Autism, Prayer and Anxiety, with Henna Cundill

This week, Ian is speaking with Henna Cundill about her research on autism, prayer and anxiety. She shares about autistic experiences of anxiety and how churches can be more understanding. She also shares about how she ended up doing her PhD.

The transcript of the episode is available here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/e98f7761/transcript.txt

Find Henna's 'But Bible Study' series here: But… Bible Study Series – Series Editor: H.C. Dill (butbiblestudy.com)

If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, email us at [e-mail] or find us on twitter @autismtheology.

This podcast is brought to you by The University of Aberdeen's Centre for Autism and Theology.

Website: www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/centre-for-the-study-of-autism-and-christian-community-1725.php

The artwork for this podcast uses the Centre for Autism and Theology Logo, created by Holly Russel.

Creators & Guests

Host

Ian Lasch

PhD candidate at the university of Aberdeen researching autism and the Imago Dei

What is Autism and Theology Podcast?

The Autism and Theology Podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, share relevant resources, and promote ways in which both faith and non-faith communities can enable autistic people to flourish.

Our episodes are released on the first Wednesday of every month. We have a variety of guests who are related in some way to the field of autism and theology. Some are academics, others are people with life stories to share, and some are both!

We also release CATChat every third Wednesday of the month. These are shorter and more informal episodes where your hosts will share news and give you as listeners an opportunity to ask questions and share your stories.

