Looking ahead: Easter into April

It is with deep gratitude that we acknowledge the worldwide and encouraging response to our Daily Lenten Prayer Petitions for autism’s belonging in the Body of Christ. We truly thank everyone who has joined us in prayer, and we assure you that you have been instrumental in stirring up grace and new life where it has been greatly needed.

With the Easter season ushering in April, we have the opportunity to take these prayers a step further. If Lent showed us a way through the spiritual desert many of us experience from a lack of understanding and support for our autistic needs, then we have a ready reference in hand to offer our communities during the month dedicated in most places to autism awareness, acceptance and affirmation. As such, we have taken our Lenten prayers and written them so as to be suitable for praying any time, any day, any week, any season. As individuals, we can pray them in sequence, cycling through with renewed resolution each time we begin the set again. As parishes, we might use them specifically during April as a meaningful way to mark Autism Month in the Prayers of the Faithful. As Church, we may reflect on each petition as a way to assess how we are doing, and what we need to do, to support and champion neurodiversity in the Body of Christ. In whatever way the Spirit moves us, may we use these prayers to the glory of God.

Autism Consecrated’s Prayer Intentions are free to download, print, share and use as individuals and groups. May God bless and renew each one of us this April, and beyond!

Three Simple and Meaningful Ways for Parishes and Churches to Promote Autism Awareness in April (And Beyond)

(Note – the graphic is designed primarily for Catholic viewers and readers, but the text here has been adjusted to apply more universally to any Christian worship community. Feel free to share in your own circles!)

Three Simple and Meaningful Ways for Parishes and Churches to Promote Autism Awareness in April – And Beyond!

  1. Plan one homily or sermon acknowledging God’s wisdom in creating neurodiversity: noting the role of autistic people in the Body of Christ, dispelling myths many people still have about autism, and setting the tone for the parish as a place that recognizes and cherishes its neurodiverse members – seen and unseen, heard and unheard.

 

  1. Consider offering a sensory friendly worship service as part of the regular services one weekend… then, consider how that could become a recurring option throughout the year.

 

  1. Host a brainstorming session for autistic people in the church, asking what would make it easier to participate in church events, sacraments, leadership and ministry. Plan this so that input can be received in writing or pre-recorded as well as in person, to include input from non-speaking persons.

 

How can we re-form “awareness”?

Here we are at another April and countless hashtags promoting autism awareness, acceptance and affirmation.  The non-autistic world is most familiar with “awareness” as a positive way to remind the community of things often forgotten in the day-to-day, perhaps taken for granted or not particularly visible.  There is nothing inherently wrong with that, and, if we think about it, that concept does very much apply to autism.

Why, then, do most autistics prefer not to promote “autism awareness”?

Historically, public discussion of autism took place without autistic input.  For decades, autism has been looked at as a condition needing to be treated, rehabilitated, overcome and eliminated.  That mindset arose from lack of understanding of the neuropsychological reality of autism, when people considered this a mental illness that could one day be cracked and solved.  We know better now.  We know that autism is a complex interplay of hyperattuned sensory input, increased processing demands and reflexive high-alert states resulting in our brains and bodies doing exactly what humans are programmed to do under such circumstances.  Anyone who finds themselves in a state of vigilance knows what it means to pause, freeze and not speak, and to laser-lock our focus on details we feel are essential to our safety.  We know better than to take autism personally, and not to assume autistic people are being difficult because we feel entitled to preferential treatment or because we are snobby, shy or seeking attention.

Or… do we?

See, this is why we shouldn’t throw “awareness” out the window just yet.  Yes, absolutely, let us accept and affirm autism as well, but we really do need to reboot our cultural sense of awareness of what autism is, now that we know what it is not.

To be blunt: Autistics know when “autism awareness” is nothing but a token nod from non-autistics who have no intention of learning what autism really is.  In those cases, yes, we do need to move into acceptance and affirmation.  But, how will non-autistics know us and understand us without first becoming truly aware of us and all that neurodiversity is?

Perhaps one day this will evolve into “neurodiversity month.”  Or, even better, we can hope for communities who embrace us as we are so that we can happily be autistic – and they can be aware of how to support us – all twelve months of the year.

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.

The COVID-19 Zone -Or- How We Learn To Stop Worrying and Surrender to Love

by Father Mark P. Nolette

 

We are about to begin Holy Week.

April is Autism Awareness Month.

