On Faith, Autism, and Me.
Warning: This is not your typical Johnny Roe blog. If you tuned in to read about my fear of deer, my problems with clowns, or how I believe I will be the new Jude Law, than you will be sad. This is one of my few serious blog entries. If that is not for you, please come back next time when I will blog about my yeti-like chest hair or something like that.
Otherwise, if you stick around remember....I did warn you.
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I believe in God and hopefully he still believes in me. I am asking of him the exact thing I am asking everyone else in my life to do...
Just wait for me a little longer to figure things out.
The John Roedel Anthem by Alexi Murdoch.
__________________________________________________________________________
When I was younger I saw him everywhere I went. Some people find God in stained glass windows or in the quiet whispers of nature. I used to find my creator in other people. Spending time with other folks was how I spent time with God. They did not even need to share the same faith as I did to make me feel like I was being a witness to the divine. There was a time in my life where the shear differences in each of us served to me as proof of a grand designer. The fact that each of us were so unique showed to me that God created us all with extreme care to ensure our individuality.
I longed for community and connection to other people. Despite my severe introverted I knew that I had to force myself to be around other people because I was convinced that God lived in each of them. In my mind I believed that if I could not find my maker thriving in each person I met than I was wasting my time sitting in a pew only sending my prayers to an invisible veil. I felt that God would rather me look for me in his other people than solely focus my spiritual life on things that were unseen. That is not to say that I did not believe in those things that are beyond my physical eyesight. The issue is that I am perhaps not of deep enough faith or understanding to be able to find God in things that I cannot see with my own eyes. The abstract and me don't get along very well. I am a guy who needs to feel the wounds with my own hands in order to believe. That is not something that I am bragging about in any manner. I wish that it wasn't that way for me....but it is.
In order to find God in the world I needed to find him in other people. This was something that was a breeze for me able to do. In my early days having faith in God was really really easy.
I could watch people live The Gospel. I could see their generosity. I could see their empathy towards each other. I could see them be the hands of God here on Earth. That was all the proof I needed that The Lord was present in my life. The hope was that perhaps through the witness of other people I could someday make the way I lived my life become evidence to someone else in the divine. If I could find God in other people....surely someday...somehow...someone could find him in me. It was this idea that vaulted me headfirst into ministry and the vocation of serving other people in my younger days. I was going to be the face of God for others.
Was that youthful naivete? Had you asked me a year ago I would have answered with a resounding "yes". It seems that my faith has melted away quite a bit from the foundation I used to have. Over the last of my life I went from being a person who could find God in everyone I met to becoming a dude who now needed a microscope and a forensic evidence kit to find any evidence of him in other people. It seems like as I began to enter higher age brackets my heart has hardened. I can blame the news or the times when other people have let me down as an excuse to why this has happened. That would be easy to do...but it is really nobody's fault but my own.
I just don't see him as regularly as I used to in humanity. It is not because he is not there anymore, it is just because I fail to look for him there as much. The problem is I have a hard time trusting other people. I have seen too much to not be jaded. I have seen people use the name of God as a blunt weapon to get want they want. People (me included) have our own agenda's and often times we like to achieve those agenda's by acting as if we have come on the behalf of God. I have seen the failings of men and women and in myself so over the years that I can't trust as much in the idea that I can affirm my faith by looking for God in other folks.
My optimism in humankind morphed into a pessimism. Instead of looking for evidence of the divine in other people I concentrated on our shortcomings. I started to believe that we were prone to cruelty over compassion. That we favored selfishness over service. I believed that we were more likely to lash out in anger than we were to forgive. That we manipulate and abuse each other like it was a hobby. I started to believe in the worst of ourselves because I found those things in myself.
Having faith was no longer easy for me.
How could I find God in other people when I could not find him in me? And...if I could not see him in other people how in the heck was I going to see him at all? As I mentioned I have the spirituality of a headless grasshopper so I had a hard time finding his presence in my life through things that I could not see with my own eyes.
