How Nonspeakers Need Help in Church

By, Geo, a nonspeaking autistic

Geo is a nonspeaking autistic with trisomy 21, whole body apraxia, and an incredible mind. His passions include advocating for understanding between typically speaking people and nonspeakers, ensuring that his peers and future nonspeakers have access to communication, education, and participation, and educating the general public on whole body apraxia.

He uses a low tech AAC and points to communicate by typing one letter at a time. (Please reach out if you would like to know more).

Here is what he has to say:

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A List of How Nonspeakers Need Help in Church

by Geo Nelson

1. Give nonspeakers time to respond. Be diligent in slowing down.

How it seems to us is that speakers answer for us a lot. Let us communicate back using our hearts instead of our mouths. We understand everything and are hearing everything at the same time so it takes time to filter out what you say from the rest of the background noise.

2. Let regulation be the goal, not compliance.

Our systems as nonspeakers are sensitive to everything. Most nonspeakers have whole body apraxia which is a motor impairment that impacts everything that we do and often because of Apraxia we are not able to speak or move the way we want to. This is incredibly difficult. Every movement we make challenges in the region of the brain that nonspeakers already struggle with because of Apraxia.

3. Let our nervous systems rest in Church.

It’s in church that we are equal, however, our impairment is not what gets in the way. It is perceptions, lots of perceptions that get in the way of having an equally fulfilling and rewarding sacramental life in the Orthodox Church. Christ enters into all of us in the same way through Holy Communion, renovating our hearts in the same way. The Nous is incredibly nondiscriminatory to we who are in broken bodies. Nonspeakers are lessons in seeing not the outside of man but the inner nous so that God may be glorified in His wisdom, love and inscrutibly irrefutable commitment to the least.

4. Love so much more than you think you are able to.

It’s only through sacrifice, hinting always in sacramental respect at the same nature that sacrificing Himself has opened the doors to eternal bliss. Love has saved our souls.

His love makes hard things easy

His love makes old things new

His love lines the hearts of the lost

Bearing our mistakes in His love, safety, help, grace, beauty, in His goodness, His infinite unending giving of love in sacrifice means my God lives to sacrifice on behalf of His bride the Church.

Open spelling has allowed me to communicate. Hardly anyone has what I have and I speak empathetically, haltingly, hopefully, and sacrificially on behalf of Love and for my Nonspeaking sisters and brothers in the faith and all those who see God in one another.

I’m sorry, having Apraxia should not mean I am excluded from any part of sacramental life in the Church. Deriding nonspeakers as not intelligent leads to loss of essential parts of the Body of Christ, the Bride, God’s normative invitation to all mankind.

In Nonspeakers, Love walks among you, often unnoticed, intelligently aware, noticing everything, acknowledging nothing — having inside so much to give and share that most of us turn to communication with God as a means to organize our suffering and live as real humans in this temporary lifetime on earth, always looking forward to our inheritance and new bodies.

Having heard these words, give kindness and, in mind, in heart, and in soul, be one in Christ, Lord of all and Savior of the World.

Going to God’s Divine Liturgy in a Parish that lets me participate in mystery through inclusion as a whole person, capable of confession and able to give and serve in meaningful ways — my experience should be normative, not unique.

Thank you St. Katherine, patron of my home parish.