First, Define “Leadership.”

When addressing the question of where autism fits into the Church, it has been said – and rightly so – that inclusion is not just a special project, but rather, should be something that flows from the top down.  For this to be authentic, then autistic people need to be included in the leadership of that community.

While this is easily said, it is not something that is easily attainable.  How so?

When we look at the question of how autistic people can have more representation in decision-making, the first step is to ask what is meant by leadership.  People normally think of the leader as the one on top, the one who is in charge.  That is one kind of leadership, but not the only one.  Let us use The Lord of the Rings as an example.  Aragorn is the one destined to be king.  He gradually moves into that role.  However, Gandalf also exercises a great deal of leadership though he is not a king or ruler in the usual sense.  As a wizard, he is an outsider – not man, elf, dwarf or hobbit; yet all recognize his wisdom and discernment, his prophetic leadership (if you will).

As a rule, autistic people do better in Gandalf’s role than in Aragorn’s.  But that requires a culture that values that kind of insight and prophetic speech and therefore values those who have such gifts.  In a parish, the pastor may ultimately be in charge, but others also exercise other kinds of leadership.  Deacons lead in one particular way.  The parish council is meant to exercise another kind of leadership as an advisory group to the pastor, assisting in forming the parish vision and in discerning how best to implement it.  All of this requires an openness from the pastor and the parish as a whole for collaborative leadership, and a focus on the individual gifts of each participant, rather than defaulting to pre-defined ideas of what “leadership” roles should be.

Autistic people are very well-suited to act as advisors and consultants to those in roles of parish and diocesan decision-making.  This is one way in which we can exercise a kind of leadership that is consistent with our autistic nature, valuing the gifts we bring rather than requiring us to conform to the system already in place (which, many times, excludes people like us).  A first step toward inclusion at the leadership level, then, is to invite autistic input at every level, starting with the roots – that our ideas and needs may permeate whichever entry point our comfort level may be, and be championed upward from there.

 

Fixed: Email subscribers glitch

A note to email subscribers: We are attempting to fix the glitch which has prevented our recent notifications for new blog posts from sending.  If you have not received our latest notifications, we direct your attention now to our two most recent posts:

April: A Puzzling Month 

Autistic Egypt

Additionally, we invite readers to see Fr. Mark Nolette’s guest blog post on the National Catholic Partnership on Disability webpage: Autism Appreciation: Lessons from Horton Hears A Who

Thank you!
Aimee O’Connell – Autism Consecrated

April: A Puzzling Month

Get out your symbols: April is here, and that means it’s Autism SOMETHING Month.  One pass over social media affirms that April is [choose one] Autism: Awareness-Acceptance-Celebration-Heavy Marketing-Conference Planning -Token Mentioning-Gross Misunderstanding-Online Arguing-No Two People Say or Feel The Same Way About It …. Month.

We see light bulbs, puzzle pieces, infinity symbols, rainbows, profiles shaded blue, profiles shaded red, profiles sparkling gold, the periodic table symbol Âû augmented with ctrl+shift+^… and a few more I’ve probably forgotten.

We hear autism called: a condition, a disorder, a disease, a way of being, a superpower, a neurotype, a diversity.

We see meme after meme telling us what autism is and what autistic people need… followed by explainers about what NOT to say, what NOT to do, and how NOT to help autistic people.  How many are written by autistics, and how many are written about autistics?

As an autistic person / person with autism / Aspie, and a parent of autistic kids (with whom I have checked and are okay with me saying that in a blog post), and a person with a degree in school psychology, I admit – maybe peculiarly – that I am overwhelmed by the fluctuations in rules and algorithms of reference, to the point where I’d rather be silent than risk saying the wrong thing.  Yet, I get why it’s like this.  I know how this storm originated, and I wait for the year the world declares recess on the shouting matches April brings.  Rightly, autistic people (like me) are tired of being told we need to adapt to the clinical consensus of what “typical” people ought to look like.  This model has dominated psychology for some time, but anyone recalling the history of the study of psychology will see that the discipline itself marches forward in phases which last as long as they fit the prevailing thought of the time.  Psychology as a discipline has some downright embarrassing moments in what we have promoted during different stages in the field.  Eventually, better-informed ideas appear in the literature, and what we held as dogma for many years gets jettisoned for what is, hopefully, better dogma in years to come.