Obviously what happened next was I stopped seeing him. I could not longer relate to him in any way. I isolated myself from my God whom I used to have a solid relationship with. If I could not find him in the physical manifestation of other people or in myself I was probably not going to be able to find him at all.
I have a very hard time with the abstract....
So does, as it turns out, my autistic son Noah. SInce day one, the existence of an invisible God in our world has been one that has not made any sense to him. My other two children believe because they can simply trust in the idea that they were created by a divine being. They can take that leap of faith because in their hearts it kind of makes sense to believe in such a wild claim that they were formed by a creator. Noah is not so easily convinced. If he cannot see it, he has a very difficult time in understanding it.
For example when we take a big family trip to Disneyland my other two children go crazy the couple weeks before we leave. Noah does not join them in that. He is happy that we are going but he does not get hyper-excited until we start to board the plane. Boarding the plane makes the whole vacation a lot more real than me telling him that we are going. He needs to see the airliner to know that we are actually going somewhere...my word that we are going or the electronic tickets on the computer screen are not enough evidence. He needs to see to believe.
That is how the idea of God is to him. His mind does not operate in a way that allows him to give his heart to an unseen creator. He has to see God physically manifested in the world to allow himself to start to believe in his existence. Sound familiar?
To his credit my son has really tried very hard to open himself up to the concept of having faith. He goes to mass with his family and he says his prayers at night. However, through most of those experiences I can tell that he is just voting "present" to the moment. He is not really committed to it because he still has not bridged the gap between his head and his heart. This was something that really bothered me...until recently I noticed that I was doing the same damn thing as he was. Like Noah, I can't find locate God very easily these days either. It can be a struggle for both of us.
The advantage that Noah has over me is the fact that his heart has only the ability to be unconditionally loving. Love is not a choice for him. It is not an optional setting for his heart. If he knows you, he loves you. Even if you bully him at school he will love you the next day. His capacity to let people make mistakes and still love them is amazing. There is nobody he will not care for. Noah does not love other people because he is following some moral code or because he is afraid of breaking the laws of a church. He loves because that is the only thing he knows how to do.
If did not know any better he is the proof that I am so looking for in humanity in God's existence. Whether he knows it or not Noah is the hand of God in our world today. He is evidence of God being present in my life. Why did it take me having to be smashed in the face with a metaphysical baseball bat to realize that while I was looking to the outside world for God to reveal himself I was ignoring the lesson that was living right under my own roof.
God exists, I know he does. It is just that I have a hard time seeing him through the fog of this world. It is hard to find him through the wars, the self-inflicted poverty, through the warlords, through the violence, through the terrible acts done in the name of God, through the "better them than me" mentality, and through my own self-absorbtion. I am still waiting for the fog to lift. I have to get over the fact that faith is not meant to be easy. That perhaps while I sit in my Dark Night Of The Soul I need to remember that God is still there on the other side of this wall of fog waiting for me to figure it out.
Perhaps he is waiting for me to figure out how much Noah and I really need each other. Maybe...maybe just maybe Noah is here to remind me that at the end of the day we are all called to love each other without condition. And through that unconditional love I will see the real face of God in my life...thus affirming my paper-thin faith. And maybe...just maybe I am here to help Noah look in the mirror to see the gift of who he is and show him that his own reflection is the physical proof of God that his brain so desperately needs. It seems to me that his faith journey and mine are tied together. When I start to doubt in the goodness of people I don't have to look any further than him to be reminded how good we can be. When he starts to doubt in the existence of God he does not have to look any further than the reflection in the mirror and the love his family has for him to be all the proof he needs.
Hopefully this will be the gateway for both of us on our faith journey. We need to believe in both the seen and the unseen. We both need to have faith like a child. I pray that finding God present in our lives will become a much more simple venture than it has been.
God, grant both of us the ability to have the faith of a child. Help me find you in the world and in myself. Then maybe other people can find you in me again.
Otherwise, if you stick around remember....I did warn you.
