Eaglehawk parishioner, Kobi Paine, shares her experience of faith and her relationship with God. “For me, faith and God are a logical conclusion from looking at the world around me,” writes Kobi.

I was having a conversation with someone the other week, and as these things usually happen, I was asked how I reconcile my faith with the logical, sometimes rigid thinking that comes from being autistic. I have to admit that I stared at them like they had lost their mind for a moment, but then I realised that for them, logic and autism don’t go with their idea of faith, with God. (How they reconcile with the fact that many scientists have faith and yet work in a field driven by logic and semi-rigid thinking is beyond my own understanding.)

For me, faith and God are a logical conclusion from looking at the world around me. The way our existence is a delicate balance that required specific conditions to occur is evidence enough for me to have no doubts about God. The Bible and the Catholic Church simply provide me with a framework to connect to Him and to express my love. This framework of Sunday Mass, saints, devotions, prayers – all of it combines into a ritual that has for the most part been consistent for hundreds of years, and will continue to be so.

That consistency is what provides me with comfort on the hardest days – the days when sounds are too much, when sunlight is too bright, when fabrics make my skin itch and I feel like my brain is about to jump out of my skull. I know that I can walk into a Catholic Church and it will be the same routine, the same ritual as it was the week before, and the week before that, and the week before that.

Although there are a few variations, Mass and the Catholic Church provide a steady rock in a sea of sensory information that my body and brain are having difficulty in processing. Admittedly, at times the chimes and occasional use of incense are too much, as is the somewhat required social interaction once you are a known quantity to the other parishioners, but by falling into the familiar, always constant frame of Mass, I find that I come out of it better than when I went in.

Is it God who has calmed my mind and soul, or the consistency? To be honest, I think it’s both – He knows what I need, when I need it, always. Just because my brain functions differently from most of the population does not mean that I cannot have faith, that I cannot follow God and His Word with all the devotion and love as everyone else. Autism does not preclude God; difference does not preclude God, and it is something that we all need to remember in this world that is ever becoming more connected and exposed to Other.