On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, and the Gifts of Neurodiversity by Daniel Jr. Bowman

Author:Daniel Jr. Bowman [Bowman, Daniel Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autism/Christianity;Autism—Religious aspects—Christianity | Autism spectrum disorders | Neurobehavioral disorders—Patients—Rehabilitation;REL012110;REL012000;FAM048000, Religion, Christian Living, Family & Relationships, General, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Social Issues
ISBN: 9781493431120
Google: 5J4HEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Brazos Press
Published: 2021-08-10T23:49:58.012812+00:00

Dancing in Fields of Wheat and Tares

Chicago is cold and gray. I’m stuck at O’Hare for my connecting flight to Buffalo en route home. At 4:00 a.m. mountain time, I caught a shuttle bus from Santa Fe to the airport in Albuquerque, having just completed a ten-day residency as part of my MFA program in creative writing at Seattle Pacific University. Our summer residency takes place at St. John’s College in the high desert alongside the Glen Workshop, a program of art and faith that attracts poets, musicians, novelists, visual artists, and others from around the country.

The company of like-minded folks was intoxicating. Here at the airport, I reckon with the fact that the earth is not peopled primarily with artists like the ones I met at the Glen. It is peopled with people. So I watch them.

A twentysomething couple holding hands negotiates the terminal at a brisk clip, wheeling efficient luggage behind them. A moment later, an elderly woman with a cane almost gets hit by an airport golf cart beeping its horn. The driver seems determined to stay cheerful though frustration is evident beneath her smile. But the old woman is oblivious to the sound of the horn and, more frightening, to the general flow and pace of this world.

Then, a singularly odd image: a guy who could not be more than thirty sports one eyebrow almost entirely silver. A double take, and what I hope is a stealthy triple take, confirms. His left eyebrow is the color of his hair—dark brown. His right is at least three-quarters the color of the hair of a man twice his age, an airy but slick silver, unmistakable as the Crayola I reached for to color stars in the skies of my childhood.

The idiosyncrasy unsettles me. I want to go online and burn time, but I had put my laptop in my checked bag. I decide to go for a walk. At the gift shop, ten thousand charms gleam from shelves—Windy City T-shirts, hoodies, ball caps in a range of colors and styles. Point-of-purchase impulse items display in descending order of novelty. On top, at eye level, is a new one to me: piña colada bubble gum. I settle on Tic-Tacs.

But I cannot forget the silver eyebrow, wayward twin of Normal. I return to my departing gate and the young man remains where I left him. I cannot shake his innocuous but jarring irregularity, as though his face holds the paradox of innocence and experience together in tension. He seems to somehow stand figuratively between the woman with the cane for whom the airport is a veritable gauntlet and the young couple who could circumnavigate it all day and get up tomorrow to do it again. He seems to wear on the outside what we get to hide from or put off: our own slow march toward greater imperfection, and then the end.

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