The over-arching problem is that autism has never been well understood.  Even autistics have difficulty making sense of why we do what we do, but the one thing we know is that we are not defective.  But in terms of the clinical disciplines, autism remains a puzzle to non-autistics, warranting fretful study and treatment, and giving rise to terms suggesting we are disordered, diseased, trapped, suffering and in need of intervention.  Parents who hear doctors describe autism as something urgent and critical to treat assimilate this as a “disorder” without taking much time to question that angle.  Pair that with the daily task of trying to help a sensory-overloaded child not yet able to explain what’s happening, and parents are all the more susceptible to adopting battle-mindset to combat their imagined worst-case scenarios.  Good? Bad? Right? Wrong?  We can look back and see where that mindset has been detrimental to both children and parents, but we can’t fully accuse parents of ableism when this is how we have been taught to see autism.  Entire generations of people have been immersed in this way of thinking.  That is not going to disappear overnight, nor can all the rallying images of puzzle pieces be instantly obliterated, even as we realize that, for some, these symbols remind us how we have been treated like “puzzles” who don’t quite fit into the rest of humanity.

I risk being very unpopular for holding the belief that we do better to be clear, gentle and compassionate in our assumptions than to battle back with fury.  I know that runs the risk of enabling those who truly refuse to see autism as anything but an aberration, but I genuinely think more people than not are open to considering the advances we have made in knowing what autism is, and what it is not, over the past few decades.  What if most puzzle-piece wearing people never realized we might feel hurt by seeing that?  Those who double down and insist on keeping it prove themselves loyal to their slogans more than the people in front of them, which ends our hope right there; but some, I’m guessing, will express surprise and regret.  For some, the puzzle piece represents a commitment to understanding our point of view, which we well know can be a genuine “puzzle” to non-autistics.  To those, the puzzle piece was directed inward, not outward.  But, how are we to know which is which?  Maybe what we need is Autism Amnesty Month, to talk about and sort out all of this before the next batch of offending t-shirts starts printing again.

Lest I be said to be inauthentic, I truly do speak from both sides.  I completed graduate school in the late 1990s, when protocols and treatment plans still centered around Lovaas’ ABA technique and goals were still written such that autistic children would one day be indistinguishable from their typical, same-age peers.  I myself was raised to believe my number one job was to suppress, mask and conform, and when I did that well, I received multiple awards and copious praise.  I have now come to see that masking erodes my physical and emotional health, and have had to employ therapy techniques myself for recognizing and refraining from these habits while learning how to be autistic, unplugged and needy, in every aspect of my life.  It is as much work as it was learning to mask in the first place.  Many times, I slip and use the old terms I committed to memory back in my early career.  I notice myself using the wrong terminology especially when I feel too tired or anxious to pause and speak more accurately.  I am not an ableist.  I am an imperfect human being, in need of patience and forgiveness.  As such, I try extend that same amnesty to others in my path: Not everyone is an ableist.  Many are imperfectly trying to understand better, after years of being fed only incorrect information about autism.

We are in the concluding days of Lent, where the public ministry of Jesus is coming to a dramatic end.  His message has been missed by the elders and authorities, who rigidly adhere to what they know and have been taught, refusing to consider that there might be a way of seeing salvation that is completely different from their expectations and conditioning.  Rather than shouting them down, Jesus remains gentle, and silent, and asks God to forgive their rigidity and misconceptions… trusting that God’s justice flows not from violence, but from mercy.

I’m not suggesting autistics remain silent about what we know is true, and I’m not against correcting misconceptions and manners of reference which, knowingly or unknowingly, diminish our dignity and value as human beings.  I am, however, wishing this could be done in less confrontational and hostile ways.  I don’t mean harm against myself or my fellow autistics if I slip and say “disorder,” as it’s still called that in the diagnostic literature.  On a weary day, I might talk about the challenges of being anxious and sensory-overloaded more than the gifts of being perceptive, thinking outside the box and committed to my causes, which could give others the impression that autism is a condition to pity or cure.  Sadly, in acting to correct the seemingly ableist majority, autistics often employ the same techniques we are asking non-autistics to stop using with us… perhaps, ironically, because that was how we were conditioned by those driven to make us seem more normal.  Mea culpa.  But let’s not stop there.

