CAT podcast Leon Ian senses
Zoe: Welcome to the Autism and Theology podcast, brought to you by the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.
Ian: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Autism and Theology podcast. I'm Ian, and I'm so excited that you've joined us this week. This podcast is a space where we will be engaging with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, sharing relevant resources, and promoting ways that help faith and non faith communities to enable autistic people to flourish.
Our podcast episodes are released on the first Wednesday of every month, with Cat Chat every third Wednesday, where your hosts share news and answer your questions. This podcast is run from the University of Aberdeen's Center for Autism and Theology, which we've shortened to CAT. Today I'm joined by Léon van Ommen, who is a senior lecturer in practical theology at the University of Aberdeen and co director of the University of Aberdeen's Center for Autism and Theology.
Thanks so much for being with us today, Léon. 
It's great 
Léon: to be here, Ian, and yeah, really excited to talk to you today. 
Ian: And I am excited as well to talk about a little bit about the sort of field of your recent research, although not about the research specifically. And one of that, one of those fields of research has recently been on the engagement of different senses in the liturgy and in liturgical spaces.
Why do you think this is important for thinking about autistic people in worship? 
Léon: Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's two things to, to keep in mind here why this is important. First of all, worship is embodied. Now, that's not always how we think about worship. Worship, you know, we think about believing in God as something quite rational very often.
But actually when you enter a church building, it's a very sensory place, right? You immediately have a smell of the building, especially older church buildings they, buildings they smell particular way, but also newer buildings. There is a smell, whether you're aware of it or not. And some people, of course, are more sensitive-- we'll come to that-- to particular smells. But, You can see a lot around you depending on what type of church you're in. You see stained glass windows, for example, or icons or a cross or an altar, or you see the pews, you see the people. So there's a lot to see in any worship space. There's a lot to hear.
There's the singing, there's the chatter maybe before the or the silence before the service and so on and so on. So the first thing is worship is embodied. And we need to be aware of that and I'm not sure whether we're always that aware of that embodied aspect and part of the embodiment, of course, is that sensory aspect and you could say we encounter the world we encounter everything through our senses, whether that is touch or smell or hearing or seeing or feeling or the awareness of our body in space, all of that.
So that's the first thing. The second thing is, why is this, and that's more directly to your question, why is this important then to talk about the senses in worship for autistic people that is because we know that if you, well, to say it bluntly, if you want to understand autism, you need to understand sensory perception, sensory processing, sensory inputs.
And so, if we see that sensory perception is a hallmark, as it were, to understand autism, then it becomes doubly important to understand the sense of worship as well. At least if we want our churches to be spaces where autistic people can flourish just as anyone else. 
Ian: Thank you. I love that. I think that we do, we, we do have this tendency, it seems to me-- and this is speaking a little bit from my experience-- to reduce worship and all of our faith life to cognitive acts, right? And forget that it takes place in bodies, in physical space, and engages all the senses, so I think that's really important, and you're right, that it is it's particularly important if you're talking about autistic people, because if you're not considering that, then you could be having essentially a hostile environment without even realizing it. 
Léon: Yeah. Yeah. And just to illustrate that, and I mean, some traditions are more cognitive heavy than others. If you want, I grew up in a tradition where, in a reformed tradition and I'm not completely aligned with that anymore, I guess, but the way I grew up, it was like, As a family, we walked home after church and church has been, the worship service had been good if the sermon had been good.
If the sermon had been bad, the service was bad, right? But we didn't talk about anything else except for the sermon, right? And the sermon was not like, that was not evaluated in terms of its sensory aspects. It was the cognitive content, like, you know, was that a good sermon or not? And just another example of how this becomes quite clear, I think, is especially in more liturgical churches or, well, every church is liturgical, but I mean, churches that are so called more high liturgical or more formal worship, where you have like, a text from a book that you were saying together or that a priest says or whatever.
Liturgical revisions very often center on the text or in evangelical church, for example we center on the words of the worship songs. So again, it becomes very cognitive because that's where, you know, that's where theology gets important. It's in, in words, right? Do we get theology right?
But actually theology, of course is embodied, as well What we think about God, about church and all of that is not just in our minds as, you know, it's not just cognitive it's with our whole bodies, the whole way we are in the world, the whole way we interpret the world, church, everything, the way we relate to each other.
So, Yeah. Again, the senses are really important. 
Ian: Yeah. It's interesting hearing you talk about it because it becomes self evident if you examine it, right? If all that mattered were the words, then why wouldn't we just recite the songs as poetry, right? We're, but we're doing something different with them to engage the senses differently.
