Hopko’s 29th maxim, ‘Be grateful in all things’, does not mean pretending everything feels good, or thanking God for abuse, injustice, or sensory agony. For autistic Orthodox Christians, it means daring to look for God’s gifts within a life that includes overload, shutdown, social misunderstanding, and executive dysfunction. Gratitude can be very concrete and very small: ‘Thank You for noise‑cancelling headphones; for this cup of tea; for the friend who texts clearly; for the priest who believes me; for the beauty of trees and light that my brain notices in detail’. It is less about a mood and more about a chosen habit of naming good things in the middle of mixed days, so that your attention is not swallowed entirely by what hurts.
Because autistic perception often highlights what is intense, wrong, or out of place, this maxim is best practised as a gentle, structured exercise rather than a vague command to ‘feel thankful’. You might keep a short gratitude list, add one line of thanks to your rule of prayer (‘Glory to You for…’), or link gratitude to sensory grounding (‘I feel my feet on the floor; I thank You that I can stand’). On very bad days, ‘in all things’ may shrink to ‘in this breath’, ‘in this icon’, ‘in this safe corner of my room’. Gratitude here does not erase the need to lament or to seek justice; it simply insists that suffering does not have the final word about your reality.
This maxim becomes particularly healing when turned directed at your own autistic life. You can begin to thank God, cautiously at first, for some of the things you once saw only as defects: for your ability to focus deeply, to notice patterns in theology or creation, to be loyal, to care passionately about truth, etc. You do not have to be grateful for every meltdown or exclusion, but you can thank God for sustaining you through them, for the people and practices that help you recover, and for the ways they have made you gentler to others who struggle. Lived this way, ‘Be grateful in all things’ is not a demand to overwrite your pain with pious language; it is an invitation to let your intensely observant mind also become intensely observant of grace, so that even in an overstimulating, confusing world, you regularly glimpse the quiet, particular ways God is already with you.
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