Friday, July 31, 2009

Deep thoughts, a mystery, and a horse montage

I'll be visiting family in the US for the next two weeks, so blogging will be light. In the meantime:



John C. Wright on the supernatural origins of the universe; also, his characteristically fun to read takedown of materialism



William Lane Craig argues that the tensed A-theory of time is more compatible with the nature of God than tenseless B-theory



And to overcome my tempation to make life and faith too academic, TheoCenTriC has some thoughts on Christian mystery



And on a lighter note, a hilarious literal interpretation of the Penny Lane music video

Friday, July 24, 2009

Asperger's in pop culture

I have a confession to make: I don't watch much TV. Not much of anything made later than 1999 anyway (the year MST3K, the finest television show ever made, aired its last episode). I'm a crusty curmudgeon like that. I've never seen an episode of Bones or House; I'm too busy watching Quantum Leap and tut-tutting about how they don't make shows like that anymore, no siree. So I when I read this article in Maclean's about the growing prevalance of characters with AS in television, movies and books, I was somewhat surprised. Before I go any further, I should mention that, though I haven't seen some of the shows mentioned in the article, I've heard about them, and I am familiar with other shows, movies, and books featuring characters with AS and I have a general feel for how it is portrayed in pop culture, so I'm going by that. Don't hesitate to call me out on anything that I get wrong.

Seeing as how Rainman was the only autistic character in mainstrem film and television for over a decade, I suppose I should be pleased by this sudden widespread awareness and acknowledgement of ASD (autism spectrum disorders). And in a way I am. But I'd be happier about it if the characters had more than one dimension.

Now I don't have a problem with stereotypes of AS as such. I invoke them all the time, and they do have some truth in them. The problem rather, is that every heavily stereotyped TV, film, and book character means one less opportunity to create a deeper, more realistic portrayal of people with AS; moreover, it gives a superficial and sometimes even false idea of what it is like to have it.

For example, the article describes the extreme giftedness of many of the aspie (and ambiguously aspie) characters:
Christopher Boone knows every prime number up to 7,057; another autistic hero from teen fiction, 16-year-old Simon Lynch of Ryne Douglas Pearson’s Simple Simon, has mathematical abilities great enough to crack a NSA security code. Bones Brennan is a brilliant forensic anthropologist, trained in four martial arts, and a bestselling novelist who speaks Japanese; Zack Addy has an IQ north of 163, a photographic memory and two doctorates. House is, roughly speaking, more intelligent than the rest of his medical team combined. On the ABC series Boston Legal, it is Jerry Espenson’s Asperger’s that provides the attention to detail that makes him a master of financial law. Lisbeth Salander, 24, had a horrific childhood, but emerged as a brilliant computer hacker.
There is a little truth in that. There are aspies out there with genius IQ's and multiple doctorates and the ability to figure out the square root of 145,161 faster than a calculator. But there are also a lot of aspies out there, probably the majority of us in fact, who are everything from above-average but not genius to below average. And even those who possess genius IQ's and rare gifts are not guaranteed of success. For every person with an ASD and a genius IQ who is a doctor or lawyer or a Silicone Valley millionaire, there is probably another one who's underemployed because he lacks social skills to the point where no one finds it quirky and charming anymore, or he has bizarre mannerisms, or his gifts simply aren't in demand.

It is only hinted at in the article, but something else I've noticed about popular depictions of AS is that the characters' personalities seem to consist almost entirely of whatever autistic traits the writers found interesting, without any consideration as to how autistic traits manifest themselves differently in different people and the interaction between autistic traits and other personality traits. Come to think of it, it seems like the characters don't even have personality traits that don't come straight from the diagnositic checklist. Just give the character a couple of compelling quirks, some blunt dialogue, a chronic distaste for the vast majority of people, a single-minded pursuit of some goal, and the emotional range of Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, then tack on about 50 IQ points, and you're done. As much as I enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, I came away from the book hoping that no one who read it would get the idea that it was an accurate representation of Asperger's. The story's hero, Christopher Boone, is so cold, so strangely detached from the people in his life, so oblivious to the emotional impact of the events in the book, it's almost disturbing. And, for most of us anyway, entirely inaccurate. It's as though Mark Haddon simply read somewhere that a classic trait of AS is lack of emotional reciprocity and never even bothered to find out whether that meant a lack of all but primal emotions in general (it doesn't) or difficulty in understanding and expressing the more complex emotions that we do, in fact, feel, including strong emotional attachment to people. And then there is Christopher's complete lack of humour, which anyone who has spent any time with actual aspies for more than ten minutes knows is completely at odds with reality. (For the record, my husband, who also has AS, is, in addition to being a caring guy, also one of the funniest people I've ever met).

