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!

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

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

"...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