spectacular

“It’s so pretty out here,” I say, the words like an exhale. Golden brown leaves skitter across the asphalt, and everywhere I look I see another vibrant shade–the sky, cool blue; the trees, a sunset arch sheltering our pathway. I breathe a prayer, remembering something C.S. Lewis said, something that fits:

We do not want merely to see beauty… We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

C.S. Lewis, Transposition and Other Addresses (1949)

I feel as though I am passing into beauty, receiving it, becoming part of it.

“Yes, it is,” Riley says, though I had not spoken in conversation nor really expected her to respond. Autism parents learn this; we carry it as chronic grief, the fact that spoken language has its limits, that, at a certain depth, all connectivity will be lost. Riley’s conversational skills eventually devolve into a series of repetitious comments because her pure intention to engage can’t quite overcome the neurological misfiring in her brain. Add to this reality the continual, if somewhat medically relieved, occurrence of absence seizures, and the fact that she communicates as well as she does becomes extraordinary. Riley and I can talk to each other, but we fight for depth with unreliable success. Some days, often the most heart heavy ones, we get beyond mechanics to real feelings, but other days, conversation between us sounds like a memorized prayer or a poem learned long ago. On those days, words lose their meaning.

“I like looking at what God has made,” she continues, her voice light, floating on the breeze. “I like the sky and the sun.”

I glance at her, unable to hide my surprise, drawing her attention away from open admiration of the clouds, which today look like silver ribbons. “What?” She asks.

So today we understand each other, I’m thinking, but I say, “Also the leaves, I love the bright red ones. And I love the way they twirl in the air, the way they sound on the road.”

“Yes,” she says. “God does such a good job.” It feels like we’re strolling through an art exhibit, pausing to comment on technique. “I like the squirrels. I like animals,” she says, with a tiny, joyous giggle. I imagine she’s thinking of the comfort dog at school, how she loves to take him on walks.

“I love the way the tree trunks curve. The branches look like arms,” I say.

“Mmmhmm,” she murmurs, turning her head so that the sun streaks across her cheek. She catches sight of someone working outside and throws up a hand. “Hi,” she calls cheerily, so brightly they look up, shielding their eyes with a gloved hand, and smile.

It should not come as such a surprise to me that the testimony of creation–that wordless, soundless speech that carries knowledge of the glory of God to the ends of the earth (Psalm 19)–would become our fluent language, the conversational space that defies challenges and equalizes eloquence. The ancients called this visio divina, or “divine seeing,” that is, the meditation on the invisible qualities of God revealed through the visible world. Paul claimed this clear testimony as the reason people who “neither glorify God nor give thanks to Him” are “without excuse (Romans 1: 20-21).” For my part, I never expected this walk, which I intended as training for Riley in healthy habits, to turn into a spiritual practice. But then, there is no unifier, no builder of relationship, no master of love and community quite like the Holy Spirit.

We go on in this way for some time, turning corners and launching down dappled streets, pointing out beauty, taking turns praising God for who and how He is. She waddles and toe-walks and moves her body with a rigidness somewhat common for individuals on the spectrum, and I can’t help but smile because that root, spect, means to look. Autistic people see everything, and this is not some soft-focus dream, this is the way we look for God while living warily in a broken world. She looks and I look; we are spectrum people seeking spectacle. We worship and watch for God–Advent in the gritty, honest ordinary. Meanwhile, I watch peripherally, as I always do, alert for signs of a seizure, for the frozen moment when she can’t speak to me at all. I keep her within reach, because I know this isn’t heaven. I imagine her jerking in the street and me holding her safe beneath these stunning, sheltering trees; I imagine what I’ll do to shelter her while God, who is the beauty in which we always dwell, shelters the both of us. And when those moments come and we feel the danger of the place, we’ll also have the Truth of God we’ve gathered here beneath the trees.

“I love birds!” She says; it bursts out. “God made birds so beautiful. I love how they fly.”