Deep Autistic Prayer: A Personal Prayer Beyond Words

Last updated on: September 20, 2019 at 9:26 am by Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC

Deep Autistic Prayer: A Personal Prayer Beyond Words 2019-09-20T09:26:42-04:00 Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC

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When we autistics pray, we can go deep. However, autistic prayer is slightly different from neurotypical prayer. I recently recorded a short video on going deep in prayer as an autistic. We can have certain difficulties early in prayer with the theory of mind regarding God. However, once we get beyond that, I think our way of thinking can help us go deep. This is a follow up to my video on Autistic Memory and Prayer from a few weeks ago.

In the video, I explore things like the communication loop between thoughts are language, how we understand language, direct communication with God without language, vivid mental images of Gospel passages, and some others. All of these topics should help us reach deeper levels of autistic prayer. Levels in prayer aren’t something we achieve but something that develops in the relationship between God and us. Hopefully, our way of thinking can help us reach deep prayer as autistics, a prayer that might even be deeper than what neurotypicals experience in prayer.

The point is not that autistic prayer is not completely separate from neurotypical prayer but that certain aspects are different. I hope to be able to write more comprehensively on this and have sent in a book proposal for a 30-day autistic devotional. Please pray for that project which I hope will help many people.

Notes:

Sorry for a few background noises.
Yes, I am autistic and a Catholic priest. Part of the reason I made this public was to help my fellow autistics with resources like this. I find a certain dearth on how we should pray as autistics and I hope that the few resources I provide can help to fill this gap.
If you want exploring autism and prayer, please help me make more resources by supporting me on Patreon.

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