Autism Prayer and Anxiety
Zoe: [00:00:00] 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 you've joined us this week. This podcast is a space where we'll 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 [00:01:00] first Wednesday of every month, with CAT chat episodes every third Wednesday, where your hosts share news and answer your questions. This podcast is run from the University of Aberdeen Centre for Autism and Theology. which we've shortened to CAT. Today, I'm joined by the newly doctor, Henna Cundill, who was recently awarded her PhD.
The topic of her dissertation was "Autism, Prayer, and Anxiety: Conversations about Autistic Experience". So, thank you so much, Henna, for being with us today.
Henna: It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Ian: Of course. So we'll start off just wondering what was it that got you interested in this topic?
What was it that got you interested in studying autism, prayer, and anxiety, sort of, together?
Henna: I mean, it's one of those, sort of, stories where you have to simplify things because it was, a number of different things going on in my life that came together all at [00:02:00] once. But the sort of simplified version is that I was working as a youth worker and I had a surprising number of young people, kind of in quick succession and to a certain extent together, kind of come through the different groups that I was working with, the different programs that I was running who were autistic.
And I began learning quite a lot about autistic anxiety, particularly for teenagers and particularly with some more kind of intensive one to one time that I spent with a couple of young people who were referred to as school refusers, which is a term I now hate because I really didn't feel like they were refusing anything.
If anything, it was often the schools that were refusing things that could be quite simple accommodations. It sort of started to, give me an interest in autism and in this experience of autistic anxiety. And then around that time, I also attended a day conference on Christian mindfulness. And this is when mindfulness was first kind of having this [00:03:00] big surge of popularity.
And somebody had put on this day conference on Christian mindfulness. And I, there was a friend of mine there who was a GP. And I got chatting with her about her son, who was also autistic. And he was having difficulty in attending university and completing his undergraduate degree because of anxiety.
So I asked her, it just quite casually in the course of that conversation. Oh, well, would something like mindfulness. be helpful for him, you know, Christian mindfulness prayer or meditative prayer or anything like that. And her reaction was really surprising because she said, Oh no, I would never recommend that to an autistic person because they're, they're so prone.
These were her words. You know, they're so prone to scrupulosity and OCD and to, you know, getting quite anxious. Then, you know, it could create more anxiety that they must pray every day or something. Bad might happen or this kind of thing. And I'd not really come across that idea before. And of course, as a youth worker, I'm then suddenly really questioning [00:04:00] my own practice.
Like, "Oh no, am I actually really not helping some of these young people that I'm working with?" Because I'm putting this idea out there that this is something they must do and that, you know, there should be some kind of anxiety attached to completing something like daily prayer or things like that. So kind of long story short, when I came to the end of that youth work contract and I was looking for what to do next and thinking that postgraduate study might be the way to go, all those things kind of came together and I ended up studying with the Centre for Autism and Theology, looking at this phenomena of autism, anxiety, and specifically prayer and how the three might be related both positively and negatively.
Ian: Yeah, which sort of segues nicely to the second question I had, which is about the relationship between those, which you've talked a little bit about. But what I, what I wonder, Based on your experience, based on your studies, do you think that there is a unique relationship? Do you think that prayer and anxiety [00:05:00] are uniquely or somehow differently connected for autistic people than for neurotypical people?
Or how would you say, how do you see, how would you describe the relationship between prayer and anxiety?
Henna: Yeah, it's, I mean, that's a great question. It sort of feels a bit depressing that at the end of three years of studying, I still don't know the answer. But that's part of that is just to do with the sheer diversity of autistic experience.
You know, what's true for one person is not true for the next. I think what came out of the project for me, what sort of my autistic participants really did so well, and which then really benefits the wider church as well, is articulate very clearly and with a kind of raw honesty what kind of anxieties can become attached to prayer, both for autistic and non autistic Christians.
But I felt that with my autistic participants, they were really good at just telling it like it is. and kind of not [00:06:00] sugarcoating stuff and just being quite open and raw about some of the difficulties. And to give an example, you know, daily prayer is difficult for everyone to maintain a daily habit of prayer, even those of us that work in ministry or whatever.
