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Disability and Faith

About Mike Bonikowsky

Mike Bonikowsky lives and works in Dufferin County, Ontario. He is a direct support professional with the local Association for Community Living and spends the rest of his time raising two young children. He has been living and working with men and women with developmental disabilities since 2007. He is an editor for Ekstasis

Marilyn Takes Me For A Walk

I am having a bad day at the group home, the sort of day where I find myself drafting resignation letters in my head. There is too much to do, and [Read More]

Alongside

Supporting a person with a developmental disability to grieve is not a matter of coming alongside, but of remaining where we already were.

Outside the Machine

The technicians had very kindly broken the rules and allowed me to stay with him in the room, but I was still outside of the tube. I had the freedom of my limbs. The noises the machine made were not inches from my ears. I called encouraging words to him inside the tube, but they were just more sounds. So I did the only thing I could think to do. ...

Celebrant

So much of what we do on a daily basis we do without qualifications. We walk through every conceivable season of a person’s life with them because we are the ones who happen to be present when the call comes.

Book review: Formed Together

Caregiving is one of the hardest things there is to do well. Second to it in difficulty is writing about caregiving well.

Vera’s Gift

It is a weekday morning, and I am present, here in this beautiful place in this good company, and I am doing my job. These are not stolen moments, but given ones, gifts we have given to one another.

John Michael’s Gift

My favorite twenty minutes of each day is when I get to help John Michael eat. He can’t do it on his own, and even with help, he can’t do it quickly. It takes time and concentration on both of our parts. It’s a dance.

Francis and His Brother

Everywhere we go we are being called brother and sister, daughter and son, mother and father. Everywhere we go we are being called into relationship with the lonely and the forgotten, the sidelined and the left behind. Everywhere we go voices are calling us to be more than we ever thought we could be. May we all have the faith to call one another into the reverberations of the love of God, and to answer that call when it comes.

Advent – Christ

Whom have we ever had but you?
Who came to be alone with us
Who came to sit and weep with us
In the winter after Christmas.

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