Perhaps April will eventually become Neurodiversity Month, fostering the idea that we’re all part of the same humanity, and we all have a great deal to learn together, neurotypical and autistic alike.  Idealistic?  Yes.  But that’s how my autism speaks.

Autistic Egypt

The Lenten season of 2021 is just ahead, with all the usual encouragements of prayer, fasting and almsgiving – all of which are very good exercises, and necessary for our spiritual growth.  But for many of us (and not just autistics), too formulaic of an approach can separate Lent from its true roots, which stretch all the way back to the Exodus from Egypt.   Furthermore, many autistics find ourselves feeling lost and frustrated as we diligently apply these formulas and still find nothing but spiritual desert.  Perhaps a survey of the desert itself can provide perspective to help map out the right journey in the first place.

The Exodus took place when Moses led his enslaved Israelite brethren from Egypt to a place they could worship God.  The key here is that God desired communion with His people, free from coercion and distraction, to the point where He would escort them out of the land of their oppressors into an area of wilderness.  The gross oversimplification of this story finds many and varied reactions among those making the journey.  Some found it hardest to leave conveniences behind.  Others were challenged to believe this was really and truly the will of God.  Others questioned the trustworthiness of Moses.  And some were steadfast in their belief that such an unfathomable series of events could only be possible if God were leading them.  But the purpose of this journey was the same for everyone: Leave the spiritually empty rituals of slavery behind, no matter how familiar they are, and simply be with God, and let God speak to their hearts.

With that as our focus as seekers today, Lent is about leaving behind what is spiritually empty to simply be with God and let God speak to our hearts.

Easier said than done – especially for those of us who rely heavily on concrete, visual, and activity-based processing!

Let us then look, then, at the experiences of the Israelites in the Exodus story which we may recognize in our own lives today.

  • Repeating spiritually empty routines
  • Working primarily to satisfy others
  • Dismissing, or delaying, our own needs of body, mind and spirit
  • Accepting our status as “less-than”

Again, at the risk of oversimplifying, the Israelites lived in 13th century (BCE) Egypt as slaves, compelled by harsh drivers who judged their worth as laborers without regard to human dignity.  The Israelites had no choice but to wake up, day after day, and please those who had no concern for anything but the quality of their performance.  Their work had no dignity but to serve the Egyptians, whose spirituality was based more in appeasement and demand than anything resembling love.  The rituals to the false gods were devoid of meaning to the Israelites who were pressed into compliance with their overlords.  In order to survive, the Israelites adapted to their status as slaves and labored away in great emptiness.

The conditions of our lives are far from actual slavery, but it’s likely that most of us can name at least one or two ways we relate to the four points above.  So, then, if Lent is meant to echo the Exodus from Egypt, the path to being-with God is likewise an exit from the patterns that drain us of our spiritual connection to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (who knows and loves each of us individually, to the point of sending Jesus Christ to redeem each of us, individually).

Now, here’s the rub: Our very being autistic can, at times, set us up to operate under these conditions on a regular basis…

  • Repeating spiritually empty routines
  • Working primarily to satisfy others
  • Dismissing, or delaying, our own needs of body, mind and spirit
  • Accepting our status as “less-than”

This is not necessarily true all the time, but I venture there are moments each of us have experienced one or all of those in our schooling, our families, our professional lives and our spiritual formation as a consequence of being autistic.  For instance: Some of us truly strive to understand the meaning behind the teachings and precepts of the Church, but are not yet at a place where we grasp the truths of some of these practices and devotions as pathways to connecting with God.  It may take years for some of us to experience that meaning personally, and yet we continue to follow the rules because, we are told, “that’s what we do.”  Yes… that repetition may be the path to finally, one day, understanding.  But if it feels empty, it can just as easily lead to resentment and apathy.  If that is the case for anyone reading this, then Lent might be a time to ask questions, and persist in the quest to discover spiritual meaning, as in Matthew 7:7.

