Tranquilly Transcendent Thanksgiving

The Social Interaction Reflex

Someone with Asperger’s Syndrome (aspie) does not interact socially the way normal (neuro-typical) people do. One day I was in Borders reading a book written by a person who had the same condition, I felt a profound identification with his experiences. One sentence we both heard many times from other people was, “Anybody would know not to say that!” But I’m not just anybody, because I do have Asperger’s which affects how I behave and react in a social situation. I do not think like most people, nor do I interact socially like most people. I’ve come to realize that neuro-typical people have an automatic and subconscious social interaction behavior that I call the Social Interaction Reflex.

The Social Interaction Reflex establishes your place in any social group. Neuro-typical people establish and maintain their status in a social group by subtle interactions of body posture, facial expressions, and eye contact that occur subconsciously. This allow them to feel how they should behave, when to speak, and what subject are appropriate for the current social interaction. And they’re not anymore consciously aware of it than they are about speaking their native language. For example, if I ask people what the word ‘the’ means, they’ll say that it’s the definite article. That’s just a conscious label but it in no way points to the meaning or use of the word ‘the’ in conversations. It’s only at a subconscious level that a native speaker of English knows how to properly use the word ‘the’ in spoken discourse. In the same way, neuro-typical people are totally unaware of their Social Interaction Reflex that allows them to socially interact in a normal manner.

I realized early on that I was less than skillful in the area of social interaction, so I started reading self–help books to improve my performance in the social arena. For the most part this was only minimally helpful because I had no clue that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, nor did I know what it was, I just thought I was shy. And the self-help books were written with the assumption that the readers where neuro-typical like the authors, so the books really didn’t address the roots of my social problems. There was one that helped me more than others though, which is Personal Politics, the Psychology of Making It. by Ellen J. Langer and Carol S. Dweck. It is not the case that this book actually addressed the issue of having Asperger’s, but it did allow me to view myself with a more positive attitude.

And I did need a more positive attitude about myself since having Asperger’s attracts a lot of well-meaning criticism that does nothing to help. Social ineptitude leads to disapproval and rejection because neuro-typical people would not do something so socially inappropriate as I often did.  And there’s no way that they can relate what I just said or did, anymore than if I were speaking a foreign language. My family was not “mean”, but their continual “well-meaning” criticism only served to beat down my emotions. In college, I would find excuses to not go home during break to avoid it. I never felt supported or being loved for who I am. And even though I didn’t realize it until recently, social encounters cause me stress, whereas neuro-typical people are energized by the experience.

The percentage of children with Asperger’s has increased dramatically over the last few decades. When I was a child, I stood out like a red spot on a plain colored sheet. And my path through life was not financially nor emotionally easy. The public needs to become aware of how Asperger’s Syndrome affects the lives of those who have it, so that the coming generations do not have to suffer as I did in my path through life.

Spiritual, Mental, and Physical Energies

The flow and influence of spiritual, mental, and physical energies interact in the following ways. The spiritual is the most powerful and directly influences the mental and physical, The mental is the 2^nd most powerful and influences the physical. Then there are the feedback paths going back up. So thinking negative thoughts (mental) will influence the body towards dysfunction. Dysfunction in the body (physical) will flow back on both the mental and spiritual to support negative thinking and emotional (spiritual) dysfunction. And then the dysfunctions influence downward again. The influence of positive emotions, thoughts, and health will interact in the same manner.

Analyzing a Bible Verse

So what’s the kingdom of God? One of my favorite Bible verses is Romans 14:17. It says, “for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” It tells us what the kingdom of God is. It is righteousness and peace and joy. These are essentially experienced as feelings and emotions for human beings. Righteousness is the English translation of the Greek word, ‘dikaiosunè’. It is an inner state of awareness that influences how you interact with and influence the people and world around you. It is a feeling of doing God’s will in your life, having integrity, and treating other people fairly. Peace is the English translation of the Greek word, ‘eirènè’. It is a feeling that you have about how you relate to surroundings and other people, and how both relate to you. It is a state of tranquility, and harmony and concord between individuals. It includes the feelings of happiness, prosperity, security, and safety, since harmony and peace make your environment prosperous and safe. Joy is the English translation of the Greek word, ‘chara’. It is an inner state, a feeling of gladness. It is a condition of intense happiness. It comes from other people or occasions or events that you view as very positive. It contains a sense of gratitude and conducts the energy of love from God.