The writer of the Maclean's goes on to describe another novel with an aspie protaganist, this one female:

In one of her [Elinor Lipman's-ed.] earlier novels, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (2003), when a female autistic doctor finally scores a boyfriend, she is hilariously clinical about their first kiss. “When he leaned in for the actual compression of lips, my arms went up and circled his neck, causing a lingering farewell and inducing a near-reluctance to part that was unanticipated.” One (female) reviewer wrote that, in the touchy-feely world of women’s lit, it was refreshing to have a heroine “as in touch with her emotions as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.”

"Actual compression of lips?" Seriously? I know she was going for humour here, but I have to wonder if people actually believe we think like that. Not all portrayals are that awful, of course, and some are pretty cool, but still, we're not all the blunt, ballsy geek grrls of the movies and books (though some of course are, and awesome ones at that). We're just as likely to resemble the gentle, feminine, quirky Luna Lovegood as we are Lisbeth Salander, the tenacious computer hacker with the dragon tattoo. We're just as likely to be into things like art and poetry as we are computer programs and molecular biology. Many aspie women are emotional, caring, and intuitive, and the ways in which those aspects of our femininity interact with our autistic traits are complex. Probably too complex, I'll admit, to portray accurately in a TV show or movie whose focus is on other things, but complex enough to make a compelling character study.

And finally there's that whole I-tell-it-like-it-is-and-I-don't-give-a-damn-what-you-think aura that some (though definitely not all) characters with AS have. It makes for good comedy, but it isn't how many of us really are. As we are growing up, we do tend to say uncomfortable truths and opinions and say them bluntly, but by the time we reach adulthood most of us have learned (sometimes the hard way) not to. Sometimes we even overcompensate by becoming quiet, shy, and eager to please people who'd love to tell it like it is once and awhile but don't. And not only do we eventually learn to pick up on what others think of us, but many of us care about it a great deal, sometimes going to great lengths to try to be liked. If we find ourselves alone, more often than not it isn't because we dislike people, but because they dislike us, or because being whispered about, laughed at, picked on, and treated condescendingly has taken too great a toll. Many people with Asperger's experience the same desire to be with people and be liked by people as anyone else would, and yet find interacting with them to be mentally draining and uncomfortable. It's a paradox that can cause intense pain, to the point where some aspies have taken their own lives. And yet not only is that aspect of AS rarely shown, but many of the characters are actually portrayed as being perfectly happy being alone.

I don't mind one bit if we keep the archetypal blunt, humourless, left-brained loner geniuses. In the right hands, they make for great TV, movies, and books. But I hope we stop calling them aspies, and instead start introducing characters who actually feel like real people-people who happen to have Asperger's Syndrome.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

imonk hits the nail right on the head

...as usual, with this thoughtful post on what many people are looking for in a church. An excerpt:


We long to be loved, to be quietly accepted, to be told to lie down in green pastures, to stop the race, to pray in silence. To be given a spirituality of dignity, not a spirituality that is a feature of this week’s sermon series on how to have more sex, make more money, have better kids, smile more, achieve great things and otherwise turn the salvation of Jesus into a means to an American end.



Be sure to read the whole thing.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Following Christ may result in oddness

Those of us with Asperger's tend to stand out without even really trying. We speak differently, move differently, act differently, dress differently; we avoid situations that most people gravitate towards and spend way more free time than most people pursuing interests like entomology, quantum physics, and obscure retro arcade machine games. We resist following rules and trends that don't make sense to us, like backstabbing our co-workers to get a promotion and wearing acid wash jeans.