It's, it's, it's a really hard world that we live in now. unless you live in an enclosed community where it's built into your structure. And I think non autistic Christians, and I include myself in this, are very good at glossing over that difficulty, downplaying it, shaking it off, just choosing not to think about the fact that Our daily practice isn't that disciplined or or worse, if I'm briefly honest, that we give the impression to others that we're a lot more disciplined or whatever than we really are.
And what was really helpful through the interviews was the way my participants were so willing to be honest about how tough that really is. and how frustrating it actually is, and how much the church impoverishes [00:07:00] itself by pretending otherwise and not actually dealing with the problem. So, yeah, so not necessarily that the anxiety relationship is different for autistic people, although it may be, and I think the autistic experience of anxiety has some kind of distinct factors but more that where non autistic people are able to sort of gloss over things, brush over things, shake it off, or just pretend that things are other than they are.
That kind of honesty that came out of the project was really helpful just to shine a light on some of this stuff.
Ian: Yeah, that, that, to me, that makes sense, right? That speaking as an autistic person, if you tell me something is the rule, right? Like, it is expected that I will pray morning and evening prayer every day, right? Which is in the Episcopal tradition in which I'm I am a part. That's the expectation, at least, at least.
Henna: Yeah,
Ian: what is stated as the expectation. And yet, I think the vast majority of [00:08:00] Episcopalians and probably Anglicans to don't hold themselves to that standard and don't really lose a lot of sleep over it when they when they don't do that, you know, it's, oh, well, I'll get it next time.
Henna: Yeah ,yeah. Right.
Ian: Whereas if you're an autistic person, not, not every autistic person, but speaking for myself as an autistic person, if that's the rule and I've blown it, then, then I feel a lot guiltier, like it keeps me up at night.
Henna: Yeah, no, I think that's very much what came out of the project. And sometimes it was quite heartbreaking for me, you know, as someone who works in ministry, I, one participant said about, oh, you know, Jesus said that some people will come to him and say, "Lord, Lord, and he'll say, I never knew you."
And she's genuinely like, "what if, what if he says that to me?" you know, and like, I'm not diminishing that feeling at all. Do you know what I mean? It's not ridiculous. It's there in scripture, but as a non autistic Christian, I'm quite good at going, yeah, that probably won't happen. Right. You know, I don't, you know, I don't mean we could build a very carefully and [00:09:00] robust theological account as to why exactly that will not happen.
I mean, the very fact that you care about it happening suggests that you're, you're kind of on the right track with your, you know, Christian walk, but, but I don't even, as a non autistic Christian, I don't even need to do that careful theological construction. I just kind of shake off the uncomfortable thing and get on with my day.
And I could really feel that this person who was speaking to me couldn't do that in her own Christian life.
Ian: No, that makes sense. Relatedly, unfortunately, one of the reactions that I see to anxiety among a lot of Christian ministers and practitioners is just a reference or a citation of Philippians 4-- chapter 4, verse 6.
"Don't be anxious about anything, rather bring up all your requests to God in your prayers and petitions along with giving thanks." As though, and I think some people genuinely believe this, if you have enough faith, you won't be anxious, or as though anxiety is somehow the opposite of faith. Do you have an answer you would give [00:10:00] to that?
What would you, how would you respond to that?
Henna: Yeah, this is great. It's a particular bugbear of mine as well. And I mean, as you've already just kind of stated there, as, as we've just talked about, to some extent, anxious about your own Christian practice, well, that's kind of a positive kind of anxiety, surely, you know, it shows that you care, albeit that can become then maladaptive, if it's, you know, not kind of held.
And it's, yeah, it's really interesting. I think one of the difficulties with that particular verse is the way it gets pulled out of context. And I think actually, even in context, it's a little bit, to me, mistranslated which is quite a bold claim. And, you know, I'm sure there are biblical scholars that would like to disagree with me.
But when you look at it in Philippians chapter four, in the preceding verses, Paul has urged for unity in the church. He's pleading with the believers to be of the same mind, to be united. He speaks about his yoke fellows and his co laborers in verse 3, [00:11:00] and then in verse 6 comes this command, do not be anxious.
But the word translated anxious there, merimne, literally means to be pulled apart in different directions or to be divided up. So it can refer to the mind being very busy. And I mean, that's how it's used in the Gospels in Matthew. Five, six with the Sermon on the Mount where we talk about the lilies of the field and see how they're clothed to not be anxious about tomorrow.