So it really does matter. 
Léon: Yeah.
Ian: On that note, on that idea of sort of neglecting the senses, do you think that there are forgotten or neglected senses when it comes to everyday engagement in the liturgy, and how important are those that we tend to forget about?
Léon: So forgetting it, it's interesting way that you phrase the question because I'm not sure whether we are forgetting about them, but we are not aware of them.
So I'm, I would rephrase that slightly. 
Ian: Sure. 
Léon: But maybe the effect is maybe the same. I don't know. But yeah, the sense is that we are less aware of, well, I don't know. It's quite well established, I think or the consensus in most scholarship on the senses, whether that's anthropology or sociology or psychology the consensus seems to be that we live in a very visiocentric culture.
So, so we're visiocentric means like, you know, the emphasis is on seeing. On the visual aspect of culture, some would say no, there is, and some would make a difference between visiocentric and audio centric cultures. So audio centric would be the emphasis on hearing on sound. And some would say, well, in the West, you know, vision and audition.
So seeing and hearing are the dominant senses. I think that's quite right. Much of our focus is on seeing, on hearing, and in the research that we did around senses in worship this is also what we got back from the focus groups. And hopefully we can talk more about that in a webinar or something like that later on.
But yeah, so, so the dominance of Of seeing and hearing that's pretty obvious. I think in culture and in churches as well. Does that mean that we forget about smell and touch and proprioception and interoception like, you know, the other senses like how you're so proprioception would be feeling where you are in space, as it were, feeling your body, positioning your body, and a vestibular sense would be has to do with the balance. And so sitting up, down, et cetera, et cetera. So, those are senses that we often tend not to be aware of, that's a thing, but actually it is a thing, right?
And is that important? I would say yes. Because it, well, by definition, as in, that's how we live our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. Now, The more obvious example is maybe smell, because there's quite a number of smells in the church. So in the introduction, or in the beginning, I said something about smell in church buildings.
But think about flowers, and some really like them, and some really hate them. Think about maybe you have these old hymn books that have particular smell to them, right? And you open them and you're like, yeah, I'm singing in church, but actually I'm smelling in church here as well, right? And think about a perfume that someone might wear which can be really off putting to some people, especially autistic people who are sensitive to smell.
But then there's also the liturgical use of the senses flowers, I would say as liturgical as well. But especially incense comes to mind, of course. And so, yeah, some churches use incense. Well, that gives you a particular smell or lighting candles, similar. I mean, there's a particular smell to that.
So, and even the air changes because of that. And some people are sensitive to that even, so I don't know which sense that is, but I mean, again, it has to do with that perception and the way we are in the world. So whether we realize it or not, it's really important now. And once we start to see how important it is and that it is something, then we can also think about, okay, so how do we use that in churches?
How is that building up the worship and encouraging and facilitating worship? And in what ways might it actually be off putting and create a barrier to worship? So yeah, I would say it's really important to think about all the senses, really. 
Ian: Yeah. And you know, I think that's right.
I think that it's really interesting thinking about thinking through some of those, like the use of flowers, the use of incense and how there's an argument to be made that some of the origin for that was to cover up other smells that might have been going on in the churches, right? 
Léon: Certainly, yeah.
Ian: Which in a sense could be, for some autistic people, actually autistic friendly, right? That you're maybe not entirely neutralizing other smells, but you're getting a more predictable sensory experience from, say, an incense- using church than from one that doesn't. It's just, we often, sometimes we sort of assume that there's one autistic friendly way of doing things.
Léon: Yeah, and I guess we all know that there's not one way, right? There's different ways. But you're right. Historically, that was one of the uses of senses or sensing or using other smells to cover up other smells because especially cathedrals, for example, in medieval times, they were. They were almost a marketplace, right?
Ian: Right
Léon: Or at least some of them. And so we tend to think of church, I think mostly in, in terms of that's where we gather on a Sunday for worship. Or maybe, you know, if we put our building to really good use, maybe on a Wednesday as well,
or maybe we invite, you know, the dance club to rehearse in the church or whatever, or, you know, the brass band, whatever it is.
But in, yeah There's very convincing evidence that in medieval times, the cathedrals were used in many more ways. And yeah, then you get some smells, man. What do you do back then?
Ian: Whether you want them or not.
Léon: Yeah, exactly. But interestingly smell in, in some, well, in, in early Christianity, well, a little bit later, actually after Constantine, so say fourth, fifth, sixth century but also in some other cultures still today, smell is used as judgment.
