Theology, Disability, and Spiritual Transformation: Learning from ...

whole ecology of spiritual life in Christian community. Most fundamentally, however, the claim made here is that growth in communion takes place in human relationships of care and compassion through a process of progressive awakening. This is an awakening to the personal capacity for love, the inner shame and anguish that blocks this love, and the power of human and divine acceptance that frees this love for a full exchange of intimacy, fecundity, and ecstasy with other persons, both human and divine. This communion with others leads ultimately to participation in and union with God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit mediated in relationships with other persons, especially the weakest and most fragile.

In this study, I ultimately seek to contribute to a fuller understanding of authentic spiritual transformation in the Christian faith. By offering foundational and orienting perspectives on the nature of spiritual transformation in the context of a particular spiritual community, I hope to illumine clearly some of the core elements of a framework for the theoretical analysis of Christian spiritual transformation more broadly. On the basis of a phenomenological description and psychological analysis, I construct a theological interpretation of this transformation process that locates the saving grace of the triune God in relationships of communion. My central claim is that transformation in the context of L’Arche not only reveals the experiential ground of theological notions such as redemption and deification. It also challenges some of the most basic assumptions about the nature of metanoia and growth in the Christian life.