Best 115 quotes in «inclusion quotes» category

... collectively they all taught us generosity, kindness, and inclusion, and that you always share what you have, even when it's not much. My parents managed to construct a little safe haven for my sisters and me to build ourselves within, which seems almost impossible to me when I think about how quickly childhood seems to disappear these days. They have taught me about the truest kind of love: the kind that is steadfast and strong, even when it changes shape.

Compassion isn't just about feeling the pain of others; it's about bringing them in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in compassion, margins get erased. 'Be compassionate as God is compassionate,' means the dismantling of barriers that exclude. In Scripture, Jesus is in a house so packed that no one can come through the door anymore. So the people open the roof and lower this paralytic down through it, so Jesus can heal him. The focus of the story is, understandably, the healing of the paralytic. But there is something more significant than that happening here. They're ripping the roof off the place, and those outside are being let in.

Different people do different things. And no one-way of plugging in or serving in the church is more beneficial or valuable than the other. The same thing is true for our students with special needs. And it's our church's responsibility, in partnership with parents, to clear the path so that God can pursue our teens through the abilities and passions He's already given them. - Katie Garvert

Critical interventions around race did not destroy the women's movement; it became stronger . . . It shows us that no matter how misguided feminist thinkers have been in the past, the will to change, the will to create the context for struggle and liberation, remains stronger than the need to hold on to wrong beliefs and assumptions.

Don't let anyone tell you, ever, that this is a zero-sum game. Your genius does not threaten me. It delights and inspires me.

Human beings are settlers, but not in the pioneer sense. It is our human occupational hazard to settle for little. We settle for purity and piety when we are being invited to an exquisite holiness. We settle for the fear-driven when love longs to be our engine. We settle for a puny, vindictive God when we are being nudged always closer to this wildly inclusive, larger-than-any-life God. We allow our sense of God to atrophy. We settle for the illusion of separation when we are endlessly asked to enter into kinship with all.

I believe women’s groups are essential for each of us individually but also for society generally—because progress depends on inclusion, and inclusion begins with women. I’m not saying we should include women and girls as opposed to men and boys, but along with them and on behalf of them. This is not about bringing women in and leaving others out. It’s about bringing women in as a way to bring everyone in.

If we can't start by seeing an autistic child as inherently capable, interesting, and valuable, no amount of education or therapy we layer on top is going to matter.

If you don’t understand, please keep your mouth shut and just live with all sentient beings in peace and harmony beyond your intellectual speculation. It’s not necessary to think how much that helps people or how many people it helps. All you have to do is be peaceful with people right now, right here, day by day.

I hope the exposure to other people and places shapes what the kids do, but even more I want it to shape who they are. I want them to see that in the universal human desire to be happy, to develop our gifts, to contribute to others, to love and be loved—we’re all the same. Nobody is any better than anybody else, and no one’s happiness or human dignity matters more than anyone else’s.

Create inclusion - with simple mindfulness that others might have a different reality from your own.

Even if the family is wrestling through theological issues related to their child's diagnosis, it is less important that the church leader be prepared to provide answers right now, than it is they enter into the pain with the family. Instead of searching for the right theological solutions in the moment, ask for God's guidance on what to say and what not to say. The single greatest desire from families was for their church friends to join them in their grief. Receiving validation for their feelings of loss was more important to parents than receiving an explanation of that loss.

Everyone wins when the "burden" mind-set is abandoned and where the special needs ministry sees itself as a blessing to those who choose to be part of their community.

Few things feel as threatening to a mother as does something that jeopardizes others' love for and acceptance of her child.

Good people disagree on how a church should run virtually every ministry inside a church, and this is especially true for special needs ministry.

I am no thinker - what I really am is, a brother to every girl and boy, a son to every woman and man, a grandson to every elderly person - I belong to every single person on earth, for you all are my own family - your tradition is my tradition, your culture is my culture, your religion is my religion, your language is my language - science means nothing to me, scriptures mean nothing to me, God means nothing to me, for I see my God in you - you are my home, you are my temple, you are my God, you are my gospel - and nothing gives me greater bliss than being annihilated in your service.

I'd shut myself out for so long that I had forgotten how wonderful it felt to be included, to be seen, to be heard.

If a church doesn't have the volunteers, the space, and the resources to launch a ministry with every base covered, let's not chide them for getting it wrong. Let's cheer them on for taking a step in the right direction, for meeting the immediate needs in their midst, and for expanding their accommodation to any degree, and striving to do it well.