As an rather eccentric oddball (and oddball eccentric), I have found that there is something deeply freeing about the Christian faith. At its very core is the most eccentric person to ever walk the earth, eccentric because He was the very centre of Goodness in a warped and lopsided world. Many of those who have followed closely in His footsteps have done the oddest and most radical things imaginable, like the well-to-do landowner who left his 300 acres of land to live a life of bare sustenance in the desert, or the Roman officer who washed the boots of servants, or the seventeen-year-old girl who led a small army into battle, or the young noblewoman who ran away from home, traded her beautiful clothes for a plain, rustic habit, cut off her hair and went barefoot. Jesus does not care whether or not we dress fashionably, have the right houses in the right neighbourhoods, and say all the right things; moreover, he is not concerned about whether or not our Christian walk looks just like everyone else's. He cares only of our love for Him and our neighbour, in whatever odd or quirky ways we might express it. And He not only frees us to be oddballs and eccentrics, but even more, he frees us from eccentricity that is merely reactionary, superficial, and empty, instead ordering it towards things deep and permanent, ordering towards the centre: Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Love, Justice.

Now His church, unfortunately, tends to forget this. Your average American/Canadian church sometimes feels more like a social club. Certain types of people fit in and certain types don't, and the crazy thing is, if the Saints themselves walked into one of those churches they would probably be among the misfits. There is something seriously wrong with this. When we've started judging each other by appearance and status and possessions, there's a good chance we're no longer seeing each other as brothers and sisters. When we're comformed to the world, it's doubtful we're conformed to Christ. And when we have banished eccentricity, perhaps we have lost the centre.

Somewhere, one of those crotchety old church ladies who warned us all of the dangers of guitars and modern art in church feels vindicated

The Crescat is having a contest for the ugliest church art. It's hard to pick just one, but the statue of Mary in number 15 looks like she's thinking about chopping you in half with her lightsaber.

It's still hard to beat the giant Jesus on I-75, though. Or this.

Update: I almost forgot to tip my hat to Fr. Longenecker of the wonderful blog Standing on My Head for this one, how rude of me.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Compassion means "to suffer with", not "to kill"

Euthanasia and assisted suicide have made headlines lately, with the Quebec College of Physicians' endorsement of the former and the death of a renown conductor by the latter. And with bill C-384, which would legalize assisted suicide, up for debate in Parliament this fall, the issue is not likely to go away. Forgive me if this post sounds strident, but I must admit to having little patience for anything that cheapens the value of human life.

And euthanasia and assisted suicide do just that. Whenever these things are debated, we hear a lot of words like dignity, choice and compassion, and even I will admit that they seem appropriate, on the surface. But look more closely, and it becomes strikingly apparent that not only do euthanisia and assisted suicide rarely involve any of these things, they negate them.

To decide that it is acceptable to hasten the death or assist in the suicide of someone is to declare that his or her life is no longer worth living. Only the person's death retains any dignity; his continued existence has been stripped of it. It starts with the terminally ill (a questionable phrase, since doctors can rarely tell how long a patient is going to live), who, we figure, are going to die soon anyway, probably painfully-never mind that palliative care is better than ever at treating pain. And it doesn't stay there. It extends steadily outward, to those in comas, those with severe physical and mental disabilities, those with chronic pain, those with less severe disabilities like Down Syndrome, even to the mentally ill and clinically depressed, until the lives of thousands of people, whose disabilities and illnessess any of us could develop at any time, are declared unworthy to be lived.

If it is about choice, it's a warped version of it. When choice becomes the ultimate expression of human worth and dignity, a lot of people end up losing those things. Since the severely disabled and the comatose can't make their own choices, the thinking goes, they are effectively non-persons, and not only that, but they interfere with the choices of healthy people by being a burden on them, so their worth actually becomes negative. This kind of thinking can lead to astonishing cruelty. In the U.K, a man with Down Syndrome who was in hospital after suffering a stroke starved to death because doctors neglected to insert a feeding tube. People with severe brain damage are routinely dehydrated; we only hear about it when a family member objects. In the Netherlands, infants with severe disabilities are sometimes killed. Even people who are considered by society to be able to make their own choices are vulnerable to having the choice essentially made for them. So often there is pressure in the form of fear of being a burden, neglect and abuse, sub-standard care, and untreated depression and anxiety. And then there is a society that reduces people to their utility, leading to the neglect of people whom it deems a drain on society. Last year in Oregon, where assisted suicide is covered by the state health care plan, a woman with lung cancer was denied chemotherapy, and a few years before that, a man was denied a double organ transplant. There is already talk of the need to ration health care, and it isn't exactly a secret as to who will be denied treatment.

