Domestic Prayer Missionaries of Saint Thorlak

Tomorrow (14 December) begins the Novena in Honor of Saint Thorlák, prayed during the nine days leading up to his feast day of 23 December.

This year, we would like to suggest praying this novena as a spiritual bouquet to the clergy serving in the Diocese of Reykjavik: offering our prayers for the intentions and wellbeing of its sixteen priests, one deacon and one seminarian.

This bouquet reflects the prayer on a regular basis throughout the year by the Domestic Prayer Missionaries of Saint Thorlák, a volunteer corps of missionaries-in-place whose work is to pray from where we are, in our current circumstances, in our present states of body and mind.  We are “domestic,” meaning, staying in place; we pray from wherever we are able to be, transforming “everywhere” into one, common household, one family of God: “Domestic” Missionaries of St. Thorlák do our work from within the “home” of God’s Household. This Domestic form of missionary work differs from that of missionaries who leave home to do their work elsewhere, publicly.

The Domestic Prayer Missionaries’ focus is prayer in any way we are capable, including all forms of communication: fully spoken, low speaking, variably spoken and non-speaking. Our prayer takes the form of however we best express our hearts and intentions to God, in the place best suited to our abilities: at home, in chapel, outdoors; standing, kneeling, sitting, walking; wherever we connect fully with God at any given moment. Many Domestic Missionaries spend their time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, but others may pray better in motion. Some “practice the presence of God” throughout the day, offering as we go, and some simply focus on the breath in prayer (e.g., breathe in “My Jesus,” breathe out “Mercy”) to create a “chapel of the heart” wherever we happen to be. Domestic Missionary prayer deliberately minimizes physical and social demands to keep our efforts focused on prayer. We draw special inspiration from the ways of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, whose Practice of the Presence of God is an excellent model for anyone, in any state of ability or disability, to offer prayers efficaciously and sincerely alongside those called to more conventional and active forms of missionary work.

To learn more about the Domestic Prayer Missionaries of Saint Thorlák, or to become a Prayer Missionary yourself, download our prayer manual or contact us at AutismConsecrated.Com.

 

Domestic Missionaries of Saint Thorlak – Prayer Booklet

 

 

Dr. Hahn: It’s not funny

by Aimee O’Connell

 

I have recently become aware of a book just published, Autism and Holy Orders, touted as a long-overdue resource for helping autistic men navigate the process of priestly formation, ordination and service in the Church.  I could not wait to start reading… until I hit the foreword by Scott Hahn.

Scott Hahn’s name always brings a smile to my face.  I have an entire shelf devoted to his books.  I have attended his conferences and speaking engagements.  I relish with guilty pleasure every single Dad joke he has made and refer many, many people to his writing, as I feel he has a gift in being able to explain Church doctrine in a way that is memorable, relevant and relatable to anyone.  I don’t know him personally, but it’s no exaggeration to say he is a part of my Catholic fabric.

The foreword made me gasp.

In an instant, this well respected, well recognized, NON AUTISTIC writer / speaker / scholar, to whom so many look for guidance and encouragement, dismissed the condition of being autistic as a fad, a marketing ploy, a source of confusion.  His flippant tone made me want to shrink, mask, camouflage, hide.  If he said this in one of his public talks, any autistic person in the crowd would wish to become instantly invisible.

He goes on to qualify his thoughts along the lines of some of his best and brightest students have had autism, and it pains him to see them suffer needlessly from a lack of understanding.  His departure from Dad jokes to full-on irony hit me like a hard smack in the face, and I’m still not laughing.

The rest of the book, I’m sad to say, followed suit.  You can read my review here.  On the one hand, it’s a consolation to know that a book like this has a very narrow target audience, so Dr. Hahn’s insensitivity won’t necessarily be felt by as many people as it might if he wrote this in a more mainstream book.  On the other hand, how many autistic people know what sort of attitude Dr. Hahn holds toward us, and perpetuates – knowingly or unknowingly – through his example?

