Muxworthy's Musings

  One of the many words of wisdom my Dad has passed onto me was this: ‘Just remember son, civilisation is only skin deep.’ So, what did he mean by that? Basically, because of his study of various wars throughout the centuries what he meant was that the ugly side of human nature isn’t very far beneath the surface of each one of us. The book The Lord of the Flies by William Golding graphically illustrates this, and we don’t have to watch much reality TV these days to see those sorts of attitudes in the raw. For me, I have seen this manifest itself in so many ways, both in me personally and in the world we all inhabit. I was told of something that happened the other day at a petrol station during the latest panic for petrol which brought this home to me. There were a load of vehicles queued outside this petrol station, the drivers were getting angry and stressed with everyone and everything. However, the most insane part of this was that a petrol tanker arrived to make a deliver...

Proverbs 13 v12:  Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. I have just finished reading a book entitled The History of the Jews, it’s quite big book as it spans from Abram to the establishment of the state of Israel in the late 1940’s. One of the points the author makes early on is that outside of the Old Testament, Apocrypha and certain Jewish historians there is very little written history when compared with what we have for other civilisations of antiquity. The reason for this being the fact that because of the stateless nature of the Jews up until the 1940’s, added to the fact that because of persecution and being driven from various countries most history was learned orally with only the scriptures being written down. For me though the thing that comes through in this book is the fact that there have been many false messiahs in Jewish history, both before and after Jesus. This led me to consider the fact that when we look at the trial ...

T he first part of this is going to be a bit obvious for a lot of people. Put quite simply autistics deal very much in truth and facts and can on occasion hang onto them like a dog with a bone. On occasion we don’t so much speak the truth in love, but in way that leaves people shell-shocked. For instance before I realised that things sounded better in my head and should remain there unspoken things like this used to happen: Teacher: King Herod was a very nasty man. Me (age 5): He was so horrible I would have piddled all over him miss! I spent the rest of the lesson standing in the corner. So as you can imagine the whole thing about ‘taming the tongue’ in James 3 is especially difficult for autistics. That is not to say I should use this as an excuse for just blurting out the first thing that comes into my head as I see it as a fact. It was only after more than my fair share of arguments, awkward silences and the benefits of a very forgiving and loving wife do I have to think ...

Some of you may have noticed by now, but through these series of blogs I am trying to work through the attributes I listed when I began this. I have to admit that as I have gone on the more difficult I have found it. This is because I have had to take a good long look at myself and as Oliver Cromwell would say ‘Warts and all’ and come to some sort of conclusion about myself. So here is one of the many paradoxes in my life and that is the fact that I can usually clam up in a group environment but have no problem standing up the front and speaking. It has been quite a source of discomfort for me personally when in a meeting at work, church or in a group of more than four people I can clam up completely. The only conclusions I can draw from this is:   1.       I adopt this ‘silent’ mode simply because I am trying to process all the inputs from the other people and come to some sort of conclusion of my own. 2.       I grew up in...

In a lot of ways this follows on from the last blog and for me was beautifully summed up in a sentence I read in a book about Asperger’s. What follows might appear as immodest as it is funny: ‘If it wasn’t for aspies the human race would be still sitting around having a meeting discussing the principles of the wheel rather than making it.’ I am not going to launch into a great discourse of inventors and innovators throughout history who were possibly autistic. Frankly there has been enough conjecture on the internet without me pitching in! All I can speak of is my experience as a child of God with autism. We as autistics tend to be original/creative thinkers in some shape or form, I know of artists, computer programmers who have autism and are very gifted in these areas. My particular area of creativity had been in the technical design of buildings which nearly always meant coming up with a new way of putting something together – on one project I had to design how a wall made of ...