There's no compassion in euthanasia and assisted suicide. Compassion means "to suffer with", and to suffer with someone they have to actually be alive. True compassion is hard. Euthanasia is easy. True compassion forms an intimate bond not only with the people we suffer with, but to everyone who has ever suffered, which is everyone who has ever lived. Euthanasia is lonely. Sometimes it is the absolutely autonomous soul, the one who refuses to lean on others, who dies from it. But more often than not who dies is the people those autonomous souls do not want leaning on them, those that they don't want to comfort, to provide for, to suffer with.

Monday, July 13, 2009

The state of the Christian blogosphere

Internet Monk recently posted an insightful critique of the Christian blogosphere. I especially appreciated this point:

One sees very little that is of a really radical nature in the discipleship or community exemplified in the Christian blogosphere. Despite a lot of adjectives suggesting radicalism, the Christian spirituality of the blogosphere appears to be quite conventional, especially in regard to issues of comfort, finances, lifestyle, children, community, mission, etc.


I'd like to delve more deeply into this issue in future posts, but in the meantime, be sure to read the whole thing as there is a lot to chew on there.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

A thoughtful take on Caritas in Veritate for evangelicals

...from the former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, Francis Beckwith, who recently returned to Catholicism; you can read it here.

I thought this was an especially important point given that we have squeezed so much substance out of Christianity to make it fit into those confining spaces known as "left" and "right":

The categories that dominate our public discourse in the United States—left, right, liberal, conservative, etc.—play no role in illuminating the Church's social doctrines or the message of Caritas in Veritate. This is why it is a fool's errand to attempt to artificially divide Catholic social teachings into its left and right wings, as if the Church's rejection of economic libertarianism and the proclamation of the principles of subsidiary and solidarity are inconsistent with support for male-female marriage and the sanctity of human life

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Maybe we'll start listening to him

Probably not, but one can hope. From Pope Benedict XVI's latest encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate":

"Striving to meet the deepest moral needs of the person also has important and beneficial repercussions at the level of economics. The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly - not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centered...

Much in fact depends on the underlying system of morality. On this subject the Church's social doctrine can make a specific contribution, since it is based on man's creation "in the image of God" (Gen 1:27), a datum which gives rise to the inviolable dignity of the human person and the transcendent value of natural moral norms. When business ethics prescinds from these two pillars, it inevitably risks losing its distinctive nature and it falls prey to forms of exploitation; more specifically, it risks becoming subservient to existing economic and financial systems rather than correcting their dysfunctional aspects."

Whether you're Protestant or Catholic, Pope Benedict XVI's encyclicals are always worth reading if you can spare the time.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Happy Canada Day!

Some weird Canadian restaurants and quirky Canadian roadside attractions like the cow lookout of St.-Georges-de-Windsor Quebec, Susie, the worlds largest softball, and Quilly Willy the Porcupine to enjoy with your beer, beaver tails and poutine.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Is religion to blame for oppressive governments? Part 3


Many of us, when we look at the history of the West, see a timeline something like the above.

But history tells us that, rather than supressing the development of modern societies, Christianity, combined with the best of Greek thought and pagan traditions, fostered it, slowly but steadily. Some historical highlights:
  • Slavery was as common in the Roman Empire as personal shrines to Vesta, and few thought twice about it; your average Roman probably rather enjoyed watching them get mauled by lions. But from early on, Christians made efforts to improve the lives of slaves and to put an end to the dehumanizing gladiatorial contests. By the 10th century A.D, when Europe began to regain some of its stability, slavery was made illegal by canon law (the law of the Church) and was reduced throughout much of Europe in the following centuries, including Eastern Europe, which had been one of the centres of the slave trade (the word "slave" comes from "Slav"). The European slave trade would, of course, return with a vengeance in the 17th century; the efforts of abolitionists, many of them deeply religious, helped bring about the end of the slavery in the British Empire in 1833, and the end of slavery in the U.S in 1865.

