Category: Culture

Beyond Aware

It’s World Autism Awareness Day.  I have two sons with forms of Autism.  At least one of their doctors along the way thinks I “could have been diagnosed”, if they were diagnosing Asperger’s Syndrome in the 1970’s.

I don’t feel like I really have anything to say, though.

Do you ever think about a segment of time and come to the conclusion that the segment of time seemed to have gone by very quickly, and yet in another way, very slowly?  I feel that way sometimes about the 7 years that have gone by in which my family has had autism as part of our identity.  I feel like I still know very little about autism, and yet I know a great deal more than I did then.  What I did not know was how large the field of experience and understanding related to autism is: what I thought was a field (to use the same word a different way, which is endlessly amusing to some with autism, and endlessly irritating to others) is a prairie, far bigger than I ever imagined, and more diverse.

I know a lot about my kids.  I understand Zach better than I used to, and am able to enter into life on his terms much more easily than when we started.  I’ve always understood Josh much better – he and I are very much alike (and perhaps are on the same end of the spectrum, if we are there at all), and his reactions are often self-evident to me.  However, this also means, increasingly as he gets older, that I am more frustrated with him when I see him doing less than he is capable of – especially if it is a way of failing that I, too, struggle with.  I know this is common for parents of neuro-typical kids, and this is something we share.

What do I know about Autism, though?  That’s less clear.  I know Autism is real.  I know Autism looks different in every person, but that after a while, you can recognize it pretty quickly.  I know that Autism tends to dominate whatever relational space it inhabits, and it takes a lot of work for that not to be the case.   I know that Autism requires the people who interact with it to be flexible.  I know that people with Autism can be as smart, as funny, as kind, as athletic, as loving, as fragile, as human as anyone else.

And I know that Autism is not going away.  So, while a day like World Autism Awareness Day is a quaint idea, if you live in America and aren’t aware of Autism by now, you’re probably every lawyer’s dream juror.  It’s time to go past being aware of Autism, and on to figuring out how to integrate the people and families with Autism who are part of your social networks.  They need it, and its likely that your life is going to be richer, if not neater and easier, for it.

Not Cool

At a recent late-night viewing of John Carter (which was not bad, if a little wordy and long in the middle), I experienced this bit of unconventional theater etiquette:

With only me and one couple sitting in the theater, another lone filmgoer entered and chose to sit one row behind me and one seat to my right.  In a room that probably seated 400, I thought this was unnecessary.  I ignored my seatmate for the first half of the movie, at which time I noticed that he had put his feet up on the seat back next to me.  Thinking to myself, “See, this is why you shouldn’t sit right by another person,” I looked over and observed that he had removed his shoes. Not being particularly friendly at that point, I simply looked most of the way back toward him and cleared my throat loudly.  At which point my friend shifted his weight and re-positioned his feet, on the next seat back over, away from me.

This, apparently, is what happens when you get comic-book graphic novel fanboys out of their mothers’ basements to see things on the big screen.

Living in the Desert

We’re in the latter stages of the season of Lent, which is a season inviting us to reflect on Jesus’ time of being tempted in the desert by Satan.  His temptation season parallels both the time Israel spent between Egypt and Canaan, and our lives lived between being set free from slavery to sin and entering into the fully realized Kingdom of God.

Jesus’ victory over temptation is the event of the three which informs the other two: we see how Israel was meant to live, in faithful dependence on God, and how we are set free to live because Jesus is Messiah.

I’m thinking about all of this tonight because we are listening to Jeremiah 31:31-34 tomorrow morning (actually, now, this morning) in worship – a passage in which the Lord gives Jeremiah a word of hope to Israel about how they will live in yet another desert phase – the dry phase after exile from the promised land because of their failure to be faithful.  The other side of that desert is the coming of the Messiah, but they were little able to see that at the point Jeremiah comes speaking to them.  As we, too, can often barely begin to imagine what it is like to live free from the brokenness that besets our world.

But one day, that freedom will come.  Even in Lent, we rejoice on Sundays.

The Wonder of Weather

For the last week, the Chicago area has had an unbelieveable streak of warm weather.  How unprecedented it truly is has been hitting me slowly over the last few days, as I have heard facts like:

  • 7 of 8 days in this stretch have set records for high temperature; if the 8th day had set the record, too, that would have been the longest stretch of consecutive days with a record high temperature in Chicago.
  • Today, Chicago was warmer than Havana, Cuba and Cabo san Lucas, Mexico and Cancun.
  • The low temperatures during the last week have been 10-15 degrees higher than the average high temperature for these dates.

As these bizarre days of warmth have piled up, I have realized that I can’t take the weather for granted.  I can’t fall back on any of the tired cliches about what March weather in Chicago is like.  Every one of those cliches is a statement of boredom at the variety of weather, and God’s provision within it.  Well, for me, I think that’s the case.  You might be different.  But a week of totally un-likely, unbelievable weather has caused me to actually pay attention to the mundane again.  Praise God.

In Praise of The Kid

Today is a special day for me.  The Chicago Cubs pitchers and catchers reported for Spring Training, which means it is now baseball season in my world.*  However, it’s also been a sad couple of days for many baseball fans: on Thursday, Gary Carter died, less than a year after his doctors discovered brain cancer.  I’ve been sad about this too.

*For most of you, baseball season will start when the actual season starts in April, or perhaps a few weeks before in late March, or perhaps sometime later in the year if you are not gripped by baseball.  To all of you, I say: you should try my way of doing things.  You see, not only does baseball season start now, but Spring has begun.  It’s a happy place.  Granted, our winter has been more like spring this year, but we’ll probably get one more big snow, and lots of you are going to be plunged back into the winter that never happened.  I’ll be enjoying Spring.  

Being sad about Carter’s passing surprised me a little.  He started his career playing for the Montreal Expos, a team that meant nothing to me*, and then he moved to the New York Mets, who were in the midst of a season of spiteful rivalry with my Cubs.

*Well, not nothing.  That’s what it meant to Bud Selig and Jeff Loria.  But not much, since I am a Cub fan, and didn’t spend much time thinking about the Expos.  I did always love their funky M logo. 

Gary Carter wasn’t the most unlikeable member of those Mets (that, of course, would be Doug Sisk) (Just kidding, Doug!), but disliking Mets was what we did.  As I’ve been thinking back to those years, my recollection is that the thing I disliked Gary Carter for most was his sincerity.  Almost anything you read about Gary Carter will talk about his joy at playing, and that was annoying (as an opposing fan).  But that was pretty much it – the man was happy to be a baseball player, he seemed completely sincere about it, and he was really good at it. I look back at that now, and I’m reminded one thing: I had some dumb ideas as a kid.  I suppose we all did (or do, for the many teens who just love to read what I write – hi, young adults!).  Dislike someone because of their sincerity and joy?  I’d rather now celebrate him for those same things.