What it means to be Coeliac - and why the Church should care
You may have issues with being gluten intolerant or have others you know of who need to watch what they eat. Rev'd Claire Brown has some reflections on this, and the little things that can make a difference.
We have had to learn about how to care for people with all kinds of disabilities – hidden as well as obvious, and one of those less obvious is an allergy to gluten. Some people are gluten intolerant, and adversely affected by consuming products containing wheat, barley, rye or oats, and others are coeliac, suffering from an auto-immune disease that means that any consumption of those products is positively dangerous to their long-term health, including the possibility of nasty cancers.
This is important for the Church, because our central Service is based around Bread – which can be poison to a small number of our parishioners – as well as the occasional visitor to our services.
Often we are talking about older people – diagnosis can come at any time of life. But sometimes very young children can be Coeliac and we need to be able to assure them all that we care and certainly don’t want to do them harm.
St Hilda’s School and the Otago Peninsula Parish [with 2 Coeliac parishioners, but also wanting to be able to welcome everyone who comes] have decided to use only gluten-free wafers. It is slightly more expensive, but much more hospitable.
And when talking of hospitality, when morning tea is offered, it is unfriendly not to keep a packet of gluten-free biscuits in the cupboard.
Claire Brown
[Still getting used to a surprise diagnosis that has meant many foods are now out of bounds]
