Monday, August 8, 2011

Who Has the Special Need?

The National Down Syndrome Congress was a life-changing event. Surrounded by hundreds of dancing and laughing children, sharing meals and engaging the children and parents in conversation refocused everything in life.
At some point during the weekend, I began wondering what these children see. So many of them have eyes that drift upward and even some parents told me that they wonder how the children seem things. The closest way to describe the look on their faces is to imagine the look of people that are deep in prayer. I am not talking about endless repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer, but the type of prayer where one feels to be in communion with God. That is the look of these children.
We refer to these children as ‘special needs’ children, but I wonder. . .
Perhaps they can see the angels and see God in ways that we cannot imagine. Perhaps everyone else is really the ‘special needs’ person.
Certainly, these children are instantly trusting of everyone. They seem to just exist to love and to be loved. How odd that we others think that these children have ‘special needs’ when it may be that we have the real special needs. Suppose, as fanciful and Pollyannaish as it sounds, everyone trusted everyone and all we needed to be happy were to love and be loved. Perhaps a more accurate way of stating it would be to say, suppose every person recognized that all we needed to be happy were to love and be loved.

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