Inspiration Association – on TBIs, Inspire Arts and the Fall

Today Magazine Online
Apr 20
12 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

• Reflecting on TBIs, an innovative arts program and the Fall • Commentary

• Intro Note — Inspire Arts is a Connecticut-based program dedicated to supporting artists who live with disabilities, with a special emphasis on survivors of a traumatic brain injury aka TBI — the innovative program provides a platform for these TBI artists, fostering artistic expression as a recovery vehicle and a life calling.

• Established by The Supported Living Group — a private social-service agency headquartered in Danielson — the Inspire Arts initiative is offered at the agency's satellite locations in Avon and Bethany.

• Inspire Arts senior manager Rebecca Maloney is based in Avon, in the heart of Connecticut's Farmington Valley.

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By Bruce William Deckert

Editor-in-Chief

Today Magazine Online

• Traumatic brain injuries occur in various catastrophic ways — motor-vehicle accidents, violent assaults, military combat, sports mishaps, severe strokes, tragic falls — and a TBI is widely considered a significant disability.

• This commentary essay is the fifth article in an Inspire Arts series — links to the first four can be found below — and the previous feature in this series concluded with the following two questions:

• Since a TBI is a major disability, and since everyone has abilities and disabilities, I suppose that the transitive property applies — here's my supposition stated as a question: While we humans benefit from the mind's upside, can't we infer that all people must deal with a metaphorical traumatic brain injury that is part-and-parcel of the human condition?

• I believe a compelling case can be made that the answer is yes — and if this universal TBI assessment is true, who offers the best long-term restorative solution?

• Let's continue the conversation and address these key questions...

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TO ANSWER these two essential queries, let's focus on just one of the ways someone can suffer a traumatic brain injury — via a tragic fall.

Further, let's play the Word Association Game again, as in the previous commentary essay in this Inspire Arts series: What comes to mind when you hear the word fall?

For me, the term fall contains some powerful connotations and associations that connect with elementary human disciplines, enterprises and pursuits. Indeed, the word fall evokes connections with multiple human realms — such as filmmaking, music, science, storytelling, and philosophy and theology.

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In the filmmaking realm, the following three movies relate to the fall theme:

• The Fall of the Roman Empire

This historical drama depicts the magnificent scale of Rome's majesty and its final decline — the stellar cast includes Alec Guinness, Sophia Loren and Christopher Plummer — released in 1964.

• Legends of the Fall

This epic film deals with deep-seated motifs of love, betrayal, family bonds and war — featuring memorable performances by Anthony Hopkins, Julia Ormond and Brad Pitt — released in 1994.

• The Fallout

This psychological drama traces the challenging emotional journey of a teenager who must navigate the aftermath of a school shooting — the teen is portrayed by Jenna Ortega in an acclaimed role — released in 2021.

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• In the musical realm, the following three songs relate to the fall theme:

• Can't Help Falling in Love – recorded by Elvis Presley

• Partial lyrics:

Wise men say only fools rush in

But I can't help falling in love with you.

Shall I stay — would it be a sin

If I can't help falling in love with you?

Including this song might be counterintuitive in the context of traumatic brain injuries — but anyone who has experienced romance followed by the mind-numbing heartbreak of a broken relationship will likely agree with the inclusion of a hopeful love song here.

• Everything Falls – by the band Fee

• Partial lyrics:

When everything falls apart Your arms hold me together

When everything falls apart You're the only hope for this heart

When everything falls apart and my strength is gone

I find You mighty and strong

You keep holding on, You keep holding on

From the album Hope Rising, this song evidently expresses a heartfelt and earnest prayer to God.

• Free Fallin' – by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

• Partial lyrics:

She's a good girl, loves her mama

Loves Jesus and America too

She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis

... And I'm a bad boy 'cause I don't even miss her

I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart

• Chorus: And I'm free — free fallin'

Yeah, I'm free — free fallin'

Rolling Stone ranked this song top-200 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time — the chorus features a simple and memorable melodic hook.

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• In the scientific realm:

The fall theme surely relates to Isaac Newton and the law of gravity — he was famously inspired to study the gravity phenomenon when he witnessed an apple fall from a tree at his family's home in England. Newton subsequently observed and developed a law of universal gravitation.

The apple tree still stands at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire county, where Newton was born.

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• In the storytelling realm, the following three Mother Goose nursery rhymes relate to the fall theme:

• Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

• Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water;

Jack fell down and broke his crown,

and Jill came tumbling after.

