Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength.
I am reading a book given to me by one of our parishioners called
“Ten Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew.”
It was written by Ellen Notbohm.
It is a beautiful book, very insightful, and deeply personal.
She, herself, has two boys with autism and
she speaks in their voice, if you would,
to understand the context of their lives.
Deeply personal and absolutely beautiful.
I have two nieces that have been recently diagnosed with autism,
so it was a particularly apt time for me to read
and to understand the context of their lives.
There were many wonderful things out of the book
that I am still sort of pondering and reflecting on.
There are some great chapters in the book, for example:
“But please be patient with me. I am not trying to be difficult.”
But the the two chapters that highlighted for me was
“Love me with no if and but.”
That would speak to all of us.
We all want to be loved.
In that chapter, she speaks in the voice of the children
“This is who I am. Please love me.
Not for what I could do or what I should do,
but for who I am right now because this is who I am.”
Really deeply profound and beautiful.
The other chapter that got my attention was to parents
that you have a choice in how you react to me.
And that no choice is a choice.
When you have too many choices, you still have choice.
You have to choose.
Choose the best you can in that circumstance.
She uses a metaphor that I am sure you have heard before,
but I thought it was particularly profound and helpful.
She says parents are often told, and
I am sure you as who are parents out there hear this all the time,
that when you are parenting,
life is more like a marathon than a sprint.
Take the long view.
You have heard that, right?
But she takes that one step further and says,
it is not just a marathon.
It is a long distance relay race of 200 plus miles,
which you run with a group of others.
You are part of a team because you cannot do it alone.
You cannot do it alone.
The sense is that, when you do a relay race of 200 miles,
you will run 10 miles and then you hand off the baton
to somebody else who has to run another 10.
And then you get to come back and do another 10 later.
But you have a role to play sometimes this is not your moment
and you have to let somebody else run the race
as imperfectly as you do.
They have got this leg of the race.
And to understand that we do not have control of all the elements
that all we can do is run the race when we are given the baton.
The reason I bring all that up is
I think the context of the book is basically saying,
life is chaotic for a child with autism
because they have sensory overload and a processing overload,
and they have a communication challenge.
The context is we want them to be something that they cannot be,
not that they do not want to be, but they cannot be.
They are not.
So having them understand that.
The reason why I find this particularly powerful for Advent is because
we have this sort of cognitive dissonance going on in our life
because outside these walls,
we have everyone in the world getting ramped up for Christmas season.
The Christmas trees been in the shops since well before Thanksgiving,
even sometimes as early as Halloween.
They have been ramping up the secular engine of consumerism,
the acquisition and accumulation of more stuff.
We have just finished Thanksgiving
and a lot of us have put all the Thanksgiving stuff away
and up comes the Christmas trees and all the Christmas decorations
and now comes the Christmas cards.
And now we have to plan the Christmas parties
and the Christmas gifts and we have to decide where to go.
We have this and we have that and
we still have school and the kids are coming back
and you can feel the anxiety raising for all of us.
There are a few of us who have managed
to sort of whittle our way through that.
But most of us feel the anxiety building.
And this is only the first day of December, we have not got there yet.
You can understand, we are beginning to get
a sense of what it is like to be a person with autism.
There is a sensory overload.
There is just too much going on.
And so we could take a page out of this book
and be patient with one another,
be gentle with one another,
love with no buts and no ifs, to choose wisely.
It is the best we can, as imperfect as we know it is,
that we will not get it right the whole time.
And here is what is really hard.
The cognitive dissonance is not helpful.
When we read the gospel today,
talking about the end of the world, that does not help.
We have just got to the beginning of new liturgical year,
we are talking about the end of the world!
My gosh, Lord, can you give us a little bit of hope?
In the first reading, Jeremiah is trying to give hope
even though it feels like the end of the world for them.
They are all in exile there.
Some of them are imprisoned,
some of them are slaves,
some of them are completely disjointed.
And here comes Jeremiah saying,
“Oh, the God of justice is with us.”
Well, they may not have felt that way.
More than likely they did not.
So what are we to do?
I think every year we start this advent,
this four week preparation for the incarnation of Christ,
when Christ, as savior of the world, came once and will come again.
And we are in this in-between time
where we are called to wait, pause and
wait in anticipation of Christ coming again.
Now you see how in this cognitive dissonance we get,
we are called to wait and we get this craziness outside
and the chaos going, it is hard to do that.
But I am wondering if we can take a leap from Ellen Hotbaum
and turn to conventional wisdom on its head a little bit here.
We are saying we are going to wait for Christ,
but really it is God who is waiting for us.
And God has been waiting for us to show up for a long time.
It has not been just this week.
God is always waiting for us to just come and to be with him.
See when we make it a little simpler like that,
then it is maybe a little easier because it is not our work.
Our work is to simply be present to the Lord
and to allow God’s grace in, the God who is waiting for us,
the God who is pleading for us to show up is just waiting for us.
So what are we to do?
We are called in a more profound way
to not try to change all the circumstances outside.
We are not going to change the secular world,
we are not going to change the stores.
If they have goods to sell and they are going to start selling it.
They are going to be more aggressive than ever.
That we can not change.
But we can change our attitude.
See the difference between heaven and earth is not about altitude.
It is about attitude.
And the attitude that we are called to have is
I do not need to change all that.
But what I can do is I can be still, I can be watchful.
I can allow the Lord, the grace in my life
to be present to him who is waiting for me.
And so we are called to that moment of prayerfulness.
Now that does not just happen on its own.
We have that choice to make and
that is the choice we are called to do.
It is to take a little time each day, to slow down and pray.
Take a little time in the morning,
take a little time in the evening, the night,
and just be still and be hopeful and
be present to God who is already present
and be waiting for us for a long time.
Let’s not make it any more complicated than it needs to be.
Let’s not fight the forces of secularism or consumerism.
Let’s just own our own little journey,
our journey of peace,
our journey of hope,
our journey of love.
But first, we need to accept God’s grace,
who waits for us,
who is promising that he has always been waiting for us.
He is like the ultimate parent of any child with autism.
The best parent who simply is present to us,
waits for us to come to us and
loves us with no ifs, with no buts
and is patient to us today.
Let is be still and know that the Lord is here.
Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength.
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