And you could infer that in even Western societies, we still do that. Like we, we associate bad smells with bad things and good smells with good things. So just cheesy example from love. If you give your spouse a rose it's, the rose is, what was the symbol of the rose? It's, you know, it's seeing the rose, it's a particular flower, but it's also the smell of the rose, right?
And so when you get the flowers, we smell the flowers and all of that. But that has a positive sense. that's a positive association that we have. Whereas we think of, I don't know don't want to stereotype here. So I'm thinking of some examples, but I mean, just feeling yourself, like there might be smells that you associate with like, Oh, wait a sec.
This is not a good street to walk in or whatever. Or a good place to walk in, but historically. Yeah. And even as I said, in some cultures today, smell is used as judgment. And you, so in order to have, you could you could smell whether a person had good morals or not. Right.
So, and that's something I don't think we, we sniff each other out, right? We don't do that. It's like. Yeah. Well, you're a good person. No I don't think we do that. Not in Western societies, but in some cultures they still do that today. 
Ian: Yeah. But I mean, I think maybe we do to a certain extent, right? Because the ideas around what people ought to smell like are very much culturally conditioned, right?
So you use the example of someone wearing a lot of perfume in some Cultures, societies particular cultural contexts, that's expected. That's a good thing. And in others, it's a it's a it's a negative. It's something that we shouldn't do. Right. So there isn't a sort of universal standard, even as much as we want to assume that there is sometimes. 
Léon: True. And then even within a culture, I mean, in our culture, I guess, well, our, I'm living in the UK. I think when you go to a wedding, when you go to a party you put on some, you put on some perfume, whereas in other, at other occasions, it's like, well, if you do that a little bit too much, it's like, well, What are they thinking, right? Even within the culture, it's very contextual like which, in which context do you wear perfume or not to stay with that example, but yeah, you can go on and on. That's the nice thing about the senses. You can talk for hours. 
Ian: No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. Shifting gears a little bit I want to, one of the questions that I have for you that I think is, would be good to hear your answer on is, I know you personally are not autistic. And so the question is, why do you think it's important to have various stakeholders and members of the church weighing on an issues, weighing in on issues like senses in the liturgy, even when what we're, what this conversation is ostensibly about is primarily autistic people, how the senses affect autistic people.
Léon: That's a great question and gosh it's a little bit dangerous territory, .
Ian: Sure. And this is, I mean, it's an ongoing debate, right? Who is, who has a seat at the table? 
Léon: Absolutely. 
Ian: And so this is why I think it's worth hearing, right? 
Léon: Yeah. So, so two things here. For starters, , I think, I approach this whole conversation and autism theology in general from a Christian perspective in which metaphors like the body of Christ, the temple of the spirit and all of that, those metaphors are communal metaphors and they're important to me. So we are the body of Christ together, autistic and non autistic alike, right?
So what is relevant for one part of the body is, by definition, the relevant for another part of the body. So that, that is one, one, one thing that I quite strongly believe in that we need to have these conversations together. Another thing would be to say, well, why put burden on the autistic people only to figure out, you know, their own challenges and gifts and all of that, whereas actually there's Churches in general have not done a very great job in becoming churches where everyone is really welcome and really belongs, is valued.
So I think in a way, I would like to shift that burden to the non autistic people and say, well, if you're serious about, you know, being the body of Christ together, if you're serious about all are welcome, if you're serious about everyone has something to offer to our community, then you need to put in the work to make that happen.
And To live that and one of the ways that we do in, in, in academia is to research that and to hopefully also with practical outputs and and serving the church in that way and beyond the church, hopefully . Yeah, so we need to do the hard work, all of us autistic people, but also certainly non autistic people.
Now that doesn't mean that I can speak for autistic people or that I can speak as an autistic people. So what I try to do, and I hope I get that right, but no doubt I make mistakes sometimes. But what I try to do is to listen to autistic people a lot through research. informally through personal context.
As you know, we have a lot of autistic researchers within CAT. I try to listen and ground my thinking and my arguments or what I say in the experience, in the lived experience of autistic people as good as possible. But of course, we also need the autistic voices themselves, right? So, I'm never going to take over the whole discussion.
I don't want to, because of that idea of we are here together. And sometimes you get like, you get discussions where, you know, only autistic people can talk about this, or only non autistic people can talk about it, or it's not relevant, or they should shut up. I think we need to, a more kind of reconciliation approach almost, like, no, we are here together, and we need to build each other up really. And so, yeah trying to do my homework and trying to do that as good as possible and respectful for knowing that I am not autistic and respectful then to autistic people. So I don't know whether that were two things. Maybe there were five.