Autistics are familiar with support services to help us navigate the neurotypical world and the expectations of those around us.  The benefit is learning what others want us to do.  The downside to that is a pervasive sense of not being enough as we are on our own.  It’s hard being autistic and not carrying even a little bit of this sense wherever we go.  Yet, God does not create people to be “less.”  Do we truly believe this?  Perhaps our goal this Lent is to notice how we see ourselves, and where we might have adopted habits of working only to please others, or believing ourselves to be less-than those around us simply because we process differently.  It may not sound like a spiritual exercise, but the foundation of this is to better understand what is pleasing to God – and how that differs from what is pleasing by worldly standards.  Yes, we ought to strive to please God – but only if we understand what that means!  We might start with the first psalm, and realize “the law of the Lord” can be summarized by Matthew 22:35-40.  And that leads to the last point –

How often do we dismiss or delay our own needs of body, mind or spirit?  Isn’t this the whole idea of giving things up for Lent?  Isn’t that the very definition of “sacrifice”?  Well, yes.  But.  In Matthew 9:13, Jesus exhorts the Pharisees to learn what it means when God says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”  There is a time and a place for sacrifice, absolutely.  But it can be very difficult to give from a deficit, and when we have denied our own needs as a matter of course, our deficit is quite large.  It seems counter-intuitive to suggest a Lenten program of finding comfort, but the simple fact is this: “Love our neighbor as ourselves” means that we cannot truly show mercy to others unless we hold ourselves to that same standard.  If our thoughts toward ourselves were audible to those around us, would they be appalled by the way we demand, criticize, ridicule or dehumanize?  We may not even be aware of how often we do this, as these habits develop over time and are shaped by the implicit messages we receive our whole lives.  Autistics, on the whole, generally receive more critical messages than supportive ones, including those from people trying to help us.  Our sensitivity and anxiety can magnify those messages into harsh internal criticism which then filters through how we look at ourselves, how we treat ourselves and how we dismiss our basic needs.  Perhaps what we need most is to study mercy and learn how to apply it to ourselves before anything else.  (Autism Consecrated offers the Autistic Works of Mercy on our Prayer page if this would be a helpful place to start).

So, now, we’ve seen what this desert wilderness is, and we realize why it feels so foreign: It is a place where critical voices are neither heard nor heeded.  It is a place where we are valued just for showing up.  It may seem too simple.  It may be called “desert,” but for those of us living 365 days of going without and pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones, it is a leap of faith to believe we belong in a place this drenching to our souls.  Can this really be the Lenten journey we are asked to make – and are we willing to trust that God really and truly wishes this for us, even if it differs from how we have understood “sacrifice” in years past?

May each of us grow closer to God this Lenten season, in ways that surprise and delight us – and God.

 

 

A Prayer for the Autistic Souls

Tap here for AUDIO in English on our YouTube channel

All Souls Day, 2020

 

Heavenly Father,

 

We commend to Your loving care

all the autistic souls who have gone before us:

 

Those whom we knew well;

Those we knew only from a distance;

 

Those with whom we worked, as helpers and as colleagues;

Those who were our neighbors;

Those who were our classmates;

Those who stand out in our memories

as quirky, different, eccentric and odd;

Those who were accepted and welcomed;

Those who were marginalized,

bullied,

mocked,

and turned away;

 

Those who communicated easily with others;

Those who communicated without words;

Those whom others found difficult to reach;

Those who were overwhelmed by the sensory demands of their environment;

 

Those within our own families

who succeeded;

who struggled;

who knew that they were autistic;

who wondered why they were different;

who were accepted with love and patience;

who were difficult to connect with;

 

Those who died alone

in group homes;

in mental institutions;

in hospitals;

in nursing homes;

in isolation from others;

in homelessness;

 

Those who died without the benefit of being understood for

who they were;

why they were different;

what their actual diagnosis was;

what their actual capacity for love was;

what their interests were;

what their intellectual capacity was;

what gave them joy;

what brought them sadness;

all that made them who they are;

 

For all autistic souls who have gone before us:

 

May they rest in Eternal love, acceptance and peace,

and may their memory inspire us

to love more, understand better,

and cultivate patience

with ourselves, and with one another.

 

In the Holy Name of Jesus, we pray,

Amen.

 

 

 

Saint Thorlak: A Sermon by a Lutheran Minister from Denmark

Gratefully posted with permission of the author, Pastor René Yde – Denmark.

 

Dearly Beloved,

When we gather in church, we offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving for the praise and worship of God alone, but tonight we also have a kind of themed service because we celebrate the mass in memory of and in honor of an Icelandic saint, namely Saint Thorlak.