It's that idea about not being divided between God and money in particular that Jesus is speaking about just before he uses the word there. So it can refer to that anxious feeling of the mind running in 3, 000 directions all at once. But I just wonder if in Philippians 4, it isn't actually Paul speaking about the community life and not being divided up by whatever is pulling the community apart.
Not least because then in verse 7, he speaks about the peace of God and peace there is Irenae, the bringing back the [00:12:00] unity, the joining together again. And so whether, What's implied there is one's inner thought life in terms of anxiety versus peace, or whether this passage is actually looping back to the earlier bit of the chapter and also of chapter two of Philippians, where Paul refers to a community that's full of grumbling and arguing and people pulling in different directions.
I'm kind of left with that question as to whether we're really understanding what this verse is saying to us. But I guess it's interesting that either way, you've got that model of, you know, anxiety in a sense of dividing up people, either within themselves or within their communities, of unity rather than faith being the antidote, as it were.
So peace as in being whole and being unified, rather than just faith as some kind of nebulous thing that we can somehow grasp hold of. That kind of works. either way. And the idea that if somebody is anxious, they can be brought back into [00:13:00] community to pray together, to rejoice together in a space where, you know, in verse five he says, be gentle with one another, let your gentleness be evident to all.
This seems to be far more constructive thing to suggest to someone that, who really anxious, come and be in this gentle community where we will pray with you and rejoice with you if you need that, rather than go and sort yourself out and then come to church when you feel better, you know, yeah.
Ian: Yeah, it's, I mean, it's interesting because you alluded to this, the idea that anxiety can actually be a good thing, right, that there are ways in which anxiety is a healthy impulse, or can be, right?
But it can go, but that it can go beyond that healthy impulse, right? That it can, it can, it can go to a dark place or a, or a difficult place. What's interesting is that I think that when we talk about anxiety more generally, culturally, it seems that we almost always pathologize it, right? It's [00:14:00] almost always that negative understanding of anxiety that we're talking about, where any anxiety whatsoever is a negative.
I just, I like what you point out in Philippians, this idea that what's really negative is that idea of being torn apart or torn or pulled in different directions because. It sort of gets at the heart of maybe what we could say is a biblical distinction between healthy and unhealthy anxiety. I just think, I think that's a more helpful understanding.
Do you think that's potentially useful?
Henna: I do. I think it's Like, yeah, we, I mean, it's true to say we're all a little bit anxious, you know, that's kind of, that is true and it's not always pathological. Anxiety serves a really essential function in motivating us to take action or not take action, to decide to cross the road at this moment and not that moment.
You know, all of this is, you know, anxiety performing its functional role. But, you know, like you say, it can then become dysfunctional [00:15:00] when, you know, anxiety is preventing someone from doing what they need to do or should do or want to do. And that's where we need to start. Then we talk about it as a pathology.
But then again, in a way that can sometimes over pathologize it. Somewhere in that, in terms of a Christian account of that, we've got this funny balance between the take up your cross and follow me kind of anxiety, the sort of being anxious to please God and, you know, kind of service to God and Christian discipleship.
Maybe it should be hard sometimes, you know, and that did come through from my participants too. They say, you know, well, yeah, daily prayer is really hard for me to maintain because of this, that and the other, but it should be hard. You know, it's, it's a sacrifice of worship. So there's that side of it.
So we're taking up our cross and we're following Jesus. But then at the same time, you know, come to me, all you who are weary and find rest for your souls. For my burden is easy. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. And somewhere we need to hold that [00:16:00] paradox together of difficult faith and a faith that is fitting and kind of suitable for us.
In a way, anxiety holds the key because it's about what's really motivating us. What are we being driven by? Are we anxious to please or are we anxious not to fail? And I feel that that, that fear of Jesus saying, you know, I never knew you is an anxious to fail. kind of thing whereas a sort of, no, but I feel my discipleship should just be a little bit tough and challenging for me sometimes.
Well, that's maybe a less pathological kind of, or a less problematic way to experience sort of spiritual anxiety, if we want to call it that, or anxiety over one's spiritual life.
Ian: Yeah, it occurs to me talking about this that as someone who just recently completed a PhD, you are no stranger stranger to anxiety about an impending deadline, for example, and the motivation that that can be and, and, you know, I think [00:17:00] the other thing that we always have to be careful of is the idea --You know, part of the problem with that interpretation of Philippians 4 that we all, that I, that I often see, at least, is that it tends to blame people for their own anxiety, and that only sort of compounds things, right?
