Hopko’s 23rd maxim, ‘Live a day, even a part of a day, at a time’, asks us to stay with the present moment instead of being swallowed by the past or the future. This is important for autistic Orthodox Christians because autistic minds often run in loops (replaying old conversations, rehearsing future ones, catastrophizing) and can lose contact with the concrete now. To ‘live a day, or part of a day, at a time’ can mean shrinking the time horizon to something your nervous system can bear: the next ten minutes, the next task, this service, this meal, this short walk, this decade of the Jesus Prayer. You are not asked to stop caring about long‑term issues, but to let God meet you in the small, keepable portion in front of you instead of trying to carry all possible futures at once.
Because autistic anxiety and executive dysfunction make ‘just be present’ unrealistic as a bare command, this maxim usually needs concrete supports. These might include using written schedules or visual timers to define chunks of time; pairing brief, sensory‑grounding actions (e.g. touching an icon or making the sign of the cross) with a short prayer whenever your mind gallops ahead; agreeing with your priest or therapist on when to plan so that planning does not take over every moment. When you catch yourself time‑travelling in your head – replaying an awkward conversation from years ago, imagining every way a situation could go wrong – you can quietly name it (‘I’m not in today anymore’), commend the situation to Christ, and gently return to the next small, concrete thing.
Many autistic people also live with trauma, which can make the present feel unsafe and push you either into dissociation or constant future‑scanning. In that context, living ‘a part of a day at a time’ may be all you can do: one service, one commute, one phone call, one hour between alarms. This maxim then converges with Hopko’s later maxims about having a daily schedule, being faithful in little things, and getting help without shame: therapy, medication, and practical supports can make it more possible to inhabit the present instead of only reading about it in spiritual books. Lived this way, the 23rd maxim does not tell you to stop being an intense, forward‑thinking, detail‑tracking person; it invites your mind to stand with Christ now, in this manageable slice of time, where grace is actually given.
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