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Tag: neurodiversity

  • All Kinds of Minds

    by Canon Dr Phil Groves, who was a CMS Mission partner and lecturer in theology at St Philip’s Kongwa in Tanzania. He served at the Anglican Communion Office for 10 years. He has attended two Lambeth Conferences, three Primates’ Meetings and four ACCs. He has a PhD on Partnership in the Anglican Communion and is Vicar of the parishes of Cuddington and of Stone, Dinton and Hartwell. He is dyslexic and a member of the Church of England’s Neurodiversity Working Group

    If you look at the Agenda for the July General Synod, you will see that on Friday Synod will be asked to support a motion affirming neurodiversity in the life of the church. This is a day of hope.

    Our world is blessed by the diversity of thinking. If we all thought the same way we would not have had the breadth of creativity, insight, and scientific developments that shapes who we are.

    We are all part of this wonderful world of different thinking. We all have a part in a ‘neurodiverse’ world.

    Most of us have brains that work in a way that social scientists have described as ‘neurotypical’. Some of us are ‘neurodivergent’. Collectively, we are neurodiverse.

    ‘Neurodivergence is how we talk about minority ways of processing the world. Neurodivergent minds include, for example: being autistic, ADHD, dyslexic, dyspraxic; having dyscalculia, sensory processing differences, Tourettes, aphantasia, or executive functioning differences. Neurotypicality is how we talk about the majority ways of thinking’.[i]

    Archbishop Sarah is the first Archbishop of Canterbury to be open and confident about her neurodivergence – in her case, dyslexia. She has brought hope to all of us who know we are neurodivergent. In her article for the Autumn 25 edition of the Church of England Newsletter Disability Matters, she spoke of her confidence that we are all called by name by God (Isaiah 43).

    She has been speaking about this for years. In her landmark interview with Kate Griggs of Made by Dyslexia in 2021 – alongside her successor as Chief Nursing Officer and fellow dyslexic Ruth May – she talks about how we are all unique and all made in the image of God.

    Dyslexia is seen in our society as a weakness to be mitigated. When I told a bishop I was dyslexic, he offered his sympathy and offered ways I could be supported. I was offering my gifts; he was treating me as a diminished human being.

    Archbishop Sarah talks about her dyslexic strengths. Dyslexia gives her humility – there is nothing like not being able to spell to bring you down to earth. It is also her source of empathy, emotional intelligence, and her ability to listen. She notes that all these gifts come together in teambuilding. Teambuilding, or ‘connecting’, is one of six key dyslexic skills highlighted in the Made by Dyslexia research.

    As a dyslexic, she doesn’t read her sermons. When she preaches, she engages with the people in front of her, changing her language to ensure she is communicating directly – another key dyslexic skill.

    Archbishop Sarah has not got to where she is today despite her dyslexia: she is there because of it.

    This is important. I had to correct the tribute paid to Benjamin Zephaniah in the Guardian by one of his friends who said that he was a great poet despite his dyslexia. I asked him to listen again to the performance of ‘Dis Poetry’ and recognise that dyslexia was a part of him and essential to what made him great.

    However, there is a darker side. As Chief Nurse, Archbishop Sarah found herself with people who were speculating that dyslexics should be barred from nursing as they may not be accurate in record keeping. Imagine being in the room as this is being discussed. As a bishop, she heard the same question being asked about parish priests; people in the hierarchy were questioning if any dyslexic could be a successful parish priest.

    This is the reality for neurodivergent clergy and laity in the Church of England. We experience shame. We know we have gifts to bring – gifts that are intrinsic to our being – but we are shamed by being judged by things that we are not good at.

    Archbishop Sarah identifies her time on the cathedral staff at Salisbury as her most challenging time. Suddenly the accuracy of reading was considered vital and she found herself judged in a way that she had not been before. The Dean – the wonderful June Osborne – recognised her gifts and gave her the most difficult roles in building relationships in the community, and recognised that what she was good at were precisely those things needed in a bishop.

    In his excellent biography of Archbishop Sarah, Andrew Atherstone gives a very helpful summary of her sermons from that time and notes how often she preached on Jesus’ encounters with outsiders and her emphasis on relationships.[ii] This emphasis is typical of dyslexic preachers. We find in Jesus the one who does not judge us and takes away our shame.

    Shame is immensely powerful. A recent video highlights how many bright and inquisitive children enter school with an excitement to learn and find that schools value neatness, spelling, and order over creativity, excitement in learning, and passion for life. We are told we have a learning difficulty. Dyslexic adults all share stories of being shamed, often humiliated, while at school.