__________________________________________________________________________
I believe in God and hopefully he still believes in me. I am asking of him the exact thing I am asking everyone else in my life to do...
Just wait for me a little longer to figure things out.
The John Roedel Anthem by Alexi Murdoch.
__________________________________________________________________________
When I was younger I saw him everywhere I went. Some people find God in stained glass windows or in the quiet whispers of nature. I used to find my creator in other people. Spending time with other folks was how I spent time with God. They did not even need to share the same faith as I did to make me feel like I was being a witness to the divine. There was a time in my life where the shear differences in each of us served to me as proof of a grand designer. The fact that each of us were so unique showed to me that God created us all with extreme care to ensure our individuality.
I longed for community and connection to other people. Despite my severe introverted I knew that I had to force myself to be around other people because I was convinced that God lived in each of them. In my mind I believed that if I could not find my maker thriving in each person I met than I was wasting my time sitting in a pew only sending my prayers to an invisible veil. I felt that God would rather me look for me in his other people than solely focus my spiritual life on things that were unseen. That is not to say that I did not believe in those things that are beyond my physical eyesight. The issue is that I am perhaps not of deep enough faith or understanding to be able to find God in things that I cannot see with my own eyes. The abstract and me don't get along very well. I am a guy who needs to feel the wounds with my own hands in order to believe. That is not something that I am bragging about in any manner. I wish that it wasn't that way for me....but it is.
In order to find God in the world I needed to find him in other people. This was something that was a breeze for me able to do. In my early days having faith in God was really really easy.
I could watch people live The Gospel. I could see their generosity. I could see their empathy towards each other. I could see them be the hands of God here on Earth. That was all the proof I needed that The Lord was present in my life. The hope was that perhaps through the witness of other people I could someday make the way I lived my life become evidence to someone else in the divine. If I could find God in other people....surely someday...somehow...someone could find him in me. It was this idea that vaulted me headfirst into ministry and the vocation of serving other people in my younger days. I was going to be the face of God for others.
Was that youthful naivete? Had you asked me a year ago I would have answered with a resounding "yes". It seems that my faith has melted away quite a bit from the foundation I used to have. Over the last of my life I went from being a person who could find God in everyone I met to becoming a dude who now needed a microscope and a forensic evidence kit to find any evidence of him in other people. It seems like as I began to enter higher age brackets my heart has hardened. I can blame the news or the times when other people have let me down as an excuse to why this has happened. That would be easy to do...but it is really nobody's fault but my own.
I just don't see him as regularly as I used to in humanity. It is not because he is not there anymore, it is just because I fail to look for him there as much. The problem is I have a hard time trusting other people. I have seen too much to not be jaded. I have seen people use the name of God as a blunt weapon to get want they want. People (me included) have our own agenda's and often times we like to achieve those agenda's by acting as if we have come on the behalf of God. I have seen the failings of men and women and in myself so over the years that I can't trust as much in the idea that I can affirm my faith by looking for God in other folks.
My optimism in humankind morphed into a pessimism. Instead of looking for evidence of the divine in other people I concentrated on our shortcomings. I started to believe that we were prone to cruelty over compassion. That we favored selfishness over service. I believed that we were more likely to lash out in anger than we were to forgive. That we manipulate and abuse each other like it was a hobby. I started to believe in the worst of ourselves because I found those things in myself.
Having faith was no longer easy for me.
How could I find God in other people when I could not find him in me? And...if I could not see him in other people how in the heck was I going to see him at all? As I mentioned I have the spirituality of a headless grasshopper so I had a hard time finding his presence in my life through things that I could not see with my own eyes.
Obviously what happened next was I stopped seeing him. I could not longer relate to him in any way. I isolated myself from my God whom I used to have a solid relationship with. If I could not find him in the physical manifestation of other people or in myself I was probably not going to be able to find him at all.
I have a very hard time with the abstract....