  • Christians defied emperors by simply being Christians, and Christianity always existed in a state of tension with Imperial authority. Even after the persecutions stopped, the tensions continued, and this proved to be healthy on more than one occasion. When the emperor Theodosius exercised what he thought was his imperial prerogative to order the massacre of thousands of people after an insurrection in Thessalonica, St. Ambrose took him to task by forcing him to do public penance. And the Church frequently pushed for the power it needed to be free from government influence. Bishops were eventually exempted from civic duties so as not to interfere with their spiritual tasks, an early separation of the secular and the spiritual.

  • St. Augustine further emphasized Christianity's non-political nature in his work City of God, arguing that Christians should focus on spirituality rather than earthly power (unfortunately, his words were not always heeded).

  • St. Thomas Aquinas argued that it is just for people to overthrow tyrants, and that government authority should be limited by moral law; governments cannot legitimately force people to act immorally. He also elaborated on the idea, inherent in Christian theology, that the ends don't justify the means; a government can't commit unjust and violent acts to bring about some good.

  • Warfare became more humane through the Middle Ages. Raping, pillaging, and plundering were no longer tolerated (though unfortunately for a long time this mainly applied to other Christian lands) and enemy non-combatants were not to be harmed. Violent people like the Vikings became less so after conversion.

  • The Renaissance and enlightenment thinkers who developed the ideas of rights, liberty, and limited government were standing on a foundation built by efforts of the Byzantines, who preserved many ancient texts, and of the monks who laboriously copied ancient texts by hand, and of the scholars and theologians who engaged with the ideas of the ancients, developing many of their own in the process. It was the medievals, too, who were responsible for the universities in which many later thinkers were educated.

  • The Reformers increased literacy. They pressed for the translation of the Bible into local languages, and encouraged people to learn to read it. The Puritans of New England set up the first public schools for this purpose, and generations of children were taught to read scripture by their parents. By mid-19th century, the U.S would be the most literate nation on earth.

  • The Protestant spirit encouraged the kind of democracy that developed in America, the world's first and most successful modern democracy, emphasizing individuality, freedom of conscience, and a sort of egalitarianism in that all people were, in spiritual matters, on equal footing. Some even went so far as to flatten church hierarchy. The Puritans and Baptists developed a democratic form of church government that even included separation of power between the clergy and the laity that they brought with them to America; they also brought their belief in signing a contract to make authority legitimate, and set up the first representative democracy in the country.

And finally, there is that belief, expressed so eloquently in the Declaration of Independence, that our rights and our dignity don't come from any human government, but from our Creator. They can't be taken away, and if the government tries to, it is our right and our duty to defy them; the government cannot even temporarily strip these things away to bring about some good, which, even in our free democratic societies, it so often tries to do. Only time will tell if the foundation that has been built for us, and thus our freedom, can be sustained, or if it will crumble, leaving us prey to the tyrannies that have been so much a part of human history.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Is religion to blame for oppressive government? Part 2

I know this is a blog, not an academic journal, and I'm not an academic (I don't get paid for overthinking everything, I just do it for free), but this is a really fascinating topic, and there is a lot to be said, so I hope y'all don't mind the whole three part series. Put your feet up, grab a bag of Cheezies (or Cheetos, for you Americans), and indulge me in my youthful idealistic windbaggery enjoy.


In some places and some times, the answer to this question is yes. It is evident to the whole world that is still reeling from shock from the brutal deaths of innocent people in Iran for simply raising their voices against a theocratic regime that has worked for so long to suppress them. And in the majority of societies throughout history, where rulers were either made into gods or endowed by their gods with divine authority, allowing them to do pretty much whatever they liked and woe to anyone who had the chuztpah to incite his, and occassionally her, displeasure. If their authority was challenged, it was done violently.


But for us to hold religion as a whole as being responsible for government oppression, rather than looking at particular cases, is to fail to take into account the role of humans. We don't need religion as a tool for oppression; there are plenty of other weapons to be used. Political ideology was used to justify the oppression and murder of millions of people in the last century alone. It is also to take for granted our own free, democratic societies and the rights they uphold by forgetting just how they came into being and how much work went into building them, for they are not our default state.