I don't know. But yeah something like that. 
Ian: Sure. 
Léon: Yeah. 
Ian: No I mean, I think that's a really good answer, especially when it comes to advocacy within the church, because the numerical reality is that autistic people are a minority in the general population, at least by whatever standard we can look at.
And even more so in the church communities that we're aware of and able to track such things about. So if we leave it up to autistic people to advocate for themselves in church settings, it's just all too easy for church communities to ignore them thinking this is a fringe concern.
This is a small community of people. We don't have to worry about this, right? It's also, you know, some of the, one of the interesting things, and this is my own perspective being autistic is I have really really poor interoception, right? So I am not always aware of my own sensory inputs. I'm not always aware of what's bugging me until it sort of reaches critical mass.
And I just realized I'm ready to explode and there's just too much going on. So having people who are neurotypical maybe and better at identifying some of those sensory inputs, even if they don't generally think about them, they're more capable of isolating the strands than I am personally, that can really be helpful for thinking through some of these issues.
So this is, I mean, it goes to that body of Christ metaphor, right? Like everybody has a part to play. And so I just. I appreciate neurotypical advocates within the church for that reason. 
Léon: Thanks Ian. Thanks for offering me a place at the table. But just to add to that as well is, I mean, and of course this is almost a cliche maybe, but I mean, what works for autistic people works for a lot of other people as well.
So you get that curb effect, right? So, so what works for like someone with a what do you Like a pushchair also works for someone with a wheelchair. And so in with autism, you get the same kind of things. Like, you know, I may not be as put off by the smell of the flowers, but it doesn't mean that I like them, right? So sure. If we have good reasons to kick them out, right? Now, generally I like flowers by the way, but just to give that to, to give an example of how you. How that works out for the whole community. And I think also that. Also that relates to that body metaphor. Like, if one one part of the body body hurts then the whole body hurts.
And so this is one way in which that becomes a reality maybe. 
Ian: Sure. 
Léon: And likewise, it's not just hurt, it's not just challenges, it's also the joys Of course. And talking about the senses. I mean, there's a lot of sensory joy as well. Okay. Great. Let's see how that can spill over to the whole community, right? 
Ian: Right. Yeah. And it's just fascinating that those are, I mean, you know, part of this is realizing that no single community is going to be able to do everything because not everybody has the same sensory needs. Like I realized that flowers are a source of sensory joy for a lot of people.
I have not yet encountered a flower that I actually like the smell of, like, it's not too much. It's not overpowering. I'm not, but I just, it just, it is inconceivable to me--and yet I know that it is true-- that people get joy from the smell of flowers. Like to me, they just don't smell that good. 
Léon: Well, you're talking to someone who loves the smell of flowers, usually.
Ian: Yeah, right on. so on that note, on this idea of, sort of trying to be more inclusive communities, more accepting, more welcoming communities. What would you say to churches who are looking for ways to be more inclusive, more accepting of autistic people in their worship? 
Léon: In terms of the senses you mean?
Ian: Yes. Yeah.
Léon: Right. Okay. I, I think the first step is to become aware of the senses. So just the conversation that we're having and especially like the first 10 minutes or so when we were just, you know, giving examples of this is a sensory aspect of worship. This is sensory aspect of worship. And so just that awareness I think that awareness as a first step helps in, in several ways.
First of all, when we become more aware of the senses we can enjoy them more, right? It's just a simple example. When you have a good meal, when you just pause-- So I'm, I really love good food. I'm a very bad cook, but I love eating good food. Right. But I find myself sometimes just not attending, not giving attention, paying attention to the food that I'm eating.
And sometimes I just need to pause almost and say, well. What am I actually savoring here? What am I actually smelling? And really enjoying that. Just take a moment, right? I love coffee. What I usually do when I get a cup of coffee, I first smell. Just as, almost as a discipline, like I want to train my senses to enjoy, right?
So, so becoming aware, it just creates that joy. I mean, the senses were created by God for you, you know, and God saw that it was good, you know, and maybe God smelled that it was good, right? And so let's enjoy that. So that the first awareness, becoming aware, and that's good for everyone. 