Certainly, Dr. Hahn is entitled to believe and feel whatever he does.  It is not my place to police his comments.  However, it is within bounds to remind everyone who is not autistic that autism is no picnic.  We aren’t broken, yet people still look at us that way.  Alexithymia and sensory anxiety still make it very difficult for us to feel we are “enough” in the eyes of God, let alone the eyes of the Church.  Our intellect may know that God loves us as we are, but our bodies send signals of constant doubt which we have to consciously recognize and counteract if we want to maintain any kind of spiritual life.  It is a thousand times worse when our community sends us signals that feed this doubt (… such as when a renowned Catholic speaker belittles autism as a fad).  And, it’s amazing to see that even the people who consider autism a disability still speak about it as though they know everything about it, yet have zero knowledge of what it’s like from the inside, or any seeming desire to truly listen to those of us who talk openly about it it (… especially if they so quickly dismiss that as attention-seeking).

Dr. Hahn: It’s not funny.  I’m not laughing.  I pray that you may grow in compassion, offering Jesus’ prayer on your behalf: “Father, forgive him; he does not know what he is doing.”

 

 

From The Anchorite: An Open Letter To My Beloved Church

An Open Letter To My Beloved Church

By Fr. Mark Nolette

 

To all Catholics, and all people of good will: May grace and peace be yours from the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit!

I am an autistic Catholic priest.

My unusual identity gives a particular twist to how I am called to live out my priesthood. In the ancient world, one of the images used to describe the priest was pontifex, Latin for bridge-buulder. We still use this term when we refer to the Pope as the Supreme Pontiff. The role of the priest was seen as building a bridge between divinity and humanity. Since Jesus Christ, by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, reconciled us to the Father in the Spirit, He became known as the true High Priest, the ultimate bridge-builder between God and humanity.  All Catholic priests, from that time on, have been given a share in His work of bridge-building. Some exercise this in parish ministry. Others serve as hospital or prison chaplains. Still others dedicate themselves to specific groups of people who are in need of shepherds and bridge-builders.

I had been in parish ministry until the effects of my autism and my growing sense of a calling to devote myself to a more contemplative form of priesthood led me to retire from parish ministry. However, my calling to build bridges remains. The Lord has shown me that an important part of my vocation now is to be a bridge-builder between the Lord, the Church, and autistic people. I seek to do this through this blog.  I seek to do this through the Autism Consecrated website. I seek to do this through a life devoted to prayer as a contemplative hermit in the Lord’s presence. It is in this role as bridge-builder that I address you now.

Autism is considered to be a disabling condition. If you are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and meet certain criteria, you can qualify for Social Security Disability in the United States. As a nation and as a Church, we still struggle to make our churches and public spaces accessible to people with disabilities in general. Many of our churches may have wheelchair ramps. Some may have people who can interpret the words of the Mass in sign language for our deaf members. It’s the rare parish that offers more than this.

What about the needs of autistic Catholics? Most of the books written (so far) on autism and Church have been written by Protestants.  Those written by Catholics are chiefly focused on how to adapt a faith formation curriculum for autistic children.  People forget that those children grow up! A few parishes have set up “sensory-friendly” rooms (anti-cry rooms, so to speak), separate from the main worship area. These rooms feature (ideally) softer lighting, lower audio volume, and a TV screen for watching Mass.  Having spent time in one, I can say that such rooms cut both ways. On the one hand, they are a positive help. On the other, people who use these rooms are easily forgotten by the parish community, even its leaders, because they are unseen. A few dioceses are trying “sensory-friendly Masses”. These are Masses in parish churches, in their usual worship space, which feature lower audio volume, softer lighting, and other tweaks. These Masses are a step in the right direction.

The biggest challenge, however, isn’t about buildings or programs or even sensory input. It’s about attitude. Do you want us? Do you, my dear fellow Catholics, want us autistic Catholics as part of your faith communities? If the attitude is there, the rest will follow.

This is an extremely important question. One recent survey has shown that over 80% of autistic Christians (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox) do not attend services in their local churches. This is the highest percentage of non-attendance of any group with a disability that still leaves them capable of going to church. Slipping into my logical brain, I would assume that this statistic alone would make autistic Catholics (and other autistic people) a prime focus of the New Evangelization. I would assume that this would make autistic Catholics an ideal target for the New Apologetics that Bishop Robert Barron and his Word on Fire community speak about. The harvest is indeed rich. Where are the laborers?