• Ring Around the Rosy

Ring around the rosy,

Pocket full of posy,

Ashes, ashes —

We all fall down!

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• In the philosophical and theological realm, the biblical account refers to an event known as the Fall — here is the Dictionary. com definition:

• Fall of Man — The disobedience of Adam and Eve and their consequent loss of God's grace and the peace and happiness of the Garden of Eden. When they ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God punished them by driving them out of the garden and into the world, where they would be subject to sickness, pain and eventual death.

Notice the connection of this Fall with the last line of Ring Around the Rosy: "We all fall down" — the falling down in the nursery rhyme and the death sentence outlined in the Genesis account are described as the universal experience of all human beings.

Let's circle back to the first TBI question noted above: Can't we infer that all people must deal with a metaphorical traumatic brain injury that is part-and-parcel of the human condition?

Based on the nursery verse and the Genesis story, the answer appears to be an emphatic yes. Whether or not you believe in the accuracy of the biblical account of creation-and-fall-and-redemption — and whatever your worldview — surely we can agree that life ends in death for everyone, bar none.

Based on the biblical record ... God's good plan has been upended and flipped upside-down by the human fall

True, life on this earth is full of beauty and brilliance and incredible gifts. However, any honest assessment of human existence on this side of eternity recognizes that life has somehow gone tragically awry and is in desperate need of repair. Indeed, a fall has occurred and a fix is needed, and as far as I can see, the evidence throughout history is that everyone suffers from a TBI — in some cases visible and external, and in all cases invisible and internal.

Much more could be said and written regarding the evidence that supports the opinion I'm expressing here. If you don't see what I'm seeing, I invite you to a dialogue so we can constructively discuss this issue and hopefully arrive at a clear consensus.

The second TBI question noted above is as follows: If this universal TBI assessment is true, who offers the best long-term restorative solution?

Every single belief system, faith, philosophy, religion and worldview across human history offers an answer to this age-old question — and make no mistake, everyone must eventually decide how to answer this inescapable query. As for me, having grown up in the church, I continue to subscribe to the historic Christian faith as best I can, while aiming to avoid its caricatures and counterfeits.

I also continue to encounter questions that are seemingly as numerous as the stars in the sky, yet those burning questions need to be applied not only to the Christian worldview but also to every other life-and-faith philosophy and worldview — including but not limited to agnosticism, atheism, pantheism, polytheism and other forms of theism.

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Bill Streeter is one of the TBI survivors and talented artists in the Inspire Arts program in the heart of Connecticut's Farmington Valley. He suffered a traumatic brain injury via a fall in July 2023 — he was working remotely for Bank of America when he fell while walking downstairs to the basement of his home. He arrived at The Supported Living Group in 2024 and thus began his Inspire Arts journey.

"This program has really helped me ... my attitude has really changed since I got here," Streeter tells Today Magazine. "I have more of a religious belief. That's a big part — I'm getting help from my heavenly Father."

Other artists who are part of the Inspire Arts family speak of their belief in a divine origin for this world of amazing goodness and grace and truth.

• Inspire Arts manager Rebecca Maloney, when asked if she reckons a Creator is the source of human creativity, says freely: "Yes — I'm not an atheist. I definitely believe there's a divine source. I believe in God. I believe there's a higher power."

• LaRey Pablo, who became a Supported Living Group client in 2017, says: "I believe in a higher Spirit, a higher power — every day I do the Bible … I read a Bible app on my phone."

• Grace Miller-Kaggwa, who likewise joined the Supported Living Group community in 2017, says: "God is the greatest" — and further, believe it or not, in the face of her harrowing TBI story and her ongoing TBI-connected challenges, she even asserts: "God is good — all the time."

This assertion and affirmation elicits a question that is both ancient and modern: If God is good, why does He allow and/or cause horrifically bad circumstances — such as traumatic brain injuries?

The God described by the Judeo-and-Christian-and-Islamic worldview is the Creator who made the universe and this earth wholly and amazingly good — yet with the potential for evil because evidently choice is absolutely necessary for God to receive what He desires most from the human beings made in His image: true love.

If this is the final question you face as you stand at the doorway of eternity, what will your final answer be?

