 Mary Jo, before we get into discussing your book, I would love to hear more about how you've got into disability justice. Would you mind sharing how it became a major focus in your work? Disability justice ended up being a major focus stemming from my doctoral work in moral theology, which did not address at all the subject of disability. But it informed the way I looked at any theological question. So as it turns out, and I write this in the book, a dear cousin of mine was pregnant with her second child. And it's not that she was of one of those ages where doctors would be suspicious of, you know, potential difficulties that might happen during a pregnancy. But for whatever reason, I guess her doctor recommended that she be tested for potential anomalies in the developing fetus. So my cousin abided by that and the results of that test suggested significant presence of anomalies and predicted a rather gruesome future for the child to be born. And so the doctor had recommended abortion. And my cousin said, I will absolutely not do that. And how dare you recommend something like that to me? And so far as you know who I am, you know that I am a devout Catholic woman and I would for no reason ever make a decision to abort. So the doctor accepted that position, but did want to monitor the development of the child. And there were many visits to specialists that the doctor had scheduled and all of the reports were highly negative. Speaking about, you know, if this child will be born, the child will be like a monster. And my cousin said, well, if that's the way it is, then that's the way it will be. I love this child already. Other predictions were that the fetus would fail to thrive in utero and spontaneously abort. If that should happen, that happens. I'm not going to be, my cousin said, the instrument of her spontaneous abortion. As the child continued to develop, she was very active in my cousin's womb and thought, the doctors just don't know what they're talking about here. The baby was born and yes, she did have very significant disabilities. Doctors had said there will be a failure to thrive here. Should the baby die as an infant, as a one or two year old, then the baby dies. But I am not going to be the cause of that. As it turns out, just this past November, at 27 years old, Bethany died, her heart gave out. So that happened, the pregnancy happened at the first year of my teaching. I was teaching then at Barry University in North Miami. My cousin had remarked to me, if my brother Norman had been alive, who was a medical doctor, a pathologist, that he would know how to support her. But she reached out to me and I began to think about the ordeal that she and her husband were undergoing in terms of the medical professions. And I was just struck by how insensitive the doctors were in recommendations, in caring for all of these things. And it began to register to me that there are bioethical implications of what the doctors are saying here. The recommendations that they're making and how many women are similarly advised to abort and go through with an abortion. When in fact the child that was born was a delightful person. She had an amazing, we would call it a wicked sense of humor as she got older and matured. The doctors don't know that love is the most important thing here. So as someone trained in moral theology, I wanted to make sure that the voices of persons like my cousin and her husband in reference to the presence of disability would be heard. That's how I started. In your book you spend some time discussing theological anthropology or how we understand human beings and their relationship to God. Can you say something about how you see the Amago Dei relating to disability? Nancy Eastland wrote a book called The Disabled Book God. And it is a standard text in most theological classes or religious studies classes on disability. What Eastland realizes, and this happened as a result of a conversation, or she was at a presentation, she was doing a disability presentation, and one of the audience members had said to her, if I see God in a sift puff chair, then I'll believe, or something to that effect. And it got Nancy Eastland thinking about God in a sift puff chair. This is one of those chairs that is attached to a person, there's an apparatus that's attached to a person's neck, and there is like a straw. This is for persons who are mobility impaired, cannot use necessarily their arms to locomote in a wheelchair, but there is a device that you blow into that can move you. This idea of a sift puff chair intrigued Nancy Eastland and began to think harder on the, more intently, on the crucified God. Now we have the notion of the crucified God was developed by Jürgen Moltmann in the 20th century, mid 20th century. And what Moltmann had given to Eastland in terms of insights was the disabled God, the crucified God. Jesus' post resurrection is recognized by the disciples, the apostles and the disciples, by the marks of the crucifixion, which would have been disabling. Nails in the feet, nails in the hands, a huge gash in the side, a crown of thorns on his head, puncture wounds everywhere, and yet he stood among them. He could walk through doors, but spirits can do that. But the image of the disabled God, as opposed to the crucified God, which is Moltmann's thing, the disabled God is living post resurrection in a disabled body. So the Amago Dei, if Jesus is not the Amago Dei, none of us are the Amago Dei, but we know from Genesis the first texts in our scriptures are very clear that God created women and men. In the image of God they were created. Every single one of us is the image of God. In the Christian tradition we have the image of God and the person of Jesus of Nazareth who becomes the disabled God. And if God's not about liberating everyone, God's not about anybody. We have the disabled God now. We have the black God, the black Jesus, the black Christ. We have the Latino, Latinx Christ. We have the queer God. We have the Jewish God. Right? Jesus was a Jew. No one is excluded. No one is excluded because we are all Amago Dei. We can talk from our own identities that God knows who I am because God was one of us in the flesh, came to be with us. Can you say what you mean by the phrase preferential justice? Preferential justice. This is my own little term that I came up with. And justice is giving to others what is owed to them. Preferential justice is giving to those who have been denied what is owed to them. Because of the denial, we must correct the denials. We must correct the failures to respond to the needs of our sisters and brothers, whether they are persons with disability, persons that speak languages not native to a particular place. Women who are not welcomed in men's spaces. Christians who are not welcomed in Jewish spaces or Jewish community members not welcomed in Muslim spaces. Or Hindus not welcoming the Dalit peoples. They are the poorest of the poor in India. Every tradition and every social system was established by a hierarchy or with a hierarchy with the strongest and the most powerful persons, predominantly men. I would say 99% of them over the course of history were men who excluded women. So in many ways women are considered disabled even without having a disability. What preferential justice is attempting to do is correct those failures to give to others what is necessary, necessary so not just live but to thrive. So we recognize this immediately with neighborhoods that have been run down because there is no infrastructure support for the neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods tend to be populated with marginalized persons, whether they are brown, black, whether they are from a different context entirely from the local population. Jesus instructs us in no uncertain terms. We welcome the stranger. We clothe the naked. We feed the hungry. These are the necessary things that we must attend to preferentially for those who are most in need. And it's justice giving to others what is owed to them. Once we are born, we are owed something from our parents but something from our communities as well. Safety in crossing the street, for example. When the traffic light turns red, we must remember to stop if we are the driver approaching the red. If there is a pedestrian in the walkway, we must stop to allow the pedestrian to cross safely. Preferential justice giving to others what is due and more for those who have been denied across time until today. Is there something that you would like to say in summary about this book that is important for readers to understand? The most important thing, most important takeaway is we all depend on each other. We are absolutely dependent upon each other. I do not grow my own food. I do not mine my own M-I-N-E, mine my own oil to turn it into gasoline to put in my car. I do not build my cars. I pay for the heating bills. I don't provide that. Some company does that. I can locomote at this moment in my life but the time may come when I will not be able to locomote on my own efforts. We all need each other. We are dependent. I've written elsewhere about radical dependence similar to preferential justice. It is a radical reality that we depend on one another for safety crossing the street, for our food, for our jobs, for the buildings that we can take shelter in and play in our gymnasiums. For example, have lectures in, go to school in. We depend on someone to build that. And the builders depend on someone to provide the materials. We are radically dependent from the simplest thing like bread on the table to the most extravagant buildings, the cathedrals, the schools. All of these spaces, our road systems and the maintenance that goes on with it. We are radically dependent on one another, interpersonally and a-personally behind the scenes that most of us don't think about. We don't see it, we don't think about it, but we are in fact dependent in ever so many ways. To get from wherever point A is to point B, whether that means getting it from the table onto the fork up to my mouth or if it's flying cross-country. Thank you for your time today, Mary Jo. It was wonderful to be able to learn from you on this important topic.