Romans 14:17:
for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,
ou gar estin hè basileia tou theou bròsis kai posis
not therefore is the kingdom of the God food and drink

but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
alla dikaiosunè kai eirènè kai chara en pneumatic hagiò
but righteousness and peace and joy in spirit holy

Matthew 6:10
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
elethetò hè basileia sou, genèthètò to thelèma sou, hòs en ouranò kai epi gès
come the kingdom your created the will your both in heaven and on earth

The Lord’s prayer states in part, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Relating this to Romans 14:17, you can easily figure out that God’s will is that we express the righteousness and peace and joy of his kingdom in heaven here on earth as well. Transcribing the original Greek into Latin letters, we have the following words that make up the verse, from Romans “ou gar estin hè basileia tou theou bròsis kai posis, alla dikaiosunè kai eirènè kai chara en pneumati hagiò.” Now let’s look at a sentence in the Lord’s Prayer. It says, “Thy kingdom come.”, “elethetò hè basileia sou.” Now the word ‘kingdom’, ‘basileia’ is the same word in both sentences. So, if we want God’s kingdom to be in our lives and our reality, we should be expressing and living God’s spiritual energies of righteousness, peace and joy.

But is this how most Christians conduct their lives? Do most Christians live like this? Judging from my personal experience of attending church weekly for several decades, I have to say, “no.” Notice that the verse in Romans also tells us what the kingdom of God is NOT, which is eating and drinking, yet there are so many Christians that I have met who act as if it is. They think that judgmentalism over the grace of compassion and love is the spiritual approach to life. They express beliefs that cannot be justified by the scriptures in the New Testament. One is tithing, which was actually a requirement on Jews to make sure that there was food stored up for the people in times of scarcity. I remember one Christian telling me, “do you want to be blessed on the gross or the net” of your income for tithing. To him it was justification for worshiping Mammon over allowing the spiritual energies of God’s kingdom (righteousness, peace, joy) to flow like a river of life out into the world. Another one that I find amusing is the attitude towards smoking. I remember that during a service at Love Joy in Lancaster, NY, the preacher went off on a big diatribe on the sinfulness of smoking, and then he began quoting Spurgeon. I spontaneously laughed because Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who was the most successful Christian minister in England during the 19th Century and know as the “Prince of Preachers”, regularly smoked tobacco while preaching. Sinfulness is actually not doing God’s will which, as the two Bible verses referenced above demonstrate, is expressing God’s love to others with righteousness, peace, and joy. Grace and legalism cannot be fruitfully yoked together.

I have heard preachers lament the fact that church attendance is shrinking in America. Ever wonder why that is? It’s because churches are for the most part social clubs where like-minded people gather to find security in the fact that they are so spiritual. It used to be that churches were the only social clubs of importance in small town America and the only game in town, but now they must compete with a variety of other social options. And with the legalism and judgmentalism that passes for so much of Christianity today, the churches will continue to lose membership.

If, however, Christians wake up and begin to express love instead of legalism, and compassion instead judgmentalism, then the rivers of life of righteousness, peace, and joy will flow out from them and attract new people like a good concert attracts music lovers.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

It is an observable fact that most adults forget how they thought and felt as children.  Are you familiar with this children’s prayer that some parents teach their kids to say before going to sleep?

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I know that it was taught to me, and I said it as a child.  Fortunately for me, I didn’t really think about the words then, so I wasn’t disturbed by the last two lines.  But is praying about death each night before sleep a good thing to instill in a child.?

 

When I was an exploited adjunct working at Rose State, the James Axley Creative Writing Awards put out a pamphlet with this poem.

Christ Watched Over Me, by Trixie Walther

In Nanny’s gray bungalow
I spent four years as a child
afraid of the marble head
nailed inside my bedroom door.
“Vigilant protection for your dreams,”
Momma said the day she hung it there.

I became an insomniac at six
knowing the blind eyes
never blinked, its agonized gaze
watched me into bed
each night, while the night light flared
a shadow along the wall
sculpting fingers out of thorns.

Now I lay me down to sleep
beneath the covers buried deep.

I dislike a lot of the poems out there that do not rhyme, but , like e.e. cummings, Trixie Walther builds an emotional stream of consciousness with her deft placement of words.  “In Nanny’s gray bungalow,” has the color word “gray” which mildly connotates dreariness, depression, a place of hopelessness.  She expands the hint of negativeness into the source emotion of fear by the third line,” afraid of the marble head,”  where she give the source of the dismal reality that she experienced.  The mother thinks that giving her child, “Vigilant protection for your dreams,” when she is really instill stress and fear into her child’s life.  I am assuming that this is an icon of Christ with the crown of thorns.  Yeah, it’s not really an image that I would have liked staring at me in my room.  But the mother’s religious beliefs suppressed a more common sense approach to a child’s peace of mind.

The second stanza expands on the child’s actual state of mind which is so compromised that she has trouble sleeping.  The nightlight does not help because it makes the thorns on Christ’s head become creepy fingers that sculpt fear in her mind.  Eerie eyes stare at her unceasingly so she finds the only escape available to her  “beneath the covers buried deep.”  And she uses the word “buried” in the last line to reflect the last two lines of the bedtime prayer.  Thus she ends with a brilliant play of words on a common (and scary) child’s prayer.