    The good news is that Churches are so often ‘communities of appreciation’[iii]. We welcome and engage people with all kinds of minds. It can be a challenge. The services in my churches have to provide for autistic children who value calm, consistency, and a service that does not overstimulate. Meanwhile, our children with ADHD want excitement, stimulation, and sometimes just need to run from one end of the church to the other. To welcome all requires the ability to listen to what they and their parents – who often share the same neurodivergence, even if it is undiagnosed – have to say. As a church we have to be like Jesus.

    The benefits are huge. We find that, by enabling neurodivergent people – including myself – to speak about our reality, we are welcoming so many people of all ages who find they can finally be honest about who they are and can know that they are loved and accepted.

    However, as an institution the Church of England needs to change. Neurodivergent clergy – and there are a lot of us – share stories of exclusion and humiliation. We are advised not to disclose our divergence when applying for roles and we face barriers throughout our ministry.

    When we first gathered a dyslexic clergy forum in our diocese, many of the older clergy would only come if it was absolutely confidential. When we invited the Bishop of Oxford to our meeting, they would not come. Shame and fear are hard to remove. They believed they would face discrimination and with good evidence.

    This is why Friday’s Synod motion is so important. If it is passed, dioceses will be encouraged to develop inclusive practices and policies which promote the flourishing of neurodivergent people. This will involve training for all that is led and shaped by neurodivergent people themselves. We are calling for each diocese to appoint neurodivergent people as Neurodiversity Champions and we will encourage all churches and church members to listen and respond to the experience of neurodivergent people in their specific local contexts to enable the flourishing of all.

    We know that these are all key elements of change.

    Change is not just for the church. The oppression of neurodivergent people in our society is hidden, but it is real. Ask anyone involved in prisons and they will tell you how many prisoners have dyslexia. One government paper estimates that 50% of prisoners are dyslexic. The paper is intended to shape education in prisons, but does not ask why a dyslexic person is 9 times more likely to go to prison than a neurotypical person. Compare that to the equally unjust reality that you are two to three times as likely to go to prison if you are from a UK Minority Ethnic group (Global Majority) and think about it. Changing the way we think about neurodiversity and then changing our education system could transform lives and society.

    Tim Wyatt’s recent edited collection, Archbishop Sarah Mullally: And ten urgent challenges for the Church of England, did not include neurodiversity as one of those challenges – and barely anyone noticed.

    We hope that if this Synod Motion is acted upon it will produce real and effective change, both within the Church and beyond.

    [i] See the background paper for GS 2444: Neurodiversity – definition point 3.

    [ii] Andrew Atherstone, Archbishop Sarah Mullally: A Biography

    [iii] A term used in the research underlying the Synod Motion; see the appendix to GS 2444.

  • The Whole of Who We Are

    by Susannah Clark; she belongs to the Fellowship of the Love of God (Oxford)

    It was Augustine who wrote ‘You were within me, but I was outside’.

    How many people find themselves living, at least in part, outside themselves: performing to colleagues to fit in and meet their approval; or conforming with others around us – at work or at church – to feel part of the group and accepted? Even sadder, when we lose contact with ourselves. You may know the feeling, when you work and work, until you finally stop and ask, ‘Yes, but where am I in all this? In the life I lead?’ and you feel out of touch with yourself.

    We so easily do this to ourselves, and drift away from who we really are, uniquely made and cherished by God. We can feel fragmented, with countless loose ends, but haunted by a kind of inauthenticity. ‘How are you, Susannah?’ ‘Oh I’m fine,’ when you’re not. In our ‘outside’ lives when we’re fronting up ourselves to others like that, it is all too easy to become alienated from the God who dwells within us, always longing and calling us to get back in touch, to open and grow… to resume the journey and vocation to become the whole of who we are.

    In the Carmelite practice of contemplation, that re-connecting with the God who knows and loves us is called ‘recollection’… collecting yourself together again, and recalling the core reality of who we are in relationship with God… God who knows us tenderly, calls us into our being and becoming, loves us to the point of no turning back… and beckons us to know ourselves in opening up and devotion of our souls.

    That opening up can be – oh – so raw, and we may well fear it: because so many of us have closed doors in our souls that we’d rather not open… old hurts, old shames, and the anxiety of what it might cost if we do: what we might unleash! And yet, there is a gentleness and healing in the love of God, and opening up to the flow of God’s love is the beginning of becoming. It’s opening up, often in trembling steps, to the whole of who we are. Most of us know on paper that love is the great commandment, the first imperative, if we are to give ourselves to God and be authentic. But truly opening up means more than just being loved.

    The flow of God’s love in our being and lives is like a stream of compassion: as Jesus described it, streams of living water that would flow from within us. It is not simply a static pool that we can wallow in for our own enjoyment alone. Yes, God does water our soul like a garden, and wants us to receive and to flourish. But the fulfilment of our being is more than self alone. The Love of God is a flowing stream, the Spirit of God, longing to reach through us to others… because that’s what love does: it flows and enlivens us in the act of opening up our hearts to others round about us. When we give ourselves like that, as channels of mercy, we start to know the best of who we are. We recollect and encounter the authenticity we can have in God.

