Dementia a spiritual journey towards the divine

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Dementia - a spiritual journey towards the divine

• A personal view of dementia
• Christine Bryden

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People with dementia ...

• live within a complex web of social encounters
  that are tainted with stigma.
• Stigma like racism is pervasive and endemic to
  their existence.
• This threatens our spiritual identity.

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Dementia has been called the theological disease

• Dementia entails a loss of self and is
  disintegrative, non-redemptive thus challenging
  theologically.
• But can you truly say my mind is absent and
  body an empty shell?
• Where does my journey begin? At what stage have
  I lost my spirituality?

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What measures my existence as a spiritual
being?

• As cognition fades, spirituality can flourish as
  a source of identity.
• A spiritual self reflected in the divine and
  given meaning as a transcendent being.

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Is spirituality the temporal lobe?

• If I can get my God-experience from a well-placed
  electrode
• will I lose my God-experience when I have lost
  even more of this part of my brain?
• But we know so little about the brain, let alone
  how it relates to the mind and soul.

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The lie of dementia ...

• is that the mind is absent and the body is an
  empty shell.
• This medical model silences the voice of people
  with dementia.
• I am more than a damaged brain. My creation in
  the divine image is as a soul capable of love,
  sacrifice and hope, not as a perfect human being,
  in mind or body.

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I believe ...

• The Christian creeds and confessions start I
  believe, not I remember.
• As I unfold before God, as this disease unwraps
  me, I can feel safe as each layer is gently
  opened out.
• Gods everlasting arms will be beneath me,
  upholding me.

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We are reflected in others ...

• In the family of God, the body of Christi, we are
  what others remember of us.
• Jesus, remember me when you come into your
  kingdom.
• I will need you to be the Christ-light for me, to
  affirm my identity and walk alongside me.

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What about whether I can be in communion with
you?

• Do this in remembrance of me - an action, not
  a cognition, a memory, or an understanding.
• I am part of the body of Christ and of all its
  acts of remembrance.
• The Holy Spirit is within me, despite my diseased
  brain, and helps me in my weakness with groans
  that words cannot express.

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I need to seek emotional healing

• as this disease will increasingly challenge all
  my relationships.
• Within the body of Christ these are oiled by
  the Holy Spirit, but I must do what I can while I
  can.
• As the disease progresses, its the work done by
  others which becomes crucial.

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I need to seek spiritual healing

• for this is eternal.
• As I travel towards the dissolution of my self,
  my relationship with God needs increasing support
  from you, my other in the body of Christ.
• The Holy Spirit connects us - our souls, our
  spirits - not our minds or brains.

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Who I will I be when I die?

• My soul will always be me, even through the
  ravages of dementia.
• It is given life and meaning in Christian
  community.
• You play a vital role in connecting with me at
  this eternal level.

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My journey is a path

• of survival with dignity...
• of making meaning in life... and
• of discovering the glory of God within me.
• We are born to make manifest the glory of God
  that is within us as we let our own light
  shine, we give other people the permission to
  do the same.

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I can feel confident to believe

• I may make all things well and I can make all
  things well, and I shall make all things well
  and you will see for yourself that every kind of
  thing will be well.