We are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All three realities converge for us now.  What do they have to do with one another? Nothing… and everything.   The pandemic, and our responses to it, have brought us to a crisis moment as the People of God.  There is hope on the horizon – an immense, brilliant hope, hidden in Christ but offered to us now.  Before we can perceive this hope, we must acknowledge our situation as it is. This will be very difficult for many.  It entails seeing things in a manner differently than the world as a whole sees things.  That is why we need to look to autistic people – people who habitually see things differently; people who are not fooled by ‘spin’ – as an example of what this means and how it can work.  It is the hour when people who appear to be of no use – such as autistic people and contemplatives – may have something valuable to share with everyone else.

Let us begin.

We Americans like to define ourselves by what we do.  We feel better about ourselves when we can tell others how busy we are.  We may complain about it, but we also pride ourselves in it. We define others by how well they can adapt to our culture of busyness.  We speak of those who cannot keep up as “dis-abled”. We do not respect those who choose to order their lives differently.  We plan and fill the hours of our days, our work time and play time.  When we must physically stop, we fill the space around us with movies, TV shows, games, and conversation.  Our culture of busyness also provides us with the illusion that we are in control of our lives.  We have calendars; we have meetings; we have detailed plans and agendas.  We have life by the throat – or so we like to think.

Enter COVID-19.

This virus and the methods we have chosen to slow its spread have upended our usual sense of busyness and control.  A sense of loss and absence is pervasive. Schools and colleges have either gone to online learning or are shut down completely.  Some people must work from home, while others have lost their jobs. Social distancing makes it more difficult to connect with friends and family.  Restaurants, movie theaters, museums, and even many parks are closed. Professional sports leagues have cancelled games. Clubs and other social groups have cancelled or postponed activities.  The way we shop for groceries has changed.  Most states currently have stay-at-home orders in effect for their people.  We now find that we have more time on our hands and fewer ways to spend that time.  We miss the easy familiarity of friends and relatives.  We fear the loss of control.  We feel as though we are now in a Twilight Zone episode where everything looks the same on the outside, but our lives have changed profoundly.  We do not know how long these changes will last, or how many of us may end up with coronavirus.  Where we once knew busyness and control, we now find absence and emptiness.

Absence is suddenly all we see, starting with our own removal from where we normally go.  We basically agree that it is a concession, a sacrifice, for a greater good; and then, we seek to fill the space.  To lessen the shock of change, we begin finding substitutions to approximate what is missing.  Restaurants closed?  Then, we can order takeout!  Housebound for the evening?  Movie marathon!  Meetings cancelled?  Video conferencing!  Birthday party?  Neighborhood greetings on parade, viewed from the safety of your window!  After a while, this improvisation becomes a badge for the war effort. We cheer each other on as we prove that we can overcome any loss with enough creativity and imagination.  Yet, we cannot help but detect the scent of cognitive dissonance in all this.  All these actions are substitutes, desperate attempts to convince ourselves that life goes on as usual – except that it isn’t.  And we know it.

We look to our Church for help and guidance. In official statements from diocese to diocese, we find instead a reflection of what we see everywhere else, written with such consistency from one diocese to the next that we wonder if there is a template that everyone is passing around.  First, we find absence – an absence that we are told, regrettably, is necessary as a response to COVID-19: no public Masses, few if any Sacraments publicly celebrated (or celebrated at all), devotions and other public gatherings cancelled; church buildings in many (but not all) dioceses locked 24/7. Yet, these same official statements assure us that all is well and in control.  The work of the Church continues, we are told.  We are encouraged to watch livestreamed Masses and make prayers of spiritual communion.  Yet again, if we are open, we will catch the scent of cognitive dissonance.  The work of the Church is not continuing as it should – and we all know it.

Something is missing here.  Something is not being spoken or acknowledged.  Until we can fully acknowledge where we are, we cannot know which way we should go from here to move forward.  What is missing?

If all we do is attempt to replace one form of busyness with another, we learn nothing. If all we do is try to maintain the illusion that we are in control, we see nothing.

An artist or an architect might tell us that what we are missing is negative space or, more precisely, what only negative space can reveal.  Negative space – those areas deliberately kept empty – is as essential as every visible color, line and element in any work of art.  The use of space in a painting helps us see the subject as the artist intends.  Pauses bring out the melody in a musical piece.  Silent moments are a necessary part of any good conversation.  Negative space reveals a depth of meaning that color or sound or shape alone cannot offer.  If the artist filled all negative space, the work would suffer and even become incomprehensible.  Negative space, then, is necessary in art and in life.

How does this concept of negative space enter our discussion of the COVID-19 crisis and how we as a Church can see it and respond to it?

In the Christian spiritual life, we have a term for negative space.  We call it contemplation. Contemplation is a long, loving look at the real. Because it is a loving look, it means that we see things through the eyes of God.  Because it is a long look, it means that, in order to have that loving, divine perspective, we must create negative space in our hearts and minds.  We let go of control and power so that we can look around us with open eyes and humble, loving hearts.  Contemplation, or Christian negative space, reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways, that we are all blinded by the world, and that we can only see once we see the truth in love, as God knows it to be.  This can only be given us by God as a grace.  We cannot control it or set its agenda.  We receive it, and then we offer it to all.