    For decades I self-harmed, and ‘who’ people saw did not match who I was, how I felt, inside. I policed and defended and locked down that person for fear of discovery. I tried to project and act out a congruent manhood to meet their expectations and presuppositions, and yet… how I was inside my ‘gestalt’, what I felt, how I longed to become, was painfully incongruent with my physical body. So I tried to shut all the doors, put my integral person in a box, tape down the lid, and hide it away. But repression can be like a dam that increases and increases in pressure, until it erupts in negative ways: in my case in terrible self-harm. That was the cost of ‘performance’ outside my true self. Not waving but drowning.

    Then sometimes the dam finally breaks – I’m not just talking about trans experience, it happens to many people. In my own case I think it broke because I ached for God so much. I ached to be true. And once the dam was broken I could not put it all back. I transitioned. It was not a casual ‘life style choice’. I lost friends who ghosted me. I was told by my employers that I must leave. I lost my home. For a while I even lost my children. People at my church told me I was wrecking my life. And yet, God did not abandon me. On the contrary, I felt held and comforted and spiritually alive. I commenced hormones, and within weeks the self-harm of decades just ceased. I underwent surgery. An amazing Anglican community of sisters (in fact the community that was later featured in ‘Call the Midwife’) took me in, loved me, and nursed me for ten weeks after surgery. ‘Yours is just like ours’ they gently assured me as they tended the wounds. Christian inclusion.

    My contemplative life deepened and came alive, and I was guided and helped by another Anglican community: the Sisters of the Love of God in Oxford. They were wonderful, and encouraged me along my contemplative path. I learnt the practice of trust in the God who is there, even through the cloud of unknowing. I dared to open doors long closed, I confronted myself, I opened my being to God. My life became congruent and no longer racked by dysphoria. Instead… deep psychological ease and a more practical, productive day-to-day, week-to-week journey. It has now been fifteen years. I re-trained as a nurse, and it was the best thing I could have done: in looking outwards to others I found myself healed from within. My life – and the journey to become the whole of who I am – expanded, opened up, found release in little practical acts on the hospital wards. Contemplative life is not just internal: it permeates and colonises our practical lives as well.

    Friends at church had warned, ‘It will end badly’ and some Christians still say ‘Transition is wrong. It’s against the will of God.’ They call my vagina a ‘mutilation’ and my womanhood a fake. Politicians and sadly some Christians go further, politicising my quiet life and who I am, and framing people like me as ‘threats’ and ‘predators’. It is hurtful and in some cases hateful. They talk about an ‘ideology’ but in truth they have an ideology themselves. Their language endangers trans lives on the street, massaging the ‘culture wars rhetoric’ and providing a kind of mandate for hatred in the eyes and sick minds of those who spit, or threaten, or shout abuse: ‘you’re a pervert and a bloke in a frock’. It is sad and a bit shameful, weaponising who we are for political gain. In truth, for most trans people our lives are as mundane as anyone else’s: getting up, going to work, shopping, washing, ironing, making supper. It’s the same ‘lifestyle’ as yours I am sure: it’s called being a human being.

    My children – all three are committed Christians – have returned to love me tenderly. I am so proud of them and their devoted lives. I’m not jubilant about the impact on them and others, but we are loving and close now, which I find really humbling. One of my last jobs before retirement in 2022 was as a school nurse caring for 1200 teenagers in a large secondary. There I witnessed – but did not proselytise – four trans teenagers who were trying to explore the whole of who they were. The school had a great ethos: to afford them time, space, and respect. The same respect given to young gay or lesbian teens there. They, and all the students, would come to me for care, for cuts, inhalers, migraines, allergic reactions, or sometimes just to talk. And within the first week, I was just ‘the nurse’. Teens are great like that.

    It’s not just individuals though, is it? It’s not only about me, me, me. I’m incredibly insignificant in the great scheme of things. Thank goodness. The whole point about transition is just to get on with your life, only with greater psychological ease, more congruity, more in touch with who you are and can become. It’s the same for the Church as a whole: the call of God to open up to the whole of who we are and can become. Not excluding people, or insisting everyone conforms to a single dominant dogma, but learning that when a church welcomes the neuro-diverse, the foreigner, the gay, the bi-, the disabled, the trans, the precious individual beset with mental health issues… every one of them has been uniquely created by God and brings gift to God’s community… which would be impoverished without them.

    Yes, as a Church, we should pray that in opening up to the flow of God’s love we open more and more to the whole of who we are.