World Downs Syndrome Day - Sally Phillips - Theos Lecture
21st March is World Downs Syndrome Day. As we mark this day, the actress, comedienne and campaigner Sally Phillips’ words in a recent lecture give us profound truths to meditate on as she reflects on the experience of being a mother to Oliver.
Theos is a Christian think-tank based in the UK stimulating the debate about the place of religion in society, challenging and changing ideas through research, commentary and events. At the Theos Annual Lecture in 2019, she spoke on Human Dignity, Different Lives & the Illusions of Choice:
“I’m going to begin this story at the very beginning, the beginning of the story that started the journey that has led us here, with the birth of my son Oliver who has Downs Syndrome. It was August 2004. It was the best of times and the worst of times ... It was what theology calls a Kairos moment. Kairos means a crisis with hope. Kairos moments are completely democratic, they happen to everyone, rich and poor, black and white, disabled and able bodied … A Kairos moment is a scene change in your life, when the lights go out. It feels like your life seems to collapse around you and really there’s nothing to do in those moments, you just have to sit there in the dark until the lights come back on again to illuminate an entirely different set for the next act of your life.
“The lights came back on for me on the bus about nine months later. I was on the bus with some other mothers … I heard these other mothers complaining, saying ‘Oh he’s into everything, keeps me up all night, such a pain, eats everything, won’t eat anything’. And I had this flash that I was enjoying this a whole lot more than they are. And that was the beginning of understanding what theologians call the topsy turvy topology of the Kingdom of God …”
Carry on reading, watching or listening here.