Author: Andrew Sullivan

In order to illustrate a larger point, John Donvan and Caren Zucker tell the story of the first man ever diagnosed with autism, and how he lives today as a 77 year old:

The truth is that we often deny to adults with autism the kind of empathy and support we make readily available to children with the condition—or, for that matter, to people with white canes at crosswalks. We underestimate their capabilities, reveal our discomfort in their company, and display impatience when they inconvenience us. The people standing in the back of a long supermarket checkout line aren’t always going to say or do the nice thing when some odd-looking man in front is holding the whole place up because he can’t figure out the credit-card swipe. It’s in that moment, [Dr. Peter] Gerhardt says, that the thumb-on-the-logo trick is a matter of “social survival.” If the man with autism can navigate this situation successfully—and, just as important, be seen doing so—Gerhardt argues that our collective acceptance of people with autism in “our” spaces will tick up a notch. If the man fails, it will go the other way….

Adults present greater challenges: they are big enough to do real violence in the event of a tantrum; they are fully capable of sexual desires, and all that those imply; and they’re bored by many of the activities that can distract and entertain children with autism. “People want to treat these adults like little kids in big bodies,” Gerhardt says. “They can’t. They’re adults.” As such, he argues, they’re equipped, as much as any of us, with the recognizable adult aspiration of wanting to “experience life.”

Anthony Grafton paints a portrait of the Last Supper in art and religious history. Below, Paolo Veronese defends his Last Supper portrayal before the Venetian Inquisition in 1573:

"We painters use the same license as poets and madmen, and I represented those halberdiers, the one drinking, the other eating at the foot of the stairs, but both ready to do their duty, because it seemed to me suitable and possible that the master of the house, who as I have been told was rich and magnificent, would have such servants."

This appeal to artistic license did not satisfy the Inquisitors: “Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities?” They ordered Veronese to erase the halberdiers and replace the dog who looked up at Jesus with Mary Magdalene. Veronese complied, in his own way. He left the painting as it was but retitled it Feast in the House of Levi—a scene less freighted with theological significance.

“The Gift Of Tritemius” by John Greenleaf Whittier was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in November, 1857:

Tritemius of Herbipolis one day,
While kneeling at the altar’s foot to pray,
Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from beneath a miserable voice,–
A sound that seemed of all sad things to tell,
As of a lost soul crying out of hell. Thereat the Abbot rose, the chain whereby
His thoughts went upward broken by that cry,
And, looking from the casement, saw below
A wretched woman, with gray hair aflow,
And withered hands stretched up to him, who cried
For alms as one who might not be denied. She cried: “For the dear love of Him who gave
His life for ours, my child from bondage save,
My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves
In the Moor’s galley, where the sun-smit waves
Lap the white walls of Tunis!” “What I can
I give,” Tritemius said,–“my prayers.” “O man
Of God!” she cried, for grief had made her bold,
“Mock me not so: I ask not prayers, but gold;
Words cannot serve me, alms alone suffice;
Even while I plead, perchance my first-born dies!”

“Woman!” Tritemius answered, “from our door
None go unfed; hence are we always poor.
A single soldo is our only store.
Thou hast our prayers; what can we give thee more?”

“Give me,” she said, “the silver candlesticks
On either side of the great crucifix;
God well may spare them on His errands sped,
Or He can give you golden ones instead.”

Then said Tritemius, “Even as thy word,
Woman, so be it; and our gracious Lord,
Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,
Pardon me if a human soul I prize
Above the gifts upon His altar piled!
Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child.”

But his hand trembled as the holy alms
He laid within the beggar’s eager palms;
And as she vanished down the linden shade,
He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed.

So the day passed; and when the twilight came
He rose to find the chapel all a-flame,
And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold
Upon the altar candlesticks of gold!

(Image from Flickr user Stuck in Customs)

Kelefa Sanneh decodes Rhoda Byrnes' bestselling self-help books:

The creed promulgated by “The Secret” and “The Power” is finally noteworthy not for its audacity—many religions promise more—but for its modesty, its thinness. In distilling a spiritual message that claims to be compatible with all religious traditions, Byrne has had to bracket all possible points of disagreement, discarding anything that might seem, as Winfrey put it, “weird.” The result is a pair of religious books curiously devoid of ancient lore and esoteric beliefs, history and holiness—curiously devoid of religion itself. Byrne’s hope is that this minimalist creed will be enough for her readers. But surely some of them will notice that it doesn’t seem to be enough for her.

