Years ago, Abbot John Braganza, OSB, stressed to me the importance of keeping my peace. We were on our way to Mass and had hit traffic. I was concerned about getting to Mass on time, not at all about maintaining my peace. I am only now comprehending Abbot John’s wisdom.
Having children with highly sensitive nervous systems to the point of disability has taught me much about the necessity of maintaining my peace. My children and marriage have long set me on a path of healing so that I can best serve and love my family members according to my created potential. Through the ongoing hard work of healing from trauma, of repairing my insecurely attached nervous system, as well as of learning to meet the needs of my neurodivergent marriage and family, I have come upon the wisdom of relational neuroscience and attachment science. I have come to understand the ways in which my nervous system impacts my people and how theirs impacts me.
My best shot at leaving a legacy of faith to my children, at showing them an accurate representation of The Father’s face, is not by means of excellent catechesis or of enough exposure to faith-based experiences or of doing everything to do with church “right”. Rather, it hinges on how well I maintain my peace and as such my connection with my children.
Our parent coach impressed upon me this fact: all learning is an emotional experience for better or for worse. Learning is firstly not a matter of imparting knowledge, facts, figures, and skills. I may deliver all the points of a lesson to my child with precision and accuracy, but his retention of the information will largely depend on the state of my nervous system during the lesson. Was I regulated, and as such, warm and calm? Or was I dysregulated, and as such, cold and chaotic? If I am regulated, warm, and calm, then my child will likely not only retain the information but also remain open and curious. If I am dysregulated, cold, and chaotic, then my child will likely not only not retain the information but also develop a bad taste in his mouth and an aversion to everything that is associated with the experience.
Maslow proposed a Hierarchy of Needs. I propose a Hierarchy of Goods, one whereby the foundation is care for every individual at a relational and nervous system level. The goods of being on time for Mass, of being dressed in our Sunday best, of being able to recite prayers, of being able to stay focused during Mass, of being able to be quiet and to sit still in the pew, of being formally catechized and so on are all beautiful ideals – but they are goods that sit higher up on the pyramid. My observation is that the pyramid among the faithful is inverted. We put those higher goods before the foundational goods, that is, of maintaining our peace and as such of maintaining connection with our people. The connection that I speak of is that of a secure attachment. Without a secure attachment, we cannot be in right relationship with ourselves, with our people, or with God.
I have a daughter who suffers from severe social anxiety to the point where it is difficult for her to be among even us, her own family. Attending Mass is extremely difficult for her. She has a beautiful, brave, and sacrificial heart that only desires to please God. If she could, she would, but oftentimes she cannot. I, as her mother, know that.
She recently came to me on a Sunday morning asking if she had to go to Mass on that particular day. What broke my heart was the obvious weight of her guilt and shame over not being able to meet the Sunday obligation. My daughter knows the ideal: the good of attending Mass. Having seen the recent miraculous progress that she had been making in showing up and in integrating amongst our own family, as well as the amount of energy that it took her to do so, I said to her that she will never learn to feel safe and to belong in the Church if she does not first learn to feel safe and to belong in her own family. That was her first priority, I affirmed to her, and that God knows the priority order of things. I tell my daughter that her decisions to stay back or to go to Mass should be honouring of her capacity, not governed by any feelings of guilt or shame.
I have a son who is so vulnerable to stress that should he need the fuel of food to help to regulate his nervous system, he must eat. Simply the thought of the social and sensory overstimulation of being at Mass can be so stressful for him that he can be drained of his capacity before he even steps foot inside the church. And so, he needs to eat. For him, eating is not a matter of managing hunger; rather, it is a matter of managing nervous system disability. I have had to coach him through his guilt and shame over having to eat within the hour of receiving Holy Communion.
I tell my son that he is not being flippant when he cannot fast, that he desires to honour the fast, that he is free to decide whether he shall receive should he need to eat within the hour of Communion, that it is in his case both good to receive and good to sacrifice should he have the capacity to do so. I tell him not to refrain out of any feelings of guilt and shame, but that should he choose to refrain, it ought to be genuinely honouring of his capacity.
You may wonder, “Well, why cannot he just refrain from receiving The Eucharist if he needs to eat?” Just like my daughter, my son also has a beautiful, brave, and sacrificial heart that only desires to please God. If he could, he would, but oftentimes he cannot. I, as his mother, know that. Would you ask a pregnant or nursing mother who must eat to function and who would otherwise be eligible to receive to refrain? Would you ask a person with a visible disability who must also eat to function and who is otherwise eligible to receive to refrain? The case is the same for an individual with an invisible disability.
A few Sundays ago my youngest son fell into a rage during Mass. I took him outside of the church and allowed him the space and time to release his activation. He yelled the same demand over and over and threw punches at me. Only by the grace afforded to me through my recent trauma and attachment work was I able to remain genuinely regulated and present to him. I remained warm and calm, reassuring him of my warmth and my calm as he tested me, all the while attempting to redirect him to healthier means of moving through his activation. We missed the entire Liturgy of the Eucharist. While I genuinely missed receiving The Ultimate Good that is Jesus, I knew that the priority good in that situation was to be present to my son and not to try to force him into any compliance or to condition him into the practice of white knuckling through whatever difficulty it was that he was experiencing.
In all these cases with my children, I had to find a balance between “the rules” and relationship, between the Letter of the Law and the Spirit of the Law. I had to remember the Hierarchy of Goods. I could have easily lost my peace over my children’s inability to follow “the rules”. I could have easily reached for those ideals, those goods higher up on the pyramid when I had not first taken care of the foundational goods of maintaining my peace and connection with my people. I could have easily bypassed my children’s need for me to help them in the prioritization of the goods, goods which they themselves are not yet equipped to make sense of and to order. I could all too easily be teaching my children that our Catholic faith is about performance, instilling in them an unconscious ableism, that our identity before God is founded in our doing rather than in our being.
Referencing Matthew 22:34-40, Fr. Prior Benedict Lefebvre, OSB, said the following during one recent homily (emphasis added): “Perhaps the Pharisees tested Jesus with the question about the greatest commandment to find out his leanings, so that they could label him. Jesus rises from this sectarian interest to the question of relationship. True religion is not first about favourite doctrinal leanings but about responding to the love we have received. God is continuously loving us into being; it is our honour and our duty to give him back all of our heart, our life, our understanding. Our neighbours are his gift to us, equal to ourselves in dignity, so our response of thanks is to love them for his sake. Likewise, to thank him for ourselves and love ourselves as his gift to us.”
As God continuously loves me into being (not doing), I give him back all of my heart, my life, and my understanding by loving my closest neighbours; that is, my husband and children, for his sake. I would not have come to this place of maintaining my peace and connection with my people if not for the work that God has me doing to heal from trauma, to repair my insecurely attached nervous system, and to learn about my family member’s unique neurodivergent presentations and their respective ensuing needs.
Archbishop Smith has announced a process of renewal for our Archdiocese. I can witness to the renewal that is possible for every member of the faithful, for every marriage, and for every family should we as a church take seriously the inverted Hierarchy of Goods and the building of every human person and every relationship upon the foundations of peace and connection from the nervous system up.
Jen Spicer lives in Mission, B.C.
