To be human is be storied. We tell stories about ourselves and others tell stories about us. Within religious traditions, stories can shape imagination and offer language for self-understanding. But how might this work when narrative communication is not available to an individual? Disability theologians are engaged with these important questions. Swinton, Mowat and Baines conducted interviews with families of people with profound disability. In their reflections, they ask who should narrate such lives, how people with profound disability are positioned in narratives, how autonomy is conceived in these narratives, and whether spirituality is described as a communal or an individual reality. Dow has offered a critique of the practice of narrative, fearing that it denies human epistemological limitations. He proposes that some lives are better viewed as mystery and that one’s response to mystery is to draw on virtue ethics, not narrative ethics, to guide practice.
These theoretical discussions have prompted a small empirical investigation addressing the question: How do parents of adults with intellectual disability and/or autistic spectrum disorder narrate and explain the spiritual lives of their children? Fourteen interviews were conducted, with parents being asked “Tell me about the spiritual life of Name.” The results provide illuminating insights into the way parents narrate their children’s lives, and raise questions about the validity of such narratives in spiritual care.