A series of posts about virtue, autism, vocation, and the teaching of history.
With this opportunity to reflect in four parts for Vocation Matters, I want to explore something that I have not really noticed until recently: how much my children have taught me about vocation and about the virtues. These posts will describe an echoed vocation. As I call to my children, I hear an echoed call from them, uncontained and unpredictable and unsettling, that reverberates back into my teaching. I write these posts with their knowledge and approval.
I have spoken and written about my calling as a father to my two children, Kathleen and Peter, for many years. That calling has been informed by my calling as a teacher of history, part of which involves presenting the virtues clearly and winsomely to my students. The past not only offers examples of virtue (and vice) but it also calls us to virtues as rememberers of the past. I have tried to teach virtue to my children as well with attention and creativity because they both have autism. In doing so, I have discovered both their unique challenges and their unique insights.
I: Courage
Every year, my wife Heather and I take our children to the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion. It’s a terrific festival for our small town, with the downtown streets closed off for concerts, vendors, and the large crowds that descend on us each September. Here we can hear all kinds of music, sample interesting foods (including our annual funnel cake), check out all kinds of crafts, watch people, and run into friends. It’s a fun event, and I like taking our children to it.
But for them, this means being surrounded by things they fear. The fact that they come with me, year after year, speaks to their fortitude. I do not say this lightly: my children are the bravest people I know.
In their autistic views of the world, they face terrors every day because everyday things frighten them. Squeaky floors, the call (as opposed to the song) of the American robin, high-pitched laughter or squeals, coughing: to my son Peter, these all sound like screaming, and the sound of screaming lingers in his head. His inclination is to fight these sounds, which he generally does by making high screeching sounds himself, contorting his face and body in an effort to fight an incorporeal foe. This never works, of course, and I have spent countless hours trying to help him through meltdowns in the wake of hearing these everyday sounds.
I have tried to rationalize with him: they’re not screams; you can’t fight sound waves; this is keeping you from so many good things. But autism isn’t always rational, and as hard as he tries, even the possibility of sounds like these keeps him in a state of fear. So a downtown festival may have the goodness of a funnel cake, but it is also a place of constant alarm.
For my daughter Kathleen, the terrors of the world can be crippling. When we are planning to go somewhere or do something, she will invariably ask, “Will there be children?” To those who don’t know her well, the question seems charming; this young woman must really enjoy having children around! But it’s the opposite: Kathleen fears their emotion. The mere possibility that a child will be upset can make her dread the most exciting prospect. A meal at a restaurant, a hike, or a visit with friends can be ominous rather than welcoming. Rhythm & Roots surrounds her with tired and cranky children, so while she loves looking at the crafts displayed by vendors, they are in the middle of a minefield for her.
When I teach the concept of courage in the classroom, I turn to Aristotle, using the tried-and-true example of a burning building with a child inside: not going into the building shows cowardice, running into the building to save the child shows courage, running into the building to save an Xbox shows recklessness. What took me a long time to understand is that for Kathleen and Peter, the ordinary rhythms of everyday life are the burning building. There is no running in to save them because there is no outside; their fears are real, and my efforts to rationalize the flames don’t help. Nor can I protect them from sounds and the emotions of others. If I am going to call my children to courage, then it cannot be by removing their fears. I cannot fix their autism to help them fear more wisely.
But, of course, it wouldn’t be courage if we weren’t afraid. Courage may bring comfort or resolve, but it doesn’t imply the absence of fear. So I am calling them to a daily encounter with things that scare them—not just to the possibility but the certainty that their fears will be realized. And I am asking them to be brave.
Only when I remember the audaciousness of this call do I realize how remarkably courageous they are. They are still afraid—they still react to their fears—yet they keep going places with me. We go to Rhythm & Roots, we go to symphony concerts and museums and restaurants, we go on hikes, and we do so much more. Last summer, I took them to Ireland and Scotland for five weeks, and for all the noises and emotions we encountered, they were willing to step with me into new and uncertain places.
As I come to see the ways in which they have taken up a vocation of courage, I am amazed by their bravery. It is of course frustrating to sit with your son while he melts down in public because someone coughed. It is agonizing to answer, over and over, your daughter’s questions about whether children will be in church on Sunday. But when I remember their courage, my role in this process becomes much easier. For they not only answer my call to courage but they also echo it, calling me to courage as well.
Their call asks me to consider what I am afraid of. The things that they fear are not in the least worrying to me, but when I see their bravery, I realize that I need to face the burning building in which I live: the question of their future. It’s easy to ignore these flames because most of my days are triage, and the constant pressure to get my children through the day allows me to put off the big questions. I can’t resolve those questions any more than they can stop fearing noises and emotions; I don’t know the answers. Nonetheless, I can show courage because they call me to it.
And their call to me also shows me that a vocation of courage demands something of the caller. It demands presence. “Do not fear,” we read in Isaiah 41.10, “for I am with you.” If I’m going to call them to courage in the burning building, I’m going to have to be in there with them. We’ll face the flames side-by-side. And this returns me to my calling as a teacher of history in the classroom. Courage can be found far beyond the battlefield, the cry against injustice, or the menacing unknown. And courage can be displayed by presence with those who face their fears–even through historical memory.
Here in the burning building, it turns out that a call to courage is not a call to stop being afraid. It’s a call to acknowledge fear, to face the flames, and to dance in them. When I call my children and they call me back, it is to joy in the face of terror. Whether it’s a music festival or the uncertainty of their future, we answer that call best when we answer it together.
Martin Holt Dotterweich serves as director of the King Institute for Faith and Culture at King University in Bristol, Tennessee, where he is also professor of history. He is a NetVUE Faculty Fellow, having been a member of the 2019 cohort of NetVUE’s Teaching Vocational Exploration seminar, and he contributed to the forthcoming Scholarly Resources volume Called Beyond Ourselves. His work calls him to an emphasis on vocation both in the classroom and the community; his children continue to shape his understanding of vocation. For other posts by Martin, click here.