Why should we celebrate an Icelandic saint tonight? Because I have the vision for our community that over time we will celebrate all the Nordic saints, not only those from Denmark, but also from Sweden and Norway and therefore also from Iceland. We must get to know them and reflect on them as examples of lived Christian lives.

Saint Thorlak was born in 1133 in Iceland. He was made a deacon when he was fifteen, and ordained a priest when he was only eighteen. When he was twenty years old, he was sent to France and later to Lincoln in England, where he studied for six years. Here he showed astonishing abilities for theological study. He immersed himself in the Bible and in the writings of the Church Fathers with astonishing perseverance. Here he also got to know monastic life and became an Augustinian monk and since then he adhered to the rule with a stubborn tenacity. He returned to Iceland and lived the next six years as a parish priest. In 1168 he entered the first Augustinian monastery in Iceland and later became its abbot. When he was forty years old, he became bishop of the southern of Iceland’s two dioceses and he died on December 23, 1193, aged 60 years.

(For us Danes, who are not under the supremacy of the Roman pontiff, it is a piquant little detail that Saint Thorlak was not canonized by the bishop of Rome, but by the Icelandic Althing. It shows that a canonization may well be a local matter.)

How was Thorlak like as a person? Thorlak was a bookworm who could already read and write as a small child. He was shy and reluctant towards people. He was silent and withdrawn and could seem strange and dismissive if one tried to talk to him. In addition, he was a very complex personality with opposite and seemingly contradictory character traits.

On the one hand, Thorlak was incredibly rigid and regular of personality. To him, things were either right or wrong. He saw things exclusively in black and white. He was an unwavering Christian idealist and judged the world and men based on the ideals of the Christian religion and the revealed law of God in the Bible and in the teachings of the Church. This led to him becoming very unpopular among the priests and the Icelandic nobles.

On the other hand, Thorlak was of a very mild and gentle disposition. He was humble and loving and had a great deal of compassion for his fellow Christians, to whom he showed a great deal of responsibility because of his holly office. He had a big heart for the poor and the weak and for those who had transgressed against the law of God. It even happened that Thorlak, as the confessor, imposed a really hard and severe penance on the sinner in the confession, after which he, as bishop, freed him from the penance and took it upon himself. This made the laity take him to its heart and greatly appreciated him as a pastor and bishop.

Thorlak was in fact a shining example of the excellent pastoral and Christian principle that says: “Strict in theory and mild in practice.” We Christians must be ruthless in our judgment of thoughts and ideas and judge them strictly on the basis of the revealed truth in the Bible and in the tradition of the Church, but we must be compassionate and gracious and gentle towards people, for that is how our Lord Jesus wants us to be.

How can an individual have such a great degree of opposite character traits as Saint Thorlak? That can actually be well explained, because it is overwhelmingly likely that Saint Thorlak was autistic.

Autism is a particularly congenital condition in which one has difficulty functioning in social contexts and is not very good at discerning social conventions and norms between people. One often has a rigid and strict approach to life and one may have difficulty functioning in the ordinary social interactions.

If Saint Thorlak had autism, which is most likely, then he is a good role model for people who are born with this special challenge and can for them be an example that even an autist can be saved and attain holiness and live in God’s love and grace.

Even if you do not have autism, you can use Saint Thorlak as a role model. He was born into the world with a special and difficult challenge. He was autistic and he had his special problems and challenges to contend with, but he overcame them by the grace of God. He sought the peace in the name of Jesus despite his social disability and turned his shortcomings into a love of the truth and of our Lord Jesus. Thorlak sought and found the forgiveness and grace that flows to us from the Holy Cross of Christ. He humbled himself, fought his sins and hardships, and found the saving and sanctifying love of Christ in the preaching and means of grace of the Church.

There is a word that says, “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” Each of us has his special challenges and struggles. We are all born with special faults in nature that we are called to overcome by the grace of God. Each of us must fight against this or that sin or this or that particular challenge in our personality or this or that external circumstance. We are different also on the spiritual level, but the path is the same for everyone. We must all indulge in the grace from Calvary and be filled with the love of God through faith.