So does, as it turns out, my autistic son Noah. SInce day one, the existence of an invisible God in our world has been one that has not made any sense to him. My other two children believe because they can simply trust in the idea that they were created by a divine being. They can take that leap of faith because in their hearts it kind of makes sense to believe in such a wild claim that they were formed by a creator. Noah is not so easily convinced. If he cannot see it, he has a very difficult time in understanding it.
For example when we take a big family trip to Disneyland my other two children go crazy the couple weeks before we leave. Noah does not join them in that. He is happy that we are going but he does not get hyper-excited until we start to board the plane. Boarding the plane makes the whole vacation a lot more real than me telling him that we are going. He needs to see the airliner to know that we are actually going somewhere...my word that we are going or the electronic tickets on the computer screen are not enough evidence. He needs to see to believe.
That is how the idea of God is to him. His mind does not operate in a way that allows him to give his heart to an unseen creator. He has to see God physically manifested in the world to allow himself to start to believe in his existence. Sound familiar?
To his credit my son has really tried very hard to open himself up to the concept of having faith. He goes to mass with his family and he says his prayers at night. However, through most of those experiences I can tell that he is just voting "present" to the moment. He is not really committed to it because he still has not bridged the gap between his head and his heart. This was something that really bothered me...until recently I noticed that I was doing the same damn thing as he was. Like Noah, I can't find locate God very easily these days either. It can be a struggle for both of us.
The advantage that Noah has over me is the fact that his heart has only the ability to be unconditionally loving. Love is not a choice for him. It is not an optional setting for his heart. If he knows you, he loves you. Even if you bully him at school he will love you the next day. His capacity to let people make mistakes and still love them is amazing. There is nobody he will not care for. Noah does not love other people because he is following some moral code or because he is afraid of breaking the laws of a church. He loves because that is the only thing he knows how to do.
If did not know any better he is the proof that I am so looking for in humanity in God's existence. Whether he knows it or not Noah is the hand of God in our world today. He is evidence of God being present in my life. Why did it take me having to be smashed in the face with a metaphysical baseball bat to realize that while I was looking to the outside world for God to reveal himself I was ignoring the lesson that was living right under my own roof.
God exists, I know he does. It is just that I have a hard time seeing him through the fog of this world. It is hard to find him through the wars, the self-inflicted poverty, through the warlords, through the violence, through the terrible acts done in the name of God, through the "better them than me" mentality, and through my own self-absorbtion. I am still waiting for the fog to lift. I have to get over the fact that faith is not meant to be easy. That perhaps while I sit in my Dark Night Of The Soul I need to remember that God is still there on the other side of this wall of fog waiting for me to figure it out.
Perhaps he is waiting for me to figure out how much Noah and I really need each other. Maybe...maybe just maybe Noah is here to remind me that at the end of the day we are all called to love each other without condition. And through that unconditional love I will see the real face of God in my life...thus affirming my paper-thin faith. And maybe...just maybe I am here to help Noah look in the mirror to see the gift of who he is and show him that his own reflection is the physical proof of God that his brain so desperately needs. It seems to me that his faith journey and mine are tied together. When I start to doubt in the goodness of people I don't have to look any further than him to be reminded how good we can be. When he starts to doubt in the existence of God he does not have to look any further than the reflection in the mirror and the love his family has for him to be all the proof he needs.
Hopefully this will be the gateway for both of us on our faith journey. We need to believe in both the seen and the unseen. We both need to have faith like a child. I pray that finding God present in our lives will become a much more simple venture than it has been.
God, grant both of us the ability to have the faith of a child. Help me find you in the world and in myself. Then maybe other people can find you in me again.
Dude. There is nothing you write that I do not love. This was the right thing for me to read today, but, I still like your funny blogs better.
Keep writing!!
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Maybe my favorite blog entry of yours ever. That is saying something because I never comment. You are a very honest writer and that is what keeps me reading after all these years. I never ever know what I am going to get from you when your blog shows up in my inbox.
Bless you
M-Freds
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