Because then you get anxious about being anxious and the truth is anxiety isn't something that can, that you can just get rid of, or that you can just resolve yourself. So I love the way you talk about that, Sort of gentle community as an antidote for it rather than faith, especially because we so often consider faith this personal thing, right?
Like, I need to do something to get rid of my anxiety, whereas in reality, you're talking about almost a social accommodation, almost a social model of disability, right? What we need to do is create a, a system and a society that doesn't generate An overwhelming amount of anxiety and, you know, [00:18:00] that's not always controllable, but it's something that we, I don't think, think about all that often.
Like, how can we, how can we lessen anxiety in the system?
Henna: Yeah, one of the things I ended up talking about towards the end of my thesis actually was non presence. and how the church, the neurotypically dominant church, interprets the non presence of autistic people when they don't come to the church service, or the prayer meeting, or the house group, or anything like that.
Because that had been something that, Came up quite a few times with participants. They were sort of saying, you know, I, I would attend, but I, you know, because of sensory overload or spoons not having the spoons, I, I just, I can't, and they would find then that their church interpreted that as them pushing the church away rather than the church understanding itself.
as being the barrier there and the one that was doing the pushing away. And this is what I mean about, there are some distinctive things about autistic [00:19:00] anxiety that non autistic people are bad at anticipating and understanding and being attentive to. This is where the sort of double empathy problem comes into play because my experience of anxiety as a non autistic person, I think is so qualitatively different in that way.
So it's the, the sort of. final section of my thesis sort of pushed quite a lot into what churches could do to make that move to reach out and say, okay, actually we understand that you not attending every week is not a sign of you not being committed or not caring. And funnily enough, that does then link back to that bit in Philippians where Paul's talking about the two women who's, the names have gone out of my head, but he says, you know, I urge you to help these women.
The word help there is symbolic, is that literally get hold of them, almost like bring them back in. And I, I mean, I'm quick to say that doesn't necessarily mean force autistic people to attend church every day. That's not necessarily helping, but it's that, it's that [00:20:00] act of reaching out, of making the move not, Expecting everybody else to go away, sort out their anxiety, and then come to church when they feel ready.
And then you're asking them to make the move, and you're putting it all, like you say, on them.
Ian: Yeah, it's, and it's this, it's this difficult calculus that we have, because we view it as such a personal decision these days, church attendance, or community membership, or what have you. And so we, I, I understand.
The impulse to not be, not want to be pushy or not want to overwhelm people or, or, or guilt trip people about not being present you know, because that can be anxiety producing in a way of its own, right, is reaching out and saying, well, why weren't you in church, you know, and so a lot of times the way that you approach that matters a great deal.
deal. And the last thing you want to do is compound the anxiety. But, but I think your point is well taken that we don't always, that we, we tend to view that as a personal decision. [00:21:00] Even when it, even when we know the reasons, we're like, Oh, well, they just, they just didn't want to deal with X or, you know, that sort of thing.
And we very rarely say, is there a way that we as a community could deal with it. address this and make this a more welcoming community.
Henna: Yeah in a sense as well, there's no shortcut to making that happen because it, it's going to be very individualized to the person. So, you know, for, often for me as the non autistic person in this situation, the only thing, the only option I've got for the move I can make is to go all the way back to the beginning of the empathy process, which is attentiveness, of just being attentive and saying, well, that sounds hard, you know, to this person.
I don't know what that feels like. I don't know what it feels like for church to be sensory overwhelmed. Because that's not something I've experienced. It's probably not something I will experience. So can you tell me more about what that's like? You know, and that's where empathy begins with making the [00:22:00] space for somebody to give me that window into their lives, and none of, none of what, of doing that requires them to turn up at church, you know, but that sort of, that reaching out of friendship and being willing to be attentive.
Ian: And that's, that's really good because so often when we talk about autism in theology or autism in the church, what practitioners are looking for is a checklist, right?