If a circle shuts you out, draw a circle around it.

If a minority culture doesn't accept you as much as majority culture, think about following a path of non-conformity

If the parents felt they had a healthy line of communication with the children's ministry team and the church was following up in a timely manner, they tended to reflect on the setbacks less negatively. Parents were more likely to continue their involvement with the church if they perceived the children's ministry leadership was working proactively to appropriately accommodate their child.

If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.

If you build a wall to separate people, there will be those who find a way around the wall, or over it, or under it, or through it. We humans are not meant to be contained, and neither are our thoughts.

I know hiding your prejudice behind your ignorance isn’t enough. Because I have been the mom scrambling to provide my four-year-old with a somewhat intelligent, unproblematic answer when he went through a phase of questioning bindis (and fashioning his own replicas out of modeling clay). Ignoring things I don’t understand can’t be an option given that I am guiding the next generation.

In churches that care about special needs inclusion I have found that the single biggest determinant for a child's success is the strength of the relationship between the church and the child's parents. When church leaders and parents are in general agreement regarding a child's abilities and needs, problems tend to get solved with greater speed and ingenuity. But when parents view their child's special needs as nonexistent or insignificant, it creates extra work (and stress!) for everyone serving that child. This is the reason that it is sometimes easier for churches to successfully include children with complex needs that are obvious than it is for churches to successfully include high-functioning children whose disabilities are less obvious. When parents dismiss a child's legitimate need for even occasional assistance it makes it really hard for the child and the volunteers serving them to experience success.

[I]nclusion, not assimilation, should be the key concept in seeking, ever seeking, a more perfect national union. Our own history has shown that we are stronger as a mosaic than a melting pot. Our nation is bound together more by ideals than by blood or land, and inclusion is in our cultural DNA. We should feel proud that we are not all the same, and that we can share our differences under the common umbrella of humanity.

Include every smell, every sound, every taste, every sight in your philosophy. Exclude nothing.

INCLUSION—It's amazing what happens when we allow the flower that is us, the flower that is them, to become part of the bouquet.

In fact, God may be working in and through their circumstances, and we can't know completely how God is working through any situation during our earthly lifetime. But if the topic of healing is overemphasized, the family of an individual with special needs may miss the opportunity to be loved and accepted for exactly who they are and where they are in life. Again, the church's role is to provide a safe, nonjudgmental environment that enables families to experience the love of Jesus Christ.

In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were simply a member of a culture that at one time normalized that behavior, it shaped us. We can’t undo that level of dehumanizing in one or two generations. I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery.

Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse. Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion.

In my view, the ultimate goal for a special needs ministry is to being families into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. And in order for that to happen, a church has to be prepared to successfully accommodate the child with special needs during regular church programming.

It is important that the church think outside the box, actively pursuing a relationship with the family, just as Jesus Christ pursues a relationship with each of us.

It is insufficient to only tell your children that racism and racists are bad. It is insufficient to simply explain “We love people of all colors.” It is lazy and near damaging to proclaim a love for all people but never make the leap of actually reaching out to people of color or adding tangible diversity to your life. In a world filled with empty rhetoric, our children don’t need to hear words from us without action. They need to see us embody the beliefs we claim to hold dear.

It’s about loving someone and seeing them as a part of your family. I think some people have the capacity to see different people as part of their family and some don’t.

It's funny that being human means so many things, man made divisions counter our judgements towards being wary of the "other", this is worrying because the thing that unites us is being human that is what we all are and without lament but with joy we should embrace everybody we would then live in utopia of diversity.

It's suicide," Doc Holland said, shaking his head. "Fools, all of them. This isn't any conventional war- this is madness." The general let out a weary breath. "No, Doctor-this is fear . . . and fear makes fools of us all.

It is also worth noting that the strengths (or weaknesses) of a particular group leader may factor into the placement decisions for a specific child.

It's the church's responsibility to thoughtfully, intentionally, and respectfully engage everyone - because God loves them all. That's the gospel being lived out for all to see and experience.