When I could see that I could no longer do parish ministry, I proposed to officials in my diocese that I could be a consultant or liaison for ministry to autistic people in my diocese. No one showed interest in this. Diocesan officials say that the local parishes should do something about this. Local parishes say that they lack the resources for this.

That is not all. I regularly hear from autistic people who have tried to connect with their parishes and find that they are ignored, their needs minimized, and their behaviors (over which they may have little control) ridiculed or mocked – even by pastors and lay parish leaders. Many autistic Catholics end up feeling like they have to pastor themselves. Is this right? Is this what Christ had in mind for His Church?

It doesn’t help that autism is seen by many as a “mental illness”. Even in 2022, when people see the term “mental illness”, they are much more likely to think of serial killers and mass shootings than the story of a group of Down’s Syndrome adults who had a foot race in a Paralympics.  The ones who took the lead then slowed down so that all the runners could cross the finish line together and win together.

Let me be blunt. If we autistic people were all wealthy, parishes and dioceses would beat a path to our doors. If we were members of a favored group in our culture, some Church ministers would reach out to us, if only to score points with society as a whole. Far too often, Church leaders take their cues (even without realizing it) from the prevailing cultural standards and not from the Gospel. We matter only if the surrounding culture says that we matter.

The Gospel has a different narrative to propose to us. Christ offers us the parable of the man who had a hundred sheep. One of them runs off. In first-century Palestine, anyone wealthy enough to have a hundred sheep could easily replace the missing one. Yet the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine in search of this one sheep that had no worldly value.

Saint Paul gives us more guidance. The community he founded in Corinth was beginning to think highly of itself from a worldly point of view. They believed that they had “made it” in the world, and looked down on those (even of their own Christian community) who had no worldly status. Saint Paul reminded them, first of all, that most of them had little worldly status when they first embraced the faith. Moreover, they are now members of the Church, the Body of Christ, where all cultural values are inverted. Those who seem to be worthless in the culture’s eyes are all the more valued by Christ and should be all the more honored by all His disciples.  Every Catholic community, from then until now, shows its understanding of the Gospel by how they love those people who are deemed to be lowest in the society around them.

Autistic people, at first glance, may not seem attractive or promising candidates for a Catholic community. We have trouble reaching out and expressing our feelings, even feelings of love. We may seem cold and uncaring to those who do not know us. We can move in odd, repetitive ways, make sounds unexpectedly, or have meltdowns in public. We wear headphones to church to protect us from the audio volume (which may be too loud even for you) and we are accused of disrespect as you assume we’re listening to music.

If there is anything you can learn about us, let it be this. We are like you in many ways.  The things that bother you, bother us. Where we differ from you is not in kind, but in intensity. Imagine an equalizer. In some areas, our settings are like yours. In others, the settings are turned way up – or way down. Some of us are extremely sensitive to sounds, or colors, or certain smells or the feel of certain things. Some of us are very sensitive to inconsistencies and incongruities and cognitive dissonance. If you claim to believe one thing and live another, we see it immediately.  Given our lack of social skills, we might even say so.  This may not ingratiate us to you!

Nevertheless, we have souls and hearts.  We are human beings. Christ died for us as He did for you. Our salvation is as important as yours.  The fact that we are human, like you, should be more than enough for you to reach out to us and work with us to help us become part of our Catholic communities as best we can.

Now I’ll let you in on a little secret. We have a special gift that comes from being autistic. Think of the odd behaviors we may exhibit – the movements, the noises, the meltdowns, the anxieties. Some of these, at least, are in fact given to us for the community as a whole. How so, you ask?

