for the healing I believed I needed.
However, services, conferences, prayer and laying on of hands seemed to do nothing. I always left as blind as I was when I arrived and in fact my sight continued to deteriorate. After a while I began to run away. To run away from calling and to run away from this God who seemed to promise so much but deliver so little. Until that is I found myself in a service in Southwark Cathedral. All around me the sound of singing ebbed and flowed but all I felt was anger. Anger at the God who seemed to have abandoned me. Suddenly though I began to feel exhausted. Rather like a child that has run and run and can run no longer, or maybe a child who in the middle of a tantrum runs out of the energy to scream any more. And in that exhaustion I suddenly felt as if I was being held in the most loving of loving embraces. And words seemed to echo in my head somehow. ‘John, do you think that I am so small as to need to heal you to include you?’ And in that moment I suddenly knew that everything I had been seeking and striving for was completely wrong. For my whole life I had seen myself as inadequate and, since my diagnosis, had believed that the thing I needed most was healing, the restoration of my sight. But, as those words echoed in my head, I realised that this was completely wrong. What I needed to do was to accept myself as I am, because that is exactly how God accepts me. I don’t need to be changed or fixed or made to be more like others. All I need to be is ‘me’ and accept that it is ‘just as I am’ that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. It is as a blind person that I reflect something of the image of God in the world and that it was as a blind person that God was calling me to the priesthood. St Paul’s moment of revelation suddenly leapt off of the page. ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’
I returned to a selection conference with a very different attitude. No longer trying to prove anything, but seeking to be the most genuine version of me that I could. The result was recommendation for training and, despite a few setbacks and further delays, I moved with my family to Oxford in 1992 to begin training at Wycliffe Hall. I was ordained at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in 1994.
Since then 30 years have gone by. Over 20 years of parish ministry in Suffolk, 6 years of parish ministry in Islington and nearly 3 years of my current disability Ministry Enabler role in London. With my wife Natalie’s support and several guide dogs at my side, I hope that I have managed to bring something of God’s kingdom down to earth for people of all ages and all abilities. And I believe that being a blind priest has not detracted from my ministry but added a unique and personal dimension to it. My blindness is a place and experience of vulnerability that I cannot hide. It is a place and experience of vulnerability from which I have been able to connect with the vulnerability of others in what I hope they have found to be valuable and transformative ways. Often it has been when as a blind priest I bring my vulnerability into the vulnerable places and experiences of others that there is a sense of God turning up and our human physical encounter becoming divine and holy encounter.
Aspects of human embodiment that our society has chosen to label as ‘disability’ and view as somehow diminishing of a person’s status and worth are in fact viewed completely differently within the kingdom that Jesus came to bring into being. In the kingdom all people are of ultimate worth because our worth is not rooted in ourselves or others but in Jesus Christ. Every person, regardless of their physical, sensory or cognitive shape, brings gift into the church and every person adds to us becoming a more complete representation of the Body of Christ in the world today. A body that, risen from the tomb, still bore the marks and scars of human disability in the wounds of nails and spear and thorns. I hope that my 30 years of ministry has brought something of this reality into the world and I look forward to continuing to live and breathe this truth for as long as I am able.