Mito: Masividad y calidad son dos términos irreconciliables El mayor acceso a la educación genera fuertes tensiones y desafíos en todos los países. Si un número relevante de niños y jóvenes que estaban fuera del sistema ingresan en él, como sucedió en años recientes en la Argentina, sobre todo a partir de la obligatoriedad del secundario, la composición social y cultural de las aulas se transforma. Para los docentes, crece el desafío de dar respuesta a una situación que no admite recetas simples. En las instituciones donde este cambio ha sido más significativo muchos docentes se sienten desbordados por la complejidad del escenario. [...] Pero una cosa es que no existan recetas y otra muy diferente es que las dificultades lleven a situaciones de frustración que terminen por consagrar un mito: no se pueden llevar adelante buenos procesos de enseñanza con alumnos que “no quieren aprender”. Este mito busca atacar las políticas de inclusión que “meten” en la escuela, y en el aula, a los “alumnos problema”. [...] Es habitual que la elite sienta nostalgia de la homogeneidad social y cultural, de los buenos tiempos en que a “toda” la sociedad le gustaba la música clásica y todo marchaba mejor que ahora, una época en la que dominan el rock y la cumbia. En realidad, esa “sociedad” de antes estaba integrada exclusivamente por quienes tenían cierta extracción de clase y gustos culturales afines. El resto de los ciudadanos estaban completamente excluidos. Añorar aquello es como sentir nostalgia por la época del primer Centenario: en 1910 no había voto universal y el analfabetismo era alto. En ese sentido, los sectores de la elite se quejan y padecen los procesos de inclusión que tienden a universalizar derechos, tendencia a la que prefieren denominar “masificación”. Y si bien la exclusión jurídica ha desaparecido, la discriminación social se advierte aún en sectores medios y altos que procuran evitar el contacto con la “masificación” o con la heterogeneidad social. Como son motivos no siempre fáciles de enunciar en voz alta, suelen mencionar otras mitomanías para justificar sus gestos y decisiones. En algunos casos, para conjurar los temores pueden permitirse asistir a colegios o universidades más exigentes (pero ¿cuántos llegan a Harvard?). Otras veces, concurren a instituciones de enseñanza privada que están muy por debajo de la educación pública. Quizás allí se ofrezca un servicio de calidad y una atención personalizada, pero esto no siempre se corresponde con la calidad académica. [...] Detrás del mito asoma una concepción elitista de la vida y de la calidad en términos de excelencia (que, por definición, no podría ser generalizada). Incluso, a veces se constata un gesto aristocrático extemporáneo, cuando esa visión elitista es enunciada por alguien que se imagina a sí mismo, en el pasado, como parte de los estratos más altos del sistema, cuando en realidad habría estado entre los excluidos. Hay que distinguir la forma de enunciar el mito de su significado. Por ejemplo, se dice que “hay que elegir entre masividad y calidad porque son incompatibles”, cuando en realidad se quiere (y no se puede) decir que debería haber “escuelas de calidad para los buenos alumnos” y “escuelas de cuarta para los alumnos de cuarta”.

Mainstream" is the melting pot of everybody sometimes for much of its faults and triumphs it's the world out there that reveals so much more about you than the man-made boundaries that are created.

No one has ever seen the wind. We've only experienced the effects and the results of the wind. And none of us have ever seen God. Just like the movement of a pinwheel makes us sure that the wind exists, we have ways to be sure that God exists.

One of the hallmarks of social wellness is being inclusive, not exclusive, with our friendship.

Our homes travel with us. They are wherever we feel loved and accepted.

Parents have a moral obligation to share knowledge about their child when that information could significantly benefit or protect the actual child, caregivers, other students, and the church staff.

People don't expect perfection, but they do appreciate when they see leaders who sincerely try to improve and ask for help in areas where they might be weak. You don't have to be good at everything to lead, but the best leaders are honest about where they need assistance, working to fill in those gaps, while also taking action and responsibility for areas of personal growth.

Showing participants in a positive light may be the first time some parents have had their child celebrated at all, let alone publicly. The church cannot underestimate the meaningful way this affects a family of a child with special needs. Using the public venue of a worship service will shape the entire church's view of disability, reminding them of God's value for everyone.

The best way to connect with such a family is to recognize what's unique about their life story. Your support is felt when they see your desire to join them in bearing their burdens.

The churches with the strongest special needs ministries seem to know the secret: a ministry leader who values their relationship with their volunteers almost as much as they value their relationship with the families they serve.

The continuum in which we live is not the kind of place in which middles can be unambiguously excluded.