After all, for most of human history, people didn't think in terms of concepts like that of the individual and of rights and freedoms and equality under the law. A person was thought of as a member of a people, a tribe, and a clan, not an individual. He had a certain status in society and a set of obligations that went along with that status. The rules might be much less complicated and the hierarchies less rigid in some societies, but it was mainly due to the fact that those societies were themselves simple, like a band of 100 hunter-gatherers. Our modern ideas would have been foreign to all of these people.

To know this, then, is to know just how much Judaism, which taught that all people were fallen and thus none all powerful or all wise, stood out for its time. Hebrew rulers didn't shy from acknowledging their weaknesses, and the people held rulers accountable to God; the Old Testament is full of skepticism towards earthly power. Christianity was even more radical. Christ was expected to be a political messiah, but His ministry was anything but political, focusing instead on inner change. Moreover, He taught that God's love and favour were not restricted to one tribe or people, but extended to everyone. After His death, identity as a follower of Christ was more important than identity as a member of a group. The idea laid out in Genesis that humankind was made in the God's Image was further developed so that everyone, from emperor to slave, had eternal worth. Respect for authority was preached by Jesus Himself, but because Him rulers could destroy only the body and not the soul, and so His followers were given tremendous inner freedom.

Humans being the stubborn and flawed creatures we are, these ideas did not effect societal transformation overnight; it took centuries, and it would take a whole book to document how it happened, but in part 3 I'll go over some of the highlights.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Hamlet as a Facebook news feed

Utterly delightful.

h/t: Dawn Eden

Is religion to blame for oppressive governments?

If you're looking for in-depth coverage of the swine flu pandemic and other disease outbreaks that is both technical and accessible, you can do no better than Effect Measure, a blog on public health whose editors, interestingly enough, go by the name of Revere in honer of Paul Revere's service on the first local board of health in the U.S. When discussing issues like epidemiology and public health policy, they write with deep knowledge and clear passion; their concern for their fellow human beings seems to motivate them as much as their interest in science. And then there are their commentaries on religion.

Every Sunday, they post what they call a Freethinker Sunday Sermonette, which is for the most part very much in line with New Atheist thought and not really a big deal; usually I just skim it over and concentrate on the rest of the week's posts. But this last Sunday's sermonette caught my attention, because it is a good example of of an idea that, like so many ideas of our age, seems to make sense on the surface but contains deep contradictions: the idea that religion is to blame for oppressive governments.

Because there is so much that can be said in response to this, I have decided to do it in a two part series. In the meantime, I wouldn't really suggest checking out the video on religion included with the sermonette, both because it is not really amusing and because there is a pretty graphic drawing towards the end, but I do think it was funny that this line was spoken without a trace of irony: "The great thing about religion is, once you get it, you can feel the need to tell everyone you know who doesn't have it how miserable and useless they are and how much less useless and miserable they could be if only they were as smart as you and believed in stuff." It's a legitimate criticism of the attitude that we religious people sometimes have, but just change a few words around, and you've pretty much captured the essence of the New Atheist movement.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

God as Architect of the World


Much has been said of the unity between faith and science in the Middle Ages, but this illustration from an early 13th century moralized Bible, from an unknown artist, is a beautiful example of how Medieval Christians conceived that unity.









Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The "A" word

Autism is a provocative word. Its stories move us. Its controversies anger, frustrate, and confuse us. Its capacity to change our lives frightens us. And all the while, its mysteries intrigue us.

Asperger's Syndrome (AS) also tends to provoke different reactions, but, being one of autism's milder manifestations, the reactions tend to be less charged. Most people probably just get an image in their head of a computer nerd with bad manners and marginal hygeine who can give a detailed account of every single episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and speak fluent Klingon but who is clueless when it comes to romance (which, come to think of it, could make for a potentially funny rom-com in the right hands), or a ten-year-old kid with glasses and a briefcase reciting memorized train schedules, or Stephen Harper.

To those of us who have AS though, it incites everything from pride to agony. Controversies abound in the AS community over whether or not to pursue a cure and how much we should adapt to fit in. Since aspies have a way of being quite blunt, discussions can be very heated. Angry essays are constructed, complete with citations for an extra strong defense. Obscure and/or archaic insults are hurled at it like so many projectiles at a trebuchet demonstration at the Renaissance Faire.