Here are the things that we can do to be accepting, to be accommodating, to be welcoming, to foster autistic belonging. And I think you're right, there isn't, that checklist doesn't exist. If it, if it did, you know, it would be all over the place by now, but what you can do is, is actually listen to people and provide space for them to feel as though they can be heard and their concerns can be at least even if they don't know necessarily that there will be addressed, that they're not just shouted at a wall.[00:23:00]
Right?
Henna: Yeah.
Ian: So we won't have the checklist as part of the show notes available for people, but going back and, and making that space and, and listening and, and trying to sort of kickstart that empathy process, I think is a really solid starting point.
Henna: I think it's stopping to reflect. a bit more slowly and carefully on the non presence of people from, you know, your Christian community who you might know are autistic or whatever, or, you know, they might be non present for any number of reasons.
If you don't know the reason, one doesn't necessarily need to assume, oh, they didn't like us. You know, kind of most people don't mind somebody reaching out in friendship if they give you a push you away and rebuff you then fair enough, you know, but usually we don't even get that far.
Ian: Right, right. You've touched on this briefly, but I do want to ask what you would say to people who say, well, everyone's a little bit anxious or how would you, how would you, if you, if you could, is there anything you would [00:24:00] try to correct about the record when it comes to anxiety and autism?
Henna: Yeah, I mean, I guess it. Again, it's sort of that distinctiveness of the autistic experience of anxiety. It really is quite different, I think, to how a non autistic person experiences anxiety. I mean, I'm making huge generalizations there, and they're not always going to hold, hold true for every person. But I mean, one particular example that springs to mind in terms of let's say anxiety about daily prayer and not being able to sustain a habit of daily prayer.
Well, most of us feel a little bit anxious about that or, you know, we experienced that and then I can shake off my anxiety about it and maybe another person can't. But one of my participants said, Oh, I have pathological demand avoidance alongside autism. So that complicates things because these two conditions fight.
One wants structure and routine, and then the pathological demand avoidance doesn't want that at all. And every day is sort of a battle between the two and [00:25:00] you don't know which way it's going to go. And I mean, I listened to her describing that and I thought, I really have no. personal idea, what that might feel like, just as an internal lived experience.
You know, it really is just so other than what I've known. And I think that's what we need to be kind of more broadly open to is that somebody else's experience of anxiety and anxiety about prayer or about anything isn't necessarily what we think we know. So again, it's sort of coming back to that starting point of attentiveness and being willing to be interested in other people's experience and not just try and immediately map it onto your own.
Ian: Yeah, I think that sounds, that sounds right to me. I mean, even anxiety, you know, I have several members of my family who, who are, you know, who have anxiety disorders quote unquote, right? And so suffer from anxiety that is beyond what the average person understands [00:26:00] anxiety to be right if you say anxiety I think everybody has a freight definition of that that they're just plugging in and the reality is anxiety that rises to the level of interfering in quality of life is not just what am I going to have for dinner?
Right.
Henna: Yeah
Ian: Which is, I, and I don't mean to diminish anybody's experience of anxiety, but it's, but it's, it's, it's much more significant than that. It's much, it, it, it does actually impede or, or, or interfere with quality of life.
Henna: Yeah.
Ian: Which is different.
Henna: Yeah, and it's, I mean, Perhaps with social anxiety, this is where that becomes particularly stark.
I mean, everybody comes away from meeting a group of new acquaintances or, you know, you go to an academic conference, give a paper or whatever. And you're all, everybody comes away thinking, Oh, you know, was that actually okay? Did they like me? Were they interested? Was, you know, whatever. But, you know, when, sort of, I do that and then I have that moment of worry and then I shake it off and I get on with [00:27:00] my day, you know, but I know from my participants and from my autistic friends that, you know, from their experience of it, that doesn't just go away by the end of the day, you know, it can, and suddenly, maybe 12 months later, it wakes them up in the middle of the night, maybe at that conference in 2019, when I stammered a bit at the start of my paper, maybe people are still remembering that, you know, and I mean, it's, these things do affect non autistic people and obviously, People with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders will know this but I still, it, it's, It just, there just seems to be something more of an intensity and the difficulty of just moving on from those experiences that comes up with autistic people from what I'm observing anyway.