Secondly, I would say if you were aware of particular strong sensory input, in your church, then it would be good to check whether that sensory input is necessary to start with. But also if you know that people have sensory issues-- it could be autistic people, but there's other people as well with heightened sensory perception or hyposensitivity. So, so under sensitivity to senses, yeah, try to become aware of particular sensory input, those particular smells. So for example, if you have a church hall that is lighted with TL lighting, is that what you say in English as well?
TL? Those really fluorescent white lights. In Dutch, we call them TL. I don't know why. 
Ian: We usually just call them fluorescent lights. 
Léon: Fluorescent lights. Okay. So, Now, I know quite a few autistic people who become upset by them and really cause them headaches, literally. And of course, here's the thing that non autistic people need to realize, that sense, when an autistic person says, that sense is really annoying to me, usually it means like, it's really painful.
So and that's the difference between myself, for example, I might not like the lights, but they're not painful to me. It doesn't cause me headache. I'm. I don't need to recover for a couple of hours after the service, whereas I've spoken to many autistic people who actually needs half a day or even more to recover from the sensory input and those lights for--that could be an example usually softer lights work better and better. Not always. So that's the thing. And that's the third thing: Talk to your people, talk to your members in the church. I mean, there is no checklist that I can give like, oh this is what you need to do. Tick the boxes, and then your church is sensory friendly. That's not how it works. Right. Because maybe that person actually needs more sensory input on a particular thing, and would hate the soft lighting and would actually rejoice in the fluorescent lights. So, so talk to the people. I mean, in any discussion on autism and church, I always come back to this, like, why don't you get to know people, you know, in the sense, like a good thing to get to know your brothers and sisters in the body of Christ and just befriend them.
And it will become clear what the real struggles are and what the real gifts are, what the real joys are, because I really don't think that we should always focus on the problems and the challenges and, you know, the difficulties because again, especially when it comes to the senses, there's a lot of sensory delight as well.
And so how can we capture that? Capitalize on that. That sounds really bad. Like I don't like the term, but you know what I mean? Like, sure. How can we make use of that and celebrate that? Yeah. 
Ian: Yeah. It occurs to me that this idea of sort of. actually paying attention to and identifying all the different sensory inputs of, that are part of worship has potential second order benefits too, right, in that if I was, if I were church shopping, if I were looking around for a church community, and I went to their website, and I clicked on the worship page, and it said, in worship, we have these strong smells. We use incense. Our organ is loud. Our lights are fluorescent or non-fluorescent or what have you. What that tells me as an autistic person is this is a place that's done a little bit of work around being a welcoming place for people who have sensory sensitivities in some way shape or form. So even if that's not, even if they're not necessarily describing my ideal worship experience, that's a signal that I'm probably more welcome there than a church that hasn't put any thought whatsoever into it, right?
Léon: Yeah. 
Ian: And I just yeah. Go ahead. 
Léon: And I wonder whether a church who would put their sensory profiles, so to speak, on their website, if I wonder whether they could go one step further if they want and at the same, well, We know that some sensory input can be really difficult and people can struggle with that or especially delight in certain sensory input. Hey, if you feel comfortable, make yourself known to us and, you know, talk to us about it. And maybe there's adaptations that we can make if necessary. So just. Yeah, let's talk. 
Ian: Yeah. It's definitely a sort of unexplored frontier, I feel like, when it comes to worship. At least speaking for the average congregation that I see here in the States it's not commonly explored.
Léon: No, I don't think it is, but that makes it a lot of fun actually to do this research because as you said in the beginning, like once you start to describe it, it's just so obvious that it's all there. And so it's, in that sense, it's not a difficult sell to, to talk about the senses in worship. It's like, Oh yeah, that makes sense.
And then you can create awareness. So it's almost low hanging fruit for churches to, to become more aware of this and do some work on it. And that makes it a lot of fun because then, again, once you become aware of it, then you can start to play almost with it, right? 
Ian: Right, yeah. On the topic of the research that you're doing, do you think that there are other aspects of sensory involvement in worship or in liturgy that still need further exploration, still need further study?
And are there any aspects of senses in worship that you'd like to hear from our listeners about? 
Léon: Yeah, great question and difficult question actually to answer I mean, there's always more research to do. One of the things that struck me doing this research is that there is relatively little theological reflection on the senses. Very often it becomes a discussion about the inner senses or the spiritual senses. There's an old tradition in Christianity or aesthetic theology which sounds like involved with the senses, but actually it's more focused on kind of gazing upon the beauty of God or something like that.
