Forgetting whose we are….

I met a friend yesterday who is doing research into Alzheimer’s and the nature of the person. We had an intriguing and all too brief discussion about the theological and psychological interface in exploring the nature of religious experience in those whose capacity to know, and remember, and relate self-consciously to others, have been impaired. In the finest book I know on Alzheimer’s and pastoral theology, David Keck (son of Leander Keck, the NT scholar), talks from the experience of his own mother’s struggle with the illness. The title itself describes the outcome – Forgetting Whose We Are. The issue isn’t only that the person forgets who they are; it is that they forget whose they are, that they belong to God. That is a spiritual bereavement that requires wise, compassionate and theologically responsible caring.

For reasons personal and pastoral I have long been interested in the human and theological issues surrounding those various conditions that seem to affect a person’s ability to express and experience who they are. This arises largely from pastoral experience of conditions which seem to impair a person’s spiritual responsiveness and awareness of the meaning and presence of others, and of themselves. Does religious experience require  self consciousness, an awareness of what is happening to us? Are spiritual and social experiences of others, and of others in relation to ourselves, and yes of the Other in relation to ourselves, an essential component or dimension of what it means to be a person?

Pastoral experiences over the years have led to deep and as yet unresolved questions about the connections between the love of God, the nature of personality and the value of the person, and the meaning of the image of God. Also, the difference, both practically and theologically, between someone being a person and their being valued, treated and cherished as a human being. Is the word ‘person’ a theological word at all? Or do we need to recover confidence in more theologically hospitable words such as human, created, image of God, in order to instill in the word ‘person’ the moral and spiritual values that mean we cherish and celebrate human beings in all our glory and brokenness?

And what about the nature of God as Triune love, and the essential belonging and identity that exists in such a communion of love? I have a deep theological feeling (verging on conviction), that a Trinitarian theology of love in relation, holds important clues as to how we love, value, cherish, care for and protect, those whose condition affects their capacity for affective and relational responsiveness rooted in self-consciousness.

  In other words, a Trinitarian understanding of God as a communion of love, and a Christian anthropology that sees humanity as communal as well as individual, has to underlie much of our reflection on Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other conditions that impair many of the capacities that are often related to our understanding of the person and the human. And perhaps here, as much as anywhere, we can understand the Communion of Saints as that fellowship of supporting love within which, in prayer and loving care, we hold all those unable (so far as we can know), to fully know and respond to that Love which surely holds and cherishes them, and will restore to them who they are as children of God. I love the finger pointing saint (bottom right of the icon) and the figure held in the middle and surrounded by the communion of saints – it is an image of, in Julian of Norwich’s lovely phrase, being ‘enfolded in love’.

I’m meeting my friend again soon – and we’ll continue the discussion. Meanwhile, I think of several people I know who are now embarked on such difficult journeys – both those who suffer from Alzheimer’s, and those who love them, for who they have been, who they are, and who they will be. And I pray for them…Lord in your mercy……