I’ve been an editor off and on over the past few years, and have been proud to have commissioned and published quite a few particular pieces. I don’t know if I’ve ever been prouder, though, than to have commissioned this gorgeous short essay by Sam Crane, about how Taoism helped him live with his young son’s severe disability and suffering. Excerpts:

I cannot recount here the many, many hospital stays, the medical crises, the daily challenges of caring for an acutely disabled child in a world ill-suited to that endeavor. It was a time of shattered dreams and stifled hopes. Through all of it, we searched for meaning.

My wife turned more fervently to Christianity, but I could not follow her there. Raised a Catholic, I had long since slipped into skepticism. Transubstantiation might have been the beginning of the end for me: I just could not bring myself to believe, as a teenager, that that was really the Body and Blood. Once that doubt was sown, I came to question God-centered thinking more generally.

So, when faced with the crises — emotional, intellectual, existential — of Aidan’s severe disability, I fell back on the philosophical Taoism that I had encountered as a college student. In a class long ago I had been introduced to the nuances of Taoism. Then it was an intellectual exercise, but now it returned as a refuge. There would not be the distraction of theodicy there, no time and attention taken to defend the goodness of God in the face of anguish and affliction. I did not want to talk about God; I wanted to understand Aidan’s life and my relationship to him.

Taoism helped with that. In its philosophical expression — distinct from its religious form, which deifies certain figures and ritualizes certain actions — Taoism might best be described as naturalistic. It calls our attention to the vast and complex totality of all things: the physical things of this earth, the ineffable things of the heavens, and the timeless things of the universe. The unfolding of all these things altogether spontaneously and simultaneously is what we might refer to as Tao, or “Way.” We humans cannot control Way. We cannot fully understand it. Our language cannot capture its expanse and intricacy. There is no reference to, or necessity for, any God-like figure in philosophical Taoism. The cosmology of Way is, in the words of the great sinologist, Joseph Needham, “an ordered harmony of wills without an ordainer.” All there is is Way, and Way is all there is.

 Read the whole thing. If I weren’t a Christian, I imagine that I would be a philosophical Taoist. There’s a wonderful book,“Christ the Eternal Tao,” by an Orthodox priest-monk who explores Taoist themes in the life of Jesus. His view is that Taoism is the most perfect pagan expression of the spirit of Jesus Christ. Not a substitute of Christianity, not by any means, but nevertheless an astonishing anticipation of God’s later revelation in Jesus Christ.

By the way, Sam, a professor in New England, blogs at Useless Tree, where he explores the application of ancient Chinese philosophy to everyday life. He recently observed the 20th anniversary of Aidan’s birth (Aidan died a few years ago). Sam said his students couldn’t understand the Taoist concept of wuwei, or “do nothing.” Everything in their lives is so planned out; they struggle simply to live in the moment at peace with imperfection. He writes:

As my students worked to gain some understanding of passage 29 of the Daodejing, I quietly reflected on the meaning Aidan provided for me:

Longing to take hold of all beneath heaven and improve it… I’ve seen such dreams invariably fail.  All beneath heaven is a sacred vessel, something beyond all improvement.  Try to improve it and you ruin it.  Try to hold it and you lose it.

For things sometimes lead and sometimes follow, sometimes sigh and sometimes storm, sometimes strengthen and sometimes weaken, sometimes kill and sometimes die.

And so the sage steers clear of extremes, clear of extravagance, clear of exaltation.

I came to learn that a profoundly disabled boy was beyond all improvement.