Let's note that when the Judeo-Christian scriptures identify what has been called the Greatest Commandment — love God with your entire being — this command doesn't force compliance in a twisted authoritarian manner but rather expresses what God wants and longs for most ... in other words, this so-called commandment to love is God's greatest desire.

Moreover, love from a puppet or robot is obviously not true love, so for God to accomplish His objective, he decided to create image-of-God beings who could choose either to value and love Him or spurn Him and thereby break His heart.

According to the time-honored Old and New Testament accounts, when the first humans chose evil over good, they fell hard and ushered unnecessary suffering and death into the stunning world God made.

To return to the love song motif — apparently God's desire to fall in love with His beloved, the people He created, required the paradoxical potential for their fall from grace.

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Bill Streeter's main artistic mediums are woodworking and acrylic painting. In the Inspire Arts woodshop, he has made a multipurpose toy box as a gift for his grandson.

The toy box features an inventive design: When opened, the cover of the box opens and flips upside-down and becomes a tabletop mini-workbench, allowing the child to sit on the toy box as a seat while utilizing the workbench.

Let's note the metaphor — the modern-day parable, if you will — inherent in this upside-down toy-box ingenuity.

Based on the biblical record — the Genesis-thru-Revelation news accounts and short stories and poetry and other documents — God's good plan has been upended and flipped upside-down by the human fall.

True, life on this earth is full of beauty and brilliance and incredible gifts — however, any honest assessment of human existence on this earth recognizes that life has somehow gone tragically awry

But instead of giving up on His dream, and despite the flawed nature of this current flipped-over-and-out creation, God has decided to undertake a new creation — and in this way He determines to flip the bad right-side up so good emerges from the wreckage and ultimately prevails.

In the face of some monumental bad news, the astounding good news is as follows: Besides deciding to make a new creation and offer a whole new deal to we mere humans who disrespect and disgust Him too often — yes, flying in the face of His astonishing love for us — God invites us to partner with Him in His intricate and extraordinary right-side-up new creation project.

A classic passage from a letter known as the New Testament book of Romans describes this long-haul undertaking as God working all things together for good — counterintuitively including the bad circumstances like TBIs and all other unexpected and unwelcome life trauma on planet Earth.

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Of the three movies mentioned above, the only one I've seen is Legends of the Fall — I've also seen I Am Legend starring Will Smith, another cogent film with a legend reference in the title.

The movie poster for Legends of the Fall features this tagline: "After the Fall from Innocence the Legend Begins" — and this sentiment surely dovetails with countless themes that have been discussed and addressed briefly in this commentary essay.

Earlier this April, people worldwide marked the Good Friday holiday and commemorated Easter. In December, countless people from all walks of life celebrate Christmas. The central character in these holidays is, naturally, a legendary person known as Jesus of Nazareth. A compelling case can be made that his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection — per his biographies and other historical documents — are the three most essential events in human-and-divine history.

Let's revisit the second TBI-related question identified at the outset of this essay, rephrased as follows: If a universal TBI ailment is true vis-à-vis the human race, who offers the best long-term solution? A further query — if this is the final question you face as you stand at the doorway of eternity, what will your final answer be?

In my better moments, I believe Jesus of Nazareth holds the answer and is Himself the ultimate answer — because he provides the way to the new-creation home we all long for, based on the New Testament documents and other key witnesses.

According to two of those witnesses — the gospel-biographies of Matthew and Mark — Roman soldiers repeatedly and brutally struck his head with a staff after he was unjustly arrested. So Jesus may have suffered a type of TBI before he was crucified. +

• This feature is the fifth in a five-part series — the entire series:

Part 1 – Inspire Arts – Offering creative hope to brain injury survivors

Part 2 – Inspirational Initiative – Exclusive Q&A with Inspire Arts principals

Part 3 – Tale of 2+2 Artists – Inspire Arts foursome add creativity to injury

Part 4 – Artistic Association – Reflecting on TBI-disability connection

Part 5 – Inspiration Association – on TBIs, Inspire Arts and the Fall

Featuring community news that matters nationwide, Today Magazine Online aims to record Connecticut’s underreported upside — covering the heart of the Farmington Valley and beyond

Today Magazine editor-in-chief Bruce Deckert is a multi-award-winning journalist who believes all people merit awards when we leverage our various God-given gifts for good — if you're up for a conversation about the above consequential issues and topics, just let me know: my contact info can be found in a submenu on this website

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Inspiration Association – on TBIs, Inspire Arts and the Fall

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