Ian: Yeah, I think that, that, that difficulty moving on, you know, not to frame it in purely negative terms, but that's, that's a good way to phrase it is, is, you know, when you're talking about autistic social anxiety or autistic anxiety at least in my experience, that's, you know, That's a hallmark of it. It's one of those things that you just can't let go of that you end up ruminating on because, because it's got a hold of [00:28:00] you, in a way.
Henna: I can, I can easily sort of. demonstrate how that turns around to a positive as well. Actually, again, quoting from one of my participants, because he read the line in scripture, be perfect just as your heavenly father is perfect. And I thought, Oh, you know, like, let's sort of took it at face value and got very anxious about that and spent months reading and studying.
just on that one line of scripture. And actually in the interview with me gave this sort of brilliant exegesis of it, showing how he had worked through all his anxieties over that into some, into a really constructive understanding of it that was forming his Christian life rather than debilitating, you know so it, it can work the other way.
But I think, I mean, in his particular case, that was, Partly due to the help of having a peer group around him who suggested that that's what he could do. Yeah, so the community played a role there too of well, you don't just need to be stuck on this. You could actually research it and turn it into [00:29:00] something that would help us all.
Ian: That's, that's very cool because that's I, you know, that's sort of my. Approach to a lot of things, you know, it's like once I encounter a problem that I can't let go of or that won't let go of me, like my inclination is to just try and untie the knot, right? And I think something good can come out of that.
Not that it always does, but that's, that's a, that's a very cool sort of constructive, constructive example.
Henna: Yeah.
Ian: On that idea of sort of not being let go or not letting go of things, on a more personal note, I've seen somewhere else in your writing that you talked about feeling "hemmed in," quote unquote, hemmed in by God.
And that phrasing has stuck with me. Can you describe what you meant by that?
Henna: Yeah, that is, I mean, this is definitely going off on a more personal tangent, but I was really intrigued when you mentioned ahead of time. our recording today that you would be interested to hear more about that. And I don't know if it's so much of a feeling of being hemmed in.
I [00:30:00] think perhaps that's my very imprecise way of describing things because I've got this non autistic way that I use language, which is a nuisance. It's more of an experience, like almost a very practical experience, particularly quite early in my Christian life. So I'm drawing on the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 139.
where he talks about, even if I run to the very ends of the earth, you know, the setting of the sun, you are there. The same week that I became a Christian, I was about 16 and I heard about these two ships that did missionary work around the world. They were run by Operation Mobilization, a missions organization.
It's a big ship. fairly well known. At the time, the two ships they had were called the Doulos and the Logos II. And I have, you know, I had this really strong sense of, Oh, I really want to do that. That would be amazing. You know, that's just, I had a sense of call, I guess I would call it now. I didn't have that kind of terminology at the time because I was a new Christian and I'd come from a non Christian background.
So I was learning the lingo, but I, came away from this event where I'd become a [00:31:00] Christian, just feeling this huge kind of desire to, to go on these ships and do some of this kind of work. But no idea where to start. And I was not a member of a church that would necessarily understand that kind of thing.
It wasn't part of their ethos. Just a sort of little rural Methodist church in the middle of England kind of thing. So. I came away from that thinking, well, this is just impossible. This is never going to happen. Nice dream, but back to reality and went home initially, but then was going across to Helsinki where my family are to see them a couple of weeks later for a trip that had been planned long in advance.
And I get to Helsinki Harbor front on a walk one morning and there's the Logos II, berthed in Helsinki Harbor, one of these ships. And I was able to visit it and talk to the crew members and get all the information I didn't have. And long story short, I did end up going on to serve on, not on the Logos II, but on the Doulos, on the sister ship for a year.
And then while I was with them, this was only a couple of years later. So again, I'd only been a Christian for a couple of [00:32:00] years. Was still relatively new to it all. I was challenged to kind of give my testimony to a church on the shore that we were going to visit. We were in Gibraltar. The church was in just across the border in Spain.
And I really wanted to talk about that experience of Meeting the Logos II in Helsinki and I had a, I knew that there was a verse in scripture somewhere that said like "nothing is impossible with God", or something like that, but I had no idea where it was in the Bible, and I remember frantically flicking through every page of my Bible, trying to, this was before you could just Google it, okay, this is how old I am but yeah, so I was practically flicking through a paper Bible with pages trying to find this verse, and I couldn't find it, and couldn't find it, and in the end we had to get on the minibus and go.
