Healing

    In Mark 22-26, Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida.  Oliver Sacks suggested the particular significance of this event to me in his book, An Anthropologist on Mars.  There, he refers to this passage in his discussion of those blind from birth, or nearly so, whose sight is restored later in life.  Sacks notes that how few there have been in modern times, but also how few of those have adjusted to life in a world perceived through all five senses.

     Sacks further notes that although they have received vision physiologically, these rare individuals have cognitive and psychological issues for which there seems little assistance. Many in fact return to the world perceive through only four senses.  That is, they return to a reliance on all but sight, even purposely blocking the visual stimuli to function again entirely as they did.

     These observations served to reinforce my own insights on that biblical passage.  Like Sacks’ subjects, with their restored sight, I have not acquired the ability to read distances or measure depth of field.  However, my perception does not overwhelm me of the familiar, stretching to the horizon vistas of the world around me.  They have suddenly fallen into a world of sight without having  learned, acquired, or developed the methods and measures by which most people "grasp" - delineate, define - "handle" - the world of depth, distance, color, etc. around them.

     Like Mark's "visually-impaired" individual, they do not so easily distinguish trees from people, or have problems of discrimination and discernment of that sort.  However, while Jesus then follows through with a second stage in the treatment. This just as miraculously "fixes" that problem, modern medical science and therapy can apparently do nothing for the more recent recipients of the "cure."

     This I relate very readily to my own situation, as I had already with the miracle story alone.  As a person with an autism spectrum disorder, I can relate to the situation of a person whose perception of the world - of reality, differs, however seemingly more subtly and relatively less obviously than these individuals with visual impairments - or even others on the spectrum.

     There was a time when I might have tried to relate my situation with those in the scriptures who are demon-possessed.  One could, I suppose, argue that the descriptions of these match in some way those of individuals in more modern times who are "afflicted" with any number of recognized "ailments."  I myself am less inclined to think in those terms now, especially regarding my own situation.  I am past the point where I related my "condition" in terms of there being within my body and my brain one something called "me" and another - the "other." It is all the same to me now, this being for me a sign of a greater, not lesser, understanding, appreciation, and especially, acceptance, of my situation.

     There is not just talk - discussion -but also a concerted push - urgent lobbying, organizing, demonstrating, and petitioning, to find a "cure" for autism and related disorders.  There is a just as emphatic, assertive movement among people on the spectrum to be essentially left alone.

While I do not necessarily go as far as to advocate the radical "separateness" of the latter's position, I fear as much as they the implications of the former's stance.  I do not consider it an entirely irrational action to remember and to remind people of this: That before they turned on all the hated "others," the Nazi purification-extermination programs turned first to the inferior specimens - the defective members - of the master race.

     Notable here is that one response to human genome research is a call to use the thus-acquired knowledge to find that "holy grail," the legendary cure. Given concerns that health and life insurance organizations may reject people because of genetic dispositions, none of this strikes me as representing an inappropriate concern.  Eugenics is not dead, and the Brave New World can come under any name as much as 1984 can be any year one chose.

     I intend this apparent extremism as a sort of rhetorical hyperbole, pointing the way toward seeing -perceiving - what is potentially wrongheaded in the search for the cure.  Autism is not like that invasive conqueror, AIDS, nor is it like that rebellious insurgent, cancer. Autism is much more intertwined in - part and parcel with the individual human being that "has" it.

     Thus, I hope not so much for a cure, as for healing, perhaps as part of, or besides, the cure itself, if cure there is.  Thus, also, I find meaning and hope in the story of the blind man healed by Jesus whose story Mark relates.  I have no doubt that Jesus healed the other blind men he encountered just as completely, as he also did the deaf, the mute, the lame,. . . . In each case, Jesus has not only restored them physically, but in every way.  Thus, the formerly deaf man understands immediately the speech of those around him. The former mute speaks as well as if he had been talking for years. The former lame walks as well as any who have two functional limbs all their lives, but nonetheless had to learn at one point how to walk.

     This more thorough process of healing, as opposed to mere curing, reveals that healing and wholeness is a process, not an event, that the cure alone is not enough. God wants each of us to become as whole and complete as his Son was, and is, and his Son is the example; not only in the wholeness he represents, but also in the process toward that same wholeness we are to undertake with him.

     I have gone through many phases, and have experienced much regarding my disability. Besides that false sense of internal separateness, I have been in denial, have confronted rejection, dealt with ignorance (my own and that of others), as well as fear, and have repeatedly felt the frustration of living and dealing with it.  Yet, greater and greater exposure to a knowledge and awareness of it and its implications has not undermined my faith, or my hope for healing.  Rather, my faith began and has grown in the midst of an increasing understanding of my situation – of myself. In addition, it has nurtured my hope through a growing appreciation that the process of healing and wholeness is not only ongoing, but also ever expanding, drawing me out of a desire for a "quick-fix" for myself that a cure implies.

     Indeed, I cannot frankly imagine myself without my autism - that person does not exist and has never existed.  His experience would be indescribably different from my own; his world vastly distinct.  A "cured," or properly adjusted perception and all of the rest, followed by an adjusted capacity to handle and to use that new perception and awareness.  As it is, I often experience an overwhelming and exhausting sense of "overload." Really, the world is hard enough to manage in terms of awareness of, and attempts to understand, it.

     My understanding is that to come into the presence of God is an awesome experience with no exaggeration, but probably a great deal of understatement.  My faith tells me that when I come at last into the presence, I will be ready, and that the process is already underway by which that will happen.  Thus, I do not seek a cure per se, for I believe the healing is already underway.