The Margins

Here is a great review of Viral Hope, a book by Ecclesia Press that I contributed to and has just been released this month. Check it out!

This question was posed on a friend’s blog recently:

The other day, a friend of mine, who is also a mother of an autistic child, asked the question, “When should my son get baptized?” I’ve been thinking about this and other related questions a lot these days. Specifically, I am wondering, “What does spiritual growth and connection with God look like for a neuro-atypical person like Joshua?”

I so appreciate her honest pastoral, personal, and maternal response, and I am posting an excerpt here:

He [Joshua] understands tangible explanations like “First we are going to go potty then we will go for a ride in the car.” but there is no way that he is going to understand anything close to “Jesus died for your sins” or “You can trust God to give you peace in your heart”. Not even close.

So a verbal, conceptual link to God is out of the question for this kid. Unfortunately, this wipes out a lot of how I have come to know God and the spiritual life. Both of Joshua’s parents are English majors who have spent a heck of a lot of our lives teaching the Bible and conversing with people about our personal spiritual journeys. If talking and concepts are out, then how am I to understand how God is going to reach this child?

Does Josh have a spiritual journey too? Does he have choices that he will make to chose God? Is there a witness in his world that speaks to Josh of the love, grandeur, wonder, mystery and delightfulness of God? I’m pretty sure that the answer is “yes” but I’m at a loss to imagine how that works.

She concludes with this:

…I think that the question of Joshua and the spiritual journey is one that I, as a mother, will have to “ponder in my heart” for a long time. As the person who has the most up close seat to the drama of Joshua’s life, what will I come to see about how God reaches this amazing and precious person? I think that this is a parable that I will have for my whole life.

Thank you, Susan, for sharing yours and Joshua’s journey with us.

“The Sabbath, I said, is not only an idea. It is also something you keep. With other people.”
- Judith Shulevitz

This is an excellent post by Lavonne Neff, one of my new favorite reads. Like her, I commend Abraham Heschel’s book on the Sabbath to anyone, and hearing her rank this new offering as second to his in the must-read category certainly gets my attention.Unlike her, I have never been a part of a faith community that takes the Sabbath seriously. I have been with people who don’t even mention the idea apart from some Sunday School lessons given to children, as well as with people for whom the Sabbath has evolved to a verb, as in “I am sabbathing today”, with the emphasis on the “I”.

The understanding of the Sabbath as an individual pursuit in contrast with a communal celebration has bothered me. Shulevitz’s book appears to address this, and I am eagerly placing my Amazon order now.