(RNS) — The Rev. Sarah Lund describes her deeply personal fifth book, in which she tells the story of how her faith interacts with her neurodivergence, as a “call from God.”
“Storytelling in the first person helps put a face and a body into the data, into the statistics, into all the stigma. I feel like it’s a powerful way to claim our space,” said Lund, the senior pastor at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Indianapolis.
Lund’s newest book — “Blessed Minds: Breaking the Silence About Neurodiversity,” set to be published March 24 — explores what it means to welcome neurodivergent individuals into faith communities and how churches can expand their definitions of inclusion.
“As we seek to share God’s love with all people, we must be more mindful of some of the barriers people might be experiencing, levels of discrimination they might experience,” Lund said.
Lund has long been an advocate for disability and mental health justice in faith spaces. As a minister for disabilities and mental health justice and the first woman to be named senior pastor at First Congregational UCC, Lund felt it was her calling to use her writing to help destigmatize disability, mental health and neurodiversity in the faith community. But she also hopes the book will inspire anyone who picks it up to embrace their identities and stop hiding who they really are.
“I’m inviting us all to take off our masks, to celebrate who we fully are and to start sharing more of our stories about what it means to be made in God’s image by the neurodivergent God who created us to be blessed in our minds and our bodies, spirits and our body minds,” Lund said.
Lund defines neurodivergency — which affects up to 20% of Americans — as “having a brain that functions differently from the majority of people” and neurodiversity as “the range of differences in brain function and behavior among all humans.” But for faith communities to truly embrace neurodivergence, she believes they must take an even bolder step: recognizing God as neurodivergent.
“Even though the Bible does not use the word ‘neurodivergent’ to describe God, in my prayers, meditations, and reflections about the spirituality of neurodiversity, I am coming to experience the Spirit of God as neurodivergent,” Lund writes. “The Spirit of God is playful, whimsical, imaginative, complex, compassionate, deep, powerful and good.”
Her book encourages readers to consider how neurodiversity appears throughout Scripture, particularly in the foundational stories of Genesis.
“I invite other people to take it from there and look at how neurodiversity shows up throughout the Bible, because it certainly does,” Lund said.
Lund said she hopes the book can be a resource for faith groups to engage with and explore. She includes a number of practical guides — including Lund’s Ten Commandments of Neurodiversity, Ten Core Values of Neuroinclusive Ministry and Ten Steps for Developing a Neuroinclusive Ministry in Your Congregation — that she says can serve as a roadmap to inclusivity.
“I would love to see people adapt it, think about it, study it, pray about it and research it themselves,” Lund said. “It’s my own growth as a person and also where I think the church is growing as we prepare for who God’s calling us to be right now to help meet the needs of the world.”
Even the structure of the book is intentionally designed to be accessible for neurodivergent people, including Lund herself.
“When we make things accessible for people with disabilities and folks who are neurodivergent, it’s actually more accessible for everybody,” Lund said. “The status quo is neurotypical. So, what would it look like to intentionally dismantle that and make things accessible for everyone.”
To make the book more engaging and digestible for neurodivergent readers, Lund includes haikus written by neurodivergent people, parables inspired by stories of Jesus in the Bible, lists of key words from the chapter, illustrations and reflection questions. Each section is also marked with symbols: haiku (heart), key word (key), prayer (dove), story illustration (infinity) and reflection question (question mark).
Lund said she looks forward to the conversations around her new book, inviting new questions that foster religious growth and faith formation.
“These different ways of thinking can bring in a new perspective about our relationship to God, to the sacred text, to our sacraments and to baptism and Communion,” Lund said.