And which I don't mean pejoratively, but I mean, it just takes it away from that physical, sensory experience that I'm talking about. And so there's definitely, there's need for theologians to think more about this, I think. Yeah, I mean, I'm not aware of substantial research that really focuses on the senses in liturgy and worship. There's not a lot out of there out there. So the project that I'm involved with together with Katy Unwin, a psychologist who's specializing in the senses in autism, I think it must be one of the most substantial projects. And of course, one project doesn't cover everything. So yeah, I think what we did, we went to five different types of churches. Well, there's many more types of churches and it would be great to compare that and all of that. So. Yeah there's a lot more to do, I think. And then your second question was, what do I want to hear from listeners about? 
Ian: Regarding senses in worship, yeah. 
Léon: I, so I would be really interested in, in, in hearing, reading from you from the listeners: What are the senses that are most important to you in worship? Or is there a ranking? Is there an order? Or are they all equally important to you? Or let me put it slightly differently: In what ways do you think your senses help you to connect with God? And is there a particular sense that you say, well, yeah, I've, you know, actually I've, I get visions of Jesus or of, or angels. Or no, actually the smell really takes me back, you know, to, because smell and memory are closely linked. The smell actually puts me in a particular kind of prayer-like zone, or it takes me back to a particular church building where I was and where I had my conversion experience or wherever it is, alright? So I'd be really interested to know whether there's particular senses for someone that, you know, that kind of helps them connect to God because that's eventually also what our research is about: Like, how can churches actually make use of the senses? That sounds really bad. It's not instrumental. It's like, how can you 
Ian: engage the senses? 
Léon: Engage the senses? Yeah. Great. To facilitate the encounter with God, because that's, eventually that's what we do on a Sunday. We worship God. That's why we are in church. Right. So. 
Ian: Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, I think that there's a, there's certainly an argument to be made that's the point of incense to begin with, right? Is to condition a sort of experience so that you're revisiting or remembering that experience every time. And I don't want to suggest that incense is the only way to do that.
I'm not particularly Anglo-Catholic or “smells and bells,” but it's just, it's interesting to think about how it feels like we knew some of these things back in our tradition at one point in time, and we've sort of drifted away from that. And it's all the more interesting, you know, when you talk about the need for further research, this idea, I mean, really, when you look at it, it feels like contemporary theology is very interested in incarnation and very interested in embodiment.
And yet, to not talk about the ways that we engage our senses--which you don't really see in a lot of theological writing, or at least I haven't come across--it's just really fascinating. 
Léon: Well, exactly. Yeah. No, you're, that's spot on. But, and interestingly, just to pick up on very briefly on that, what you were saying, the smells and the bells, I mean, that's an idiom, isn't it?
Ian: Yeah. 
Léon: But how sensory is that? 
Ian: Right. 
Léon: So, so usually it's, I think it's used normally in a pejorative way, like, oh, it just smells in the bells. We don't like that. And all of that, but actually look at a smells and bells service, if you want, that is much more sensory or intentionally sensory, let me put it like that because every worship service is sensory as we explored. But intentionally so, I mean, the spells and bells are intentionally sensory. Absolutely. Maybe there is something in going back to that tradition and see what we can learn there. 
Ian: Sure. Sure. Well, we are just about out of time, but before we depart, I do I did just find out that you are going to be appearing at Accessibility in Worship and Liturgy Day Conference in September, is that correct? 
Léon: Yes. That is correct. That is organized by the Joint liturgical group in the UK. It is in Glasgow, and everyone is welcome. 
Ian: And that's 
Léon: And I'm not the only one. There's three other speakers, and it is really good. It is a great lineup. And yeah, it's really interesting because this a liturgical group that says, well, no, we need to take accessibility disability autism and all of that, neurodivergence, we need to take this seriously. And so let's, let's use our annual meeting, a day long meeting just for exploring this topic. So it's great. 
Ian: I'm just thrilled to hear that work is going on, you know, and not that I figured it wouldn't be, but it's just heartening to hear.
Léon: Yeah, definitely. 
Ian: All right. Well, that about wraps us up. I can't thank you enough, Léon, for appearing on our podcast today. 
Léon: Oh, thanks for having me. 
Ian: And thank you as well to our listeners. If you have any questions, you can message us @AutismTheology on Twitter or Instagram, or send us an email at cat@abdn.ac.uk. We'd love to hear from you, even if just to say hi. Our next Cat Chat episode will be out on September 18th. If you have any questions, do send them our way.
Zoe: Thank you for listening to the Autism and Theology podcast. If you have any questions for us or just want to say hi, please email us at cat@abdn.ac.uk or find us on Twitter @AutismTheology.