Simon

You’ve gone through quite a lot in your early life, but you’ve only relatively recently become aware that you’re neurodivergent. What are the questions that you live with that would be good for us to be exploring in this series?

Craig

One of the most profound stories, or fables rather, I recalled since I discovered that I’m on the autism spectrum is the one of that little boy who insisted the emperor was wearing no clothes. We tend to tell a simplified version of it, because in Hans Christian Andersen’s original version the crowd repeatedly doubles down on their deception. And that’s what I see all around me in society. Everyone telling the same stories because that is what the crowd wants, then refusing to let go of them, doubling down, and then everything falling apart. When I was younger my autistic brain found it very hard to work out the subtler social cues, so I spent years learning the patterns even though I still don’t really understand them. But what I have always been able to see, far more clearly than is comfortable at times, is the degree to which there are none so blind as those who will not see because they are so invested in what they want to see being true.

A couple of years ago I suddenly realised that this was one of the reasons I was so attracted to Jesus. Please don’t misunderstand me, because I am not labelling Jesus as autistic – we should never label others, and the glorious fact is that every autistic person is different to every other autistic person. In fact, each of the bundle of traits that make up an autism diagnosis are found to some degree in every human on the planet. But, time and again, I see that Jesus knows what his religious tradition or social environment expects of him and refuses to play the conformity game. There something about my enlightened autistic mind that now refuses to be taken in by the group-think I’ve invested so much time trying to learn, only because I see Jesus deliberately doing the same thing. 

I now try not to berate myself for not knowing how to fit in effortlessly. It still hurts when I’m misunderstood, or when I just see something instinctively that others around me can’t see, but on those occasions when I know that my superpower is at work I may still drift to the edge of the crowd but I now refuse to follow it.

Is this not an example of what Paul talks about in his statement about God choosing the weak things of this world to shame the wise? Those who refuse to conform may feel pushed to the edge and ignored, but actually it is they who are most likely to become society’s innovators and prophets. People who no longer feel the need to fit in, or have given up trying, have often got something incredibly important to say precisely because they have been forced by circumstance to think more deeply. I find it so sad that the unique life and example of Jesus has had such a profound effect upon human culture and yet the religious institutions that claim his name seem to pay so little attention to helping individuals become more like him.

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There’s a really profound book I read many years ago. It’s called Why, O Lord?: the inner meaning of suffering by Carlo Carretto.

The book is autobiographical. Carretto is training for the Catholic priesthood and he believes he’s being called to serve a mountain tribe. So he goes through the whole seminary experience. And then as he climbs to meet this tribe for the very first time the air is getting really thin and the guide who’s taking him basically tells him he needs a boost of adrenaline or something just to keep climbing. Anyway, the guide injects him with something that turns out to be either the wrong thing, or is administered in a way that injures him. The result is permanent paralysis in his legs.

And so Carretto has to face the fact that he has spent the whole of his life thus far preparing for something he’s now going to be unable to do. And the big question he poses is a theological one: God told me to prepare for a ministry I now cannot fulfil. What was that all about? Why did he allow it to happen? It is towards the end of the book that he plays with the possibility that God might be trusted to use every circumstance, even our suffering, to help us find what is truly important and valuable in life.

These, for me, are the most profound questions. I may even be remembering Carretto wrongly, but I do believe profoundly that those thought to be weak can make contributions others can’t for the very reason that those who feel strong often need to be in control and can be locked in to stories about themselves that are not true. We can spend whole lifetimes avoiding the difficult but vital questions of meaning and value, and being forced to face them might be the opportunity few of us want but most of us need. Most people with a disability are forced to face the fact that we are weak in unique ways, but the way we process this reality is a different journey for everyone.

Of course, we don’t need to experience an affliction of some kind in order to cultivate a willingness to be open or vulnerable. We live in a world that prizes something called ‘normal’, and perhaps it is those of us who will never be able to tick all the boxes who realise first that ‘normal’ doesn’t actually exist. We therefore have no choice but to be ourselves.

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In the next series of posts Simon and Craig interview Simon’s daughter Rachel whose experience of growing up with a disability is very different to the one recalled by Craig. 

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