Think of the old story of how miners would bring caged canaries with them into the mines. The canaries were more sensitive to poisonous gases than the miners, so the gases affected the canaries first. When the miners saw this, they knew they had to leave that mine, and quickly.  In the same way, if an autistic person reacts very strongly to the sound volume, or to poor sound quality, this is a problem that will affect everyone eventually. Rather than blame the autistic person, look at the problem this person perceives. If an autistic teenager can’t deal with youth ministry as most parishes do it, maybe the problem is with the way youth ministry is done. I read about a teacher who decided, as an experiment, to change the way she ran her classroom to accommodate her two autistic students.  When she did so, she found that everyone did better, not only the autistic students.

What the world deems foolish is often wisdom before God.

There is much more I can say; much more I can offer in regard to all this.  If you want to pursue this, you’ll find some other posts in my blog and a lot of the material in Autism Consecrated to be most helpful.  Please remember: Christ died for us autistic people, too!

May the Lord generously bless all of you, all that you do and all that you are!

Father Mark

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

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.

Life and Legacy

by Aimée O’Connell

When we hear “end-of-life planning,” we likely imagine meetings involving wills, property, funeral instructions and burial site selection.   It is not something we face with great enthusiasm.  For parents with children whose cognitive, emotional, behavioral and communicative skills are limited by autism and other conditions, end-of-life planning bears the additional question of how those children will be cared and provided for in their own adulthood.   It is a process which draws deeply on faith and hope that plans can be followed and provisions can be made to ensure that adult, disabled children can live the best and fullest lives possible.

And then… what will happen at the end of THEIR lives?

In many cases, planners take that question into account, and provisions are made to cover financial costs and instruct caregivers in general terms regarding the family’s faith background, place of worship and burial site.

One mom of an adult autistic daughter recently thought about this further, imagining what the end of her child’s lifetime might look like.  Who, in the family, will still be living?  Where will they be, geographically?  How many times will her caregivers have changed by then?  Will they be as familiar, as patient, as loving as those there now?

Who will be left, who truly knows her, at the end of her life?

The more this mom considered those questions, the more she realized that the core group of family, friends and caregivers who know her daughter now are the ones who appreciate her to the fullest extent.  These are the people who assist in carrying her daughter’s story – and, for the most part, they are a generation ahead, which means they will not likely be alive at the end of her daughter’s life.

With so great a focus on the pragmatic side of end-of-life planning, there is usually an assumption that, even if the deceased could not afford or arrange the particulars for themselves, they at least will have friends and family to memorialize them.

Here’s the point: What happens to people whose ability to be known is limited to being-with-them?  How do we memorialize lives lived beautifully by people unable to work, unable to speak, unable to plan and attend social gatherings for themselves, unable to make… unable to do those things which we typically rely on to describe a person’s legacy after they are gone?

Memorialization is a vital part of our human existence.  One need only look at monuments, national holidays and the persistence of obituary pages even as the rest of our newspapers scale back content in the digital age.  Death may silence our voices, but our stories live on.  Yet, when it comes to the severely impaired, our voices are not always heard even in our lifetimes.  How do we provide autistic and disabled people not just a funeral and burial, but an actual memorial, a lasting gift affirming that their lives were indeed of great and wonderful value?

This mom has started building a portfolio for her daughter, while friends and family are still healthy and within reach.  She is filling it with stories, memories, photographs, artwork and song, all by those who know her daughter and can describe her in beautiful detail.  When it is complete, this collection will leave no doubt in anyone’s mind who her daughter is and what she means to those who know her.  And, of course, this master scrapbook will be something she will have, and keep, throughout the remaining course of her lifetime.  Even if the end of her life finds her surrounded by people who only care for her or encounter her casually, her story will be a vivid window into who she is at her deepest core.

When we think about helping plan for an autistic person’s future, how very insightful to realize that their voice may not be remembered by the time their future fully unfolds.  Accommodations are not limited to those things we can do for a person now.  Assisting in telling a person’s legacy can be just as meaningful a gesture to their heart as helping them navigate their ordinary activities of daily living.

 

 

 

 

“Welcome” Seems To Be The Hardest Word

Autism Consecrated is kicking off our Pastoral Inclusion of Autism Series!

Whether you are reading this as an autistic person or someone who serves the community in some way, this next wave of posts on pastoral inclusion of autism will hopefully spark thoughts and ideas applicable to anyone.  While many of these points seem simple, their implications run quite deep.

