I am a parent of a child with autism (actually two children with autism but one of them can "pass") and I work in a field that is a haven for very high-functioning slightly odd people who in the past would have gone into math (or I suppose music) or, before that, possibly philosophy. I would categorize myself as a very high functioning s…
I am a parent of a child with autism (actually two children with autism but one of them can "pass") and I work in a field that is a haven for very high-functioning slightly odd people who in the past would have gone into math (or I suppose music) or, before that, possibly philosophy. I would categorize myself as a very high functioning slightly odd person (I have deficits but they are not insuperable). In the case of most saints, I read their works and see "they are definitely holier than me" but in the case of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross I read (anything that she was not writing for a general audience / nuns) and see "she is definitely holier than me *and smarter than me"". There are people who are smarter than me who are not also slightly odd (like, I have also read St JP2's thesis on St John of the Cross, or rather the book that was published from it, and he is smarter than me also and I doubt anyone has ever proposed that he was not neurotypical, whatever that word means to anyone today), so that by itself doesn't really indicate anything. What I more commonly try to assess from writings is "was this person a mystic (in the sense that I mean the word)" because sometimes you can smell it on someone's breath like salami (e.g. St Thomas Aquinas writing about love somewhere in the Summa) and because this is just a more interesting (though equally unimportant because not necessary for salvation) question.
I am a parent of a child with autism (actually two children with autism but one of them can "pass") and I work in a field that is a haven for very high-functioning slightly odd people who in the past would have gone into math (or I suppose music) or, before that, possibly philosophy. I would categorize myself as a very high functioning slightly odd person (I have deficits but they are not insuperable). In the case of most saints, I read their works and see "they are definitely holier than me" but in the case of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross I read (anything that she was not writing for a general audience / nuns) and see "she is definitely holier than me *and smarter than me"". There are people who are smarter than me who are not also slightly odd (like, I have also read St JP2's thesis on St John of the Cross, or rather the book that was published from it, and he is smarter than me also and I doubt anyone has ever proposed that he was not neurotypical, whatever that word means to anyone today), so that by itself doesn't really indicate anything. What I more commonly try to assess from writings is "was this person a mystic (in the sense that I mean the word)" because sometimes you can smell it on someone's breath like salami (e.g. St Thomas Aquinas writing about love somewhere in the Summa) and because this is just a more interesting (though equally unimportant because not necessary for salvation) question.