Saint Thorlak had autism, but he overcame this particular challenge of his and became a Christian shepherd for the Icelandic people, lovingly guiding them on their journey with God. You have your special challenges and I have mine. Let us together remember Saint Thorlak as a Christian man with a large and heavy cross to bear, but who bore it in love for the crucified and risen Savior. Let us take Saint Thorlak as a model for our Christian life and know that it is not our external or internal circumstances that determine whether we are saved, but only our will to belong to Christ and his church.

I will end my sermon by reading the antiphon that was sung in the medieval office on Saint Thorlak’s day:

“O shepherd of Iceland, you who are the father of truth, the pillar of permanence, the reflection of purity, you who soothe grief and is hope for the despairing, you led us to the meadows of our heavenly Fatherland.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

It’s About Time

Subscribers may have noticed it has been quite some time since we last posted any content.  There is no deliberate reason for this: no extenuating circumstances, no vacations, no staged pause before unveiling our next initiatives.  As much as this approach flaunts the rules of content writing, web marketing and brand building, these stretches of time between new posts reflect the fact that Autism Consecrated is a contemplative apostolate.  This post is for those who may be less familiar with the contemplative way of doing things, and a reassurance that Autism Consecrated is still very much present, alive and breathing.

Our world operates on time and action.  It is absolutely necessary to have structure, agendas and expectations – just ask any family who, six months later, is still adjusting to remote school learning and working from home!  Simultaneously, however, God seems to call a portion of us, at any given point in history, to be ones who step back and notice Him in wonderment and reflection.  Some of us are naturally endowed with artistic sense, thinking in poetry rather than prose, seeing abstractly more than directly.  Others are easily caught up in marvel over things that most people accept as fact, and move on.  In terms of neurodiversity, large numbers of these dawdlers and daydreamers eventually wind up being pegged on the autism spectrum.  In  the spiritual life, such folks are the ones we call contemplatives.

Much writing and scholarship has been devoted over the years to defining contemplative spirituality.  There are formulas based on centuries-old texts and teachings, but some assert  that contemplation is nothing more complicated than noticing the presence of God in every situation.  For me, it’s about time.  When I focus on the things bound by time, I’m fulfilling the active elements of my vocation.  When I focus on the eternal, I’m fulfilling the contemplative.

Many times, an idea will come to me, perhaps via the contact form on the website, or in something that I read, or experience during the work week, about which I think to myself: this would be relevant for Autism Consecrated.  Most of these thoughts are rooted in some timeless and universal aspect of the human condition… in other words, in matters that are eternal.  And, when we are dealing with things that are eternal, they exist outside the framework of time.  What is eternal today remains eternal tomorrow, and next week, and next year.  Eternity has no deadline, needs no marketing, and transcends brand building.

Being part of the temporal world, however, I also appreciate the public’s desire for fresh content, especially when it comes to offering resources (such as our Youth Ministry section, still actively under development).  These will indeed get there.  As a contemplative, both in spirituality and in neurotype, I trust that the fruit will only appear when it is ripe, and I thirstily drink in the pondering of God during each moment of that ripening process.  For every day I set to work, I might be surprised by encountering a new aspect of God’s goodness, or a fresh understanding of the redemptive nature of suffering, or be graced with hearing the story of someone previously unknown to me… and taste a bit of eternity in each.  While I do not believe myself superior to, nor hold any grudge toward, those Rudyard Kipling calls The Sons of Martha, I can find fewer things as reassuring, satisfying or edifying as seeking after the gaze of God, and I offer no shame or excuse in spending long stretches of time pursuing this eternal delight.

Yes, I promise, there are outlines in progress of content we intend to post on the Autism Consecrated resource areas. As Fr. Nolette and I have been discussing our ideas, we keep coming back to the fact that there are not many resources out there for contemplatives.  But… what would those resources look like?  Is there such a thing, for example, as a contemplative model of youth ministry, when most YM programs are group- and activity-based?  In terms of pastoral support for autism, how can we emphasize the vital importance of just-being, when most parish staff and inquirers to our website want things TO DO with autistics, not ways to just be with us?

Perhaps time will tell.