 

Part One: “Welcome” Seems To Be The Hardest Word

by Aimée O’Connell

In my career, I have done a great deal of consulting: first as a school psychologist, then as a family support liaison for adults living with mental illness, and most recently with ministry volunteers looking to be more welcoming and inclusive toward those on the autism spectrum.  I find it exhilarating to demystify and humanize things like learning disabilities, mental illness and autism, which our culture tends to classify as conditions separating people from the ability to achieve what we collectively call “success” – that is to say, a sense of ease and accomplishment with our lives, our identities, and our relationships.   Our culture so greatly values individual achievement that there is an unspoken sense of “yes, but” when a person needs help to attain what the majority can do independently.  Thus, when someone identifies with one of these conditions upfront, we unconsciously equate that with needing help – whether we are the people disclosing their conditions or the ones standing by.

With autism awareness growing over the past decade, there is a proliferation of information available in print and online to describe autism to those not yet familiar with what this means.  There are descriptions coming from clinical sources which outline the situations most likely to be difficult for autistic people, and there are resources developed by autistics themselves describing which  accommodations are helpful.  Somewhere in the middle are articles and checklists which provide detailed ways to help autistic people feel comfortable and accepted.

I want to make a strange suggestion: I would like to propose skipping over all that information.

Do you want to help your community be more welcoming and accessible to autistics?  Start by asking yourself anthropologically what any community does to express “welcome.”  Some of it is overt, even including signage using that word, but much of it is completely unspoken, with the expectation that those who show up want to be here, are able to participate, and have something worthwhile to contribute.  Generally, “welcome” is a signal that says we are at ease with newcomers joining our group and that we feel confident that participants have the capacity to be here.  “Welcome” is a statement of approval and acceptance into the community.

At the risk of being absurd, I say that “welcome” does not take the time to study newcomers or approach them as puzzles to solve.  “Welcome” does not make clinical assessments at the door or convene task forces to study how to restructure activities, modify the environment or come to the aid of the less-able.

If we know all of this intuitively, then making our community welcoming and accessible to autistics is a matter of signaling that we are at ease with autistics joining our group, and that we feel confident they have the capacity to be here.

All that other stuff can happen further down the road, if it seems helpful or appropriate.  Want to better appreciate what it’s like to be autistic?  Ask us, or read about autism… but, do that after you invite us in and assure us that our being there is important.  Want to make autistic people more comfortable or better able to participate in the activities at hand?  Ask us, or read about ways to do so… but, do that after you invite us in and assure us that our being there is important.

“Solving the problem of autism” ahead of time may be efficient, but it necessarily tags us as a problem.  That does not feel very welcoming.

Of course, it is important to know what makes an autistic person comfortable and optimizes our ability to participate.  That comes after (and because of) the welcome.  A core list of considerations for autistic well-being includes sensory regulation, physical space, preferred communication style, social participation and personal interests.  As part of sensory regulation, it is important to consider lighting, acoustics, decibel level, textures, temperatures, ability to move around, ambient aromas and visual layout. Dietary preferences and supports are also an important consideration.

None of this is terribly cumbersome, and none of this is any one person’s responsibility.  In fact, it ought to be viewed in terms of partnership.  Autistic people want to participate optimally wherever we go, so as a matter of course, we are motivated toward configuring our considerations as best we can in any given situation.  While no community or situation can match every ideal, autistic people are excellent collaborators in anticipating which situations may be more difficult to navigate and which may be made easier.  Knowing that the community is equally interested in supporting our well-being reflects the welcome we received in the beginning.  It is a natural consequence of being genuinely accepted, as implied by “welcome” itself.

Unfortunately, “welcoming” people with differences can quickly morph into, or be supplanted by, anxiety to accommodate.  “Problem-solving” may sound empowering, but in truth, such focus poses a greater barrier to inclusion than any reluctance to understand or accommodate.  Problem-solving defers welcoming the person by looking instead at what the community might be asked to do differently if this person is allowed in.

“Welcome” is a subtle but powerful word.  In keeping with its purest meaning, the challenge then becomes redefining how we carry that out.