Here we must add a warning. Some people have the impression that contemplation should always yield peace of mind; that it is a method to calm fears and anxieties.  Not necessarily.  Christian contemplation sees what really is with the eyes of love.  In this case, we may fear what we might see.  We see absence.  Emptiness.  But it’s not a neutral emptiness.  We would not fear that so much.  In that empty space, we perceive pain.

What pain do we perceive?  There is the pain of the hundreds of thousands who have COVID-19 and the thousands who are dying of it.  There is the pain of hundreds of thousands of others who have other afflictions that we might be ignoring now.  There is the pain brought about by social distancing and the lack of human touch.  There is the fear of what this pandemic will mean for everyone.  There is the pain of separation from Mass, the Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist.

All these are our pains.  But can we speak of a pain in the very heart of God? Does God not in some mysterious way share our burdens? Does God not know the suffering of those who are ill with COVID-19, or any other illness? Does God not know the pain of social isolation, or anxiety, or uncertainty? When we no longer offer one another the Sacraments – those extremely precious gifts of God to us – have we not, in a sense, spurned God by rejecting His gifts? Does our lack of faith and courage also cause God pain, in that our fears become an obstacle to His love and mercy?

When we stand in the love of God, we have the courage to face all such pain.  Where do we go from here?  Where does hope enter in?

The Scriptures show us.  Faced with such overwhelming pain, people in the Scriptures lament.  We see it in the Psalms, first of all.  We see it in the prophets.  Jesus weeps and laments over Jerusalem for its inability to recognize what the Father was offering it through Him.  So must we lament.

What should we lament?  We lament the pandemic itself and the great suffering it has caused to so many around the world.  We lament the effects of the measures taken to try to curb the pandemic – the social separation, the loss of jobs, the weakening of a sense of community, the loss of access even to many of the Sacraments.  We lament our refusal to pause our busyness long enough to gaze upon the world with that long, loving look of contemplation.  We lament how we have treated those who God has sent to show the rest of us how to do this. Since we find lamentation in the Scriptures, we can be assured that the Lord also laments for all these things and more.

Just as many of the lamentation psalms ended in expressions of hope, so, too, hope can truly enter once we have seen with open eyes what is going on, allowed ourselves to feel the pain, and lamented it.  Then, and only then, do we know where we truly are.  Then, and only then, can the Lord reach us.  Recall that His power is best manifested in what the world calls weakness. Foolishness. Failure.  Nowhere is this better manifested for us than in the events we are about to commemorate during Holy Week.

Only when we have seen things as they are and lamented them fully can we be truly open to the Lord’s voice in our hearts.  Only then can we discover what the Lord has planned for us – a future full of hope and joy.  But this future will not come from our own efforts.  It will be a gift of God.  Living that gift will take plenty of effort, of course.  But the gift will make the effort possible.

Where do we go from here? Only the Lord can fully answer that question, if we are serious about trusting Him and loving Him with all our being.  Yet, we can say this as a beginning.

First of all, the COVID-19 crisis reminds us that we are not in control and that our plans cannot account for everything.  We need something else to add to the mix: we need contemplation.  We need that ongoing long, loving look at the real.  We need to value it in our lives and live it when we can.  We need to value those whom the Lord has called to devote their lives totally to this.  We can now see that contemplation is as valuable as action, for action loses its purpose without the negative space of contemplation.

Secondly, we find ourselves struggling to maintain contact with people we like and love.  We are challenged by the constraints of social distancing.  We feel the uncertainty of a crisis over which we feel little control.  All our normal routines are disrupted.  Can anyone help us with all this? Who knows how to live such lives? Might it not be the autistic people among us, who have always felt socially distant and challenged? Autistic people, who have always struggled to connect emotionally with people they love? Autistic people, who often feel overwhelmed by life and who try to maintain daily routines? Might this be the moment when autistic people can share their hard-earned wisdom and experience with the world?

Finally, we are about to celebrate Holy Week.  This is the week where Jesus made Himself negative space; where He emptied Himself completely, giving His life for us and giving us the Eucharist as the ultimate Sacrament of His presence among us.  This would be an excellent time to practice the art of negative space, the art of contemplation, of a long, loving look at the real.  Set aside times during Holy Week when you can tune out everything, both outside yourself and within, and say to the Lord, “Here I am!”  Be ready to share His love and His sorrow; His joy and His pain.  It is all a part of Love.  It is all a part of how Love will bring you, by love, to Love.