Our Stories: Connections to God Through One Another

RESOURCE LIBRARY UPDATE:

In the three months since Autism Consecrated put out the call for presentations, we have noticed something interesting.  In the same way most of what we do tends toward the personal, the human and the deeply subjective, so too has our pursuit of assembling a symposium on autism and spirituality.  Our in-person event, “Autism Through the Eyes of God” never made it past the first planning meeting, thanks to the worldwide pandemic.  Our next thought was to shift our focus to the online platform, sending out an open call for presentations which we intended to curate and post in a freely accessible resource library on our website.  The result?

Barely anything.

But in the meantime, we have engaged behind the scenes of the website in multiple conversations about autism, spirituality and disability theology which keep coming back to the same theme: OUR STORIES.

In the broad scheme of looking at autism’s belonging in the Body of Christ, there is no formula to disseminate, no paradigm to discuss, other than that of merely being human.  There is nothing more fundamental to building an inclusive spirituality than to be with each other and enter into one another’s stories.  The act of being-with invites us to draw closer through empathy and mutual vulnerability, and to experience God’s presence – first in one another, then in our midst, and then in the depths of our own heart.

Anything beyond this runs the risk of being formulaic, impersonal and not able to fit the actual needs of the person in front of us… or the needs we ourselves have.

We have known this since the inception of the Mission of Saint Thorlak and its expansion into Autism Consecrated.  We have often repeated our catch-phrase when asked what is needed in our churches to accommodate autistic people: “less programming, more relationship.”  Likewise, when I was offered the task of writing St. Thorlak’s biography, I opted to tell his story as a person rather than give another academic treatment of his achievements or attempt to parse out those aspects of historical record which suggest he had autism.  Historical fact is relevant, but in presenting St. Thorlak as a man to whom we can relate even eight hundred-plus years after his lifetime, it seemed most relevant to simply tell his story.  What good are facts without a personal reason for wanting to know them?  That same question applies to any and every person, autistic or not, who approaches our faith communities.  What good is gathering facts, diagnostic labels, symptoms, needs, accommodations – without a personal reason for wanting to know them?  Chances are, if we get to know the whole person first, some of those other facts quickly become superfluous, even if that flies in the face of what we have been told are “best practices to follow in helping autistic people.”

In truth, we hoped to gather essays and video presentations discussing these points.  It hasn’t happened.  We did, however, receive a number of submissions of personal stories, which is, frankly, exactly perfect.

For the academics among us (including myself, I confess), there are discussions and academic papers in the field of disability theology which are accessible in book format, formal presentations and websites online.  We are striving to continuously maintain and add titles of interest in our Further Reading section, to keep those conversations going.  Furthermore, we actively welcome reaching out to other like-minded groups and individuals for dialogue, discussion and input to our resources.  One such organization, the Kairos Forum, is headed by Cristina Gangemi, whose research ties directly in with the point we are making.

And so, once again, we extend to everyone here a call to contribute.

Wanted: OUR STORIES – How have we encountered God?  What helps, or hinders, us from encountering God in our daily lives, or our faith communities?  How would we describe our spiritual lives?

Format: However we best share ourselves.  Words, visual art, music, or any other channel of expression.

What to do: Send them to Autism Consecrated along with a signed Release Form (required for any submission to be posted).

We will begin posting stories soon where our Resource Library would have been.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Thorlak of Iceland: Apostle of Autistic Theology

by Aimée O’Connell

We are nine days away from celebrating the summer feast day of St. Thorlak, and the Catholic Church in Iceland is taking this time to observe the Novena of St. Thorlak at the conclusion of each weekday Mass at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Reykjavik between now and July 20.  The text of that Novena is available for daily prayer on our website.

Autism Consecrated references St. Thorlak throughout all that we do, starting with our tagline, “Living the Way of Saint Thorlak.”  An entire section of our website is dedicated to the ways his life inspires and directs our work and the manner in which we strive to live, autistically, in the Body of Christ.