London, England, 1.20 pm

Daniel Tomasulo explains that though "we are hardwired from birth to be happy when we get salt, fat, sweet things and sex," true happiness stems from somewhere deeper:

It is the goodness of social relationships that truly makes us happy. Good relationships are the foundations for almost every measure of well being. Our immune system, our incidental sense of peace and joy, and our optimism for the future is better when we feel good about our daily social relationships. The better we feel in the social network of others in our life, the happier we are. With poor or nonexistent relationships we cannot flourish…

Choosing who we want to be with, and talk to, and spend time with sounds like a no-brainer. But the truth is most people simply don’t do it. We feel obligations and play politics, and in doing so lessen the time we spend with people who make us happy. More than this, consider those with little or no choice — those placed in foster homes, prisons, institutions, group homes, rehabs, hospitals, and yes, even college dorms. Why are there so many interpersonal problems in these settings? [Jacob Levy] Moreno would argue that the lack of sociometric choice is the culprit.

And we wonder why the ancients placed so much emphasis on the virtue and centrality of friendship.

Gary Willis argues that the Pope's beatification of John Henry Newman misrepresents him "as a docile believer in papal authority, an enemy of dissent, and a rebuke to anyone who questions church authority":

Benedict was once a scholar and now claims to be infallible in matters of faith or morals. But on the clearest facts of history he is a dissembler and disguiser. Were Newman alive to hope for preventing this distortion of his history, would he hope for the pope’s demise, as he hoped for Pius IX’s death before he did such damage to the church by claiming “tyrannical” powers?

(Image, found opposite of Royal Albert Hall: Cardinal Sinister by Nick Walker)

Eric Reitan turns the Terry Jones debacle into a lesson on religious sacrifice:

[A]t least one theologian—S. Mark Heim—has taken up Girardian themes to argue that the crucifixion is best understood as a potent repudiation of sacrificial scapegoating… If Heim is right about this, then Jones and Phelps and their respective congregations are symbolically enacting the very thing that the passion stories central to Christianity were intended to repudiate. Where they are called to see the crucified Christ in those who are being symbolically burned at the stake, they instead see a righteous sacrifice to God. Where they are called to identify with the victim of sacrificial scapegoating, they become the practitioners.

Atheist Razib Kahn is "not sickened by the burning of a Koran, or any book":

I don’t extrapolate my own psychology to others. I think there is something somewhat off about people like me, at least in relation to the modal human. The readers of this weblog are mostly nonbelievers in gods, and also of a libertarian bent. The set of these individuals tend to be overwhelmingly male, and often of a technical orientation. We’re not representative humans, and extrapolation after introspection is a dangerous game for the likes of us. Dangerous at least if we want to model how the world of human psychology and sociology is as opposed what we’d want it to be. We are the sort who are not gifted with the full range of powerful visceral emotions that others are.

Self-awareness is the important thing, I suppose.

"I Studied Love" by Yehuda Amichai (1924 – 2000) translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld first appeared in The Atlantic in July of 1998:

I studied love in my childhood in my childhood synagogue

in the women's section with the help of the women

behind the partition

that locked up my mother with all the other women

and girls.

But the partition that locked them up locked me up

on the other side. They were free in their love while I

remained

locked up with all the men and boys in my love, my longing.

I wanted to be over there with them and to know their

secrets

and say with them, "Blessed be He who has made me

according to his will." And the partition

a lace curtain white and soft as summer dresses, and

that curtain

swaying to and fro with its rings and its loops,

lu-lu-lu loops, Lulu, lullings of love in the locked room.

And the faces of women like the face of the moon behind

the clouds

or the full moon when the curtain parts: an enchanted

cosmic order. At night we said the blessing

over the moon outside, and I

thought about the women.

(Photo: An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man looks at a Palestinian shop owner reading the Muslim holy Koran outside his shop near the Ibrahimi Mosque, or Tomb of the Patriarchs, in the divided West Bank city of Hebron on September 15, 2010. By Hazem Bader /AFP/ Getty Images)