So that was that. So I had all my notes, my testimony, and I was just going to quote it. And then we get to this church, and there's an enormous mural painted on the, the east wall that says, Con Dios, nada será imposible, nothing is impossible, or nothing will be impossible with God. Luke [00:33:00] 1: 37. I know where it is now.
And it was just that, again, that experience of being just hemmed in by God, you know, it was almost like a joke, like, I was here ahead of you, you know. And I mean, there are other stories like that I could tell. I think as, you know, as my Christian walk has gone on, they've got progressively more subtle.
So I often have this feeling that sort of, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poet, says about "earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush is afire with God". And that really stays with me, that those moments where you just, you think you've got to the ends of the earth and then you just find a little glimpse of God in some way there.
I have plenty of, plenty of, non autist sorry, non christian friends and family members who will dismiss it all as ridiculous coincidences and me reading far too much into everything, but that's their prerogative. But yeah, so that's kind of where that comes from.
Ian: Yeah, that's a, it's, it's just always fun when stuff works out that way. It reminded me of a line from George Herbert's The Bunch of Grapes [00:34:00] which is of course another poem where he says, their story, meaning he says, "for as the Jews of old by God's command traveled and saw no town, so now each Christian hath his journey spanned, their story pens and sets us down."
And this idea that, that sort of our lives are in some way, again, constricted, almost, but, but in a good way, right? You know, being shepherded is, is being moved in a direction, whether we want it or not, sometimes, and so that just, that concept of being hemmed in, I thought, that resonates with my experience, I think, with a lot of people's experience, especially in call stories, you hear people talking about, I wasn't ready for that, or I didn't want to take that on, or that sort of thing, but I saw that, I saw that phrasing in It was in something that you'd written elsewhere and I thought, I want, I want to ask about that because that's, that's.
That speaks to me. Do you think that you know, you talked at the beginning about the sort of confluence of several [00:35:00] things leading you down this path towards your PhD and and sort of a number of things coming together, you know, is that to your mind? Is that that same thing? Sort of having a path laid out for you?
Henna: It may well be. Yeah, I mean, I didn't really expect the PhD to lead to an academic, potentially career. I feel like that's a big statement to make at this point when I have a two year part time postdoc to boast of and that's two years is not a long time, but
Ian: it's two years longer Than than a lot of people though.
It's true. I mean,
Henna: yeah. And
Ian: you're on. You're on the right track.
Henna: It's it was such a strange. Again, it was, you know, it's such a funny little postdoc. It has quite specific eligibility criteria that you need to be working part time in ministry alongside it. You know, that it's based in Scotland, that your PhD is from a Scottish university.
It only comes available for applicants once every two years. So it just happened that the year it became available for applicants was the year that [00:36:00] I was finishing my PhD. And, you know, they only take on one person every two years. I'm sure there are many, many more that apply. So that feeling again of being hemmed in, like, I really thought I would come to the end of the PhD and then go back to ministry and to be given the chance to kind of hide from ministry just a little bit longer and play with my books feels like an enormous privilege.
And even to speak kind of tentatively of the potential of it becoming a career I don't know how long I'll be able to hide, but let's see if I can make it to retirement.
Ian: Sure. Well we are just about out of time before we wrap up. Henna, is there anything, any other anecdotes you'd like to share?
Any other insights that you had from your PhD? Anything else that you, any parting shots that you'd like to leave us with?
Henna: I mean, I guess it sounds kind of cheesy and I don't mean it that way, but I, I genuinely, I'm enormously grateful for the raw honesty that came from the participants. They put [00:37:00] themselves out there in that way with me.
Many of them didn't know me at all or only knew me very slightly and yet were willing to take part in these interviews and really tell it like it is. And I think that is hugely valuable to the church that they were willing to do that. So I kind of, those that will be potentially listening to this want to just say thanks again for that and emphasize how important and helpful that was.
And hopefully I can do justice to what they were willing to share and speak about and really make good use of the information that came together with the project.
Ian: Well, thank you so much, Henna, for the work that you've done, that you continue to do, for speaking with us about it today, and of course, best of luck in all future endeavors.
Henna: Thank you.
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 [e-mail] [00:38:00] or find us on Twitter at Autism Theology.