Many have asked why we turn to Saint Thorlak before some of the other saints who appear autistic, or whose devotional specialty centers around matters of behavior and mental health.  Thankfully, there is no competition between and among the saints.  The holy women and men of God are all on the same team, and it is impossible to have too many benefactors praying for us.  What sets St. Thorlak apart for us is the way he lived in the time he did.  Thorlak was a child prodigy groomed by medieval Iceland’s political elite to be someone of power, both through his academic superiority and the offices he attained within the Catholic Church.  While he never denied his achievements, he considered them a reflection of his love of God and a reminder of his duty to share that love with everyone, equally, regardless of social status.  He steadfastly held to doing what was morally right, to the detriment of his political security.  His deep love of theology also lent itself to a more contemplative lifestyle, and thus he was further misunderstood by his fellow clergy who, like all Icelanders of that time, placed top priority on that which was practical and concrete.  It is not difficult to see why a life structured around prayer might seem foolish in twelfth-century Scandinavia, where physical survival depended on daily labor and economic survival on favorable political connections. Yet, Thorlak’s love of theology, coupled with a child-like air of wonder, made him the kind of priest whose mere presence drew people closer to God and the practice of their faith.  How?  He was physically weak and a poor speaker, easily ridiculed by political rivals who more closely resembled their Viking ancestors – but Thorlak was not ashamed of his marginality.  Rather, he consecrated it to God, offering that very weakness to Divine Love.  His accomplishments, and his sainthood, are the rich fruits of that contemplative life mocked by his contemporaries.

Iceland is especially blessed to have Thorlak as its patron saint, and the autistic community worldwide is likewise blessed to know his story and example.  Holy Saint Thorlak: Pray for us!

The Pastoral Needs of Autism: Healing Prayer

by Aimée O’Connell

 

To those expecting this post to contain words meant to step in and undo anyone’s autism diagnosis, we apologize: our subtitle this week begins with a gerund, not an adjective.  We aim to suggest ways our manner of prayer might itself be healed.

Why?  Ask any autistic.  There are few things more alienating than hearing from members of our faith community that we are broken or unacceptable as we are.  Yet many prayers for autism purport to fix what the community finds wrong in us… to cure us of the things that seem frightfully different… to imagine what we want for ourselves, without asking us if that is correct.

This is not to say that intercessory prayer is wrong.  On the contrary!  Praying for one another is a beautiful and life-giving aspect of community and belonging.  Likewise, it is unlikely to ever be without need of prayer, in one way or another.  Prayer, in its purest form, is both conveyance of gratitude for and acknowledgement of our interdependence as a faith community.  But more often than not, autistic people (and many others with disabling conditions) hear how little our community knows us in the prayers offered on our behalf.  Not only is it disheartening to be so overtly misunderstood, but it is starkly marginalizing.

In fairness: Yes, there is a time and a place to pray for reversal of illness, for recovery of wellness and for remission from the kind of suffering that impairs our quality of life.  Yes, it merciful to pray for those experiencing pain or distress.  Sometimes, the anxiety and sensory overload secondary to autistic wiring falls under that category, to be sure.  But then, our prayer ought to focus on our merciful wish to relieve distress, and not to condemn the person for being distressed in the first place.  To wit: “Heavenly Father, come to the assistance of this person in their hour of need” upholds the person’s dignity within the community, as does, “… heal this person of that which causes them pain.”  Contrast that with, “… remake this person in Your image to be whole once more” and “… heal this person of the autism which imprisons them,” and you have a declaration of unfitness in the community, condemning a neurological type which, by itself, is neither physical disease nor mental disorder.

The following questions are meant to help illuminate the spirit in which we might offer prayer, regardless of who we are or what our particular conditions might be.

 

  • Does our prayer focus on alleviating any discomfort or dissatisfaction WE FEEL, or is it focused on needs expressed by the person we are praying for?
  • Does our prayer PRESUME TO KNOW what the person wants us to pray for, or is our prayer based on actual, known, expressed needs of this person?
  • Does our prayer echo GENERALIZATIONS we have heard about a particular condition, or does it reflect how we know this person as a unique individual?
  • Is our prayer rooted in any FEAR or DREAD of the situation? Is this fear or dread ours, or the person’s?
  • Does our prayer surrender to asking God what is best for the person, or does it seek to define what WE think would be best?
  • Would the words of our prayer be viewed as uplifting in love and dignity, or listing our grievances and pity, when heard by the person we pray for?
  • Does our prayer portray the person as a Beloved Child of God, “fearfully and wonderfully made”? Or, does it presume fault or defect?
  • Does our prayer reflect our gratitude for the gifts this person brings to the community, or to the burdens we feel from this person’s struggles and needs?

 

May these thoughts guide us on our journeys toward healing the way we pray… for ourselves, for others, and for our community.