I've decided to talk about my own experiences with AS from time to time on this blog, especially the sometimes challenging and often unexpectedly rewarding experience of being an aspie Christian. And, occasionally, I'll jump into the fray and discuss some of the wider issues surrounding AS and autism. It often generates a lot of heat, but hey, that's what the blogosphere is for. Though perhaps the readership of this humble blog will never extend beyond the occasional visitor who does what I do when I'm bored at work 2 a.m and clicks "next blog" for an hour. In any event, it should be fun.

From mourning into morning

A moving article on mourning by Mark Shea of Catholic and Enjoying it!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Spring!

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —
When weeds in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sunday, May 17, 2009

I'm above average, just like everyone else

When my generation was growing up, we were taught that we could be anything we wanted to be; our only limitations were those we created for ourselves. I think I took that to heart. I used to think the only things worth doing were those things that you could do very well. I dreaded being average, mediocre; I wanted to rise above the masses, to be a great person who did great things, someone who people admired and lavished with praise.

For awhile, I thought I was that person. And then my university days ended and I got married and started over in a new city. Any one of those things will tend to shatter any illusions you have about your own greatness, but put all three together and it's more like a massive implosion.

For one thing, when my husband and I joined our church, I realized to my dismay that I can't sing all that well (depending on the song, that's an understatement. "How Great Thou Art" is a beautiful hymn, which is why you don't want to hear me try to sing it). My voice has all the expressiveness, range, and loveliness of a bawling calf. More often than not, I'll find I can't reach the high notes and then I'll take it down an octave only to discover I can't hit the low notes either. So I'll try harmonizing instead, only to find I'm not hitting any notes, just giving off sort of an off-key monotone. It's not pretty.

Much more to my disappointment, I started to realize just how bumbling and awkward I am at building and maintaining relationships with others. Sometimes I say or do the wrong thing; sometimes I don't know what to say or do at all. Sometimes things will be going well and then suddenly I'll make a mistake and then correct it only to make another. I've made a fool out of myself more times than I care to remember. I'm not as good a friend or neighbour as I thought I was, or as good a wife as I thought I would be.

When I started taking the faith seriously, I thought it would help me to transform, to suddenly be able to do the right things, say the right things, to radiate peace and joy and love. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that while God granted me the grace to love and serve even with all my weaknessess, He did not take those weaknesses away. I wasn't sure which I found more objectionable: the idea that God rejoices even in our most awkward, fumbling attempts at loving Him and our neighbors and parents and spouses or forgiving or asking for forgiveness or creating music or art or any other thing, or the idea that He allows these efforts to be awkward and fumbling to begin with.

Loving God is hard and loving others is hard, and we are weak. And so for most of us, if not all of us, these things are messy. We screw things up. We fall down, get up, and fall down again. But even when we are tired of trying and failing, of making mistakes, of being hurt and humiliated, we are given the strength to keep on going. And when we do fall and get up, I don't think we end up further away from the place were in before, or even in the same place. We fall back and we go forward, and yet it seems like we are being drawn ever closer to heaven, like an upward spiral. Sometimes our falls rid of us our pride, sometimes they make us more aware of the pain of others and fill us with compassion, sometimes they help us to rely more on God instead of our ourselves. And sometimes they don't seem to make any sense at all, but even in those times we are given the comfort of knowing that Christ took on all the weaknessess of human flesh-temptation, humilation, pain, death-so that our weaknesses could ultimately be overcome.

I have very gradually come to terms with my weaknessess, and in doing so I have been given a great source of strength.

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." - 2 Corinthians 12:9

Saturday, May 16, 2009

"...it seems more than strange for a sociologist to be leading a prayer meeting with a bunch of prostitutes in diner in Honolulu at 3:30 a.m"

This is what it's all about.

Chesterton on St. Francis

"The great saint was sane; and with the very sound of the word sanity, as at a deeper chord struck upon a harp, we come back to something that was indeed deeper than everything about him that seemed an almost elvish eccentricity. He was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towards the centre and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most zigzag short cuts through the wood, but he was always going home. He was not only far too humble to be an heresiarch, but he was far too human to desire to be an extremist, in the sense of an exile at the ends of the earth."

-G.K Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi