John Gardner is the man.

That kinda sums up my vision for the new asperger's site. Every message board I've seen for ADD and Aspergers involved a lot of whining and navel gazing. I want to be positive - if not downright funny- about the challenges of AS.

That's pretty much always been my vision for BWS too, actually. Even when I was fairly seriously depressed - I didn't want my site to just be a record of my "staring in the abyss" That's boring. And I abhor boring.

For years there was a mural on a building downtown (and not a nice area). It said "The best artist in the world is the one who's having the most fun"

Wow.

I didn't realize that American Idol had been around for that long. :-)

Blest, I can't wait. I agree wholeheartedly with the whining and naval gazing on support sites. It's like an addiction for some. "Feed my need to degrade my kid. Make it seem noble and worthwhile. Pleeeeeease?" So not the point.

This issue of good vs. bad artists is one of the things that prevents me from really dedicating myself to a permanent blog. I have no interest in adding to the deluge of rants and apathy and delusions of grandeur. Then again, if I can see the difference between the two, mayhaps I should trust my Lord to guide me into "a vision of life. . .that is worth pursuing." Like you have. ;)

This is also why I keep showing up here. To call thinklings a diamond in the rough is to miss all the glimmering facets of a cut masterpiece. It's more like. . .the Hope diamond being found in a pile of sand and. . .compost?. . .is that a polite way of putting it?

If one doesn't occasionally glance at one's navel, how will one know when it has lint in it that needs to be cleaned out?
Focusing on the negative all of the time is indeed tiresome, but so is "happy face Christianity". It's a term I've invented to describe the distorted version of Christianity which so often passes for the real thing in today's self-centered Christian subculture.
"Happy face Christians" respond to negativity like a bunch of stoned surfers: "Oh, wow, man, you're bummin' me out. Go somewhere else and let us continue to live in our delusions."
The Bible tells us to bear one another's burdens. But how are we as Christians supposed to bear one another's burdens, if Christian believers aren't allowed to share their burdens with one another? How are we supposed to obey God when he tells us to feed the hungry if we refuse to acknowledge that there are hungry people in the world?
Jeremiah was called the "weeping prophet". And "Jesus wept". There is a time for both laughter and tears.
Good art is all about truth. Sometimes truth is positive. Sometimes it's negative. Focusing on either one to the exclusion of the other is dangerous.
In the art instruction book "Drawing on The Right Side of The Brain", Betty Edwards wrote that often, the easiest way to draw an object was to focus instead on the "negative space" around the object, because one generally has fewer preconceptions about that space than one does about the positive object one is trying to draw. As an artist, I can attest to the fact that her method of teaching drawing really works. And I think there's something symbolically important about that concept of looking at negative space as well.
For example, if one has no concept of injustice, then the word "justice" has little or no real meaning. The word "light" is meaningless to someone who has never known darkness. It is the contrast between opposites which enables us to see things as they are. But one can only see that contrast if one looks at everything which is there, both positive AND negative.
Yes, for a Christian who focuses on the hope we have in Christ Jesus, the story does indeed have a happy ending for us all. But life in the interim can be full of toil, trouble, heartache and misery, even for the elect. "Happy face Christianity" does a disservice to the Body of Christ by creating a mentality in which people think that the best way to deal with problems is to sweep them under the rug and hope that they magically go away. That's an abdication of responsibility. The proper response to negativity on the part of another human being is to give that person a genuine reason to feel hopeful again! But a lot of Christians would rather not do that, because doing that takes real effort, and occasionally, it even takes sacrifice. It's so much easier to mouth empty platitudes, and to "blame the victim" by focusing on the person's negativity instead of focusing on what the explanations for that negativity might be.

Thanks Mark,

I hope you didn't infer from this post that I'm for superficiality, or false happiness.

On the other hand, I'm a huge fan of joy.

And, frankly, there are some Christian sites out there that are, basically, nothing but one long shower of dung about how awful everything is in Christianity.

Standing against that extreme doesn't mean I'm for the other.