The Deacon's Bench - September, 2010

A few days ago at the hospital, I received a page to visit a man who had asked for spiritual support. I went up to his room and found a friendly, robust, physically fit man who didn’t seem to be in any great distress. His wife was there too – very friendly too, yet eager to let us have some time to talk alone.

He told me that he had suffered an episode of transient global amnesia (TGA). That’s a condition in which you simply have no memory of what has recently happened to you. It’s not life-threatening and it’s unlikely to reoccur, but it’s frightening when it happens because although you remember who you are, a portion of your life is lost to you forever.

In his case, he’d found himself in a town nearby with no idea why he was there or how he’d driven there. It had shaken him up badly. “I’ve never been out of control before,” he said. “I could’ve killed myself or other people and never even known what I was doing.”

He turned out to be a well-educated person, with an impressive career in the military and later in corporate life. As I listened, the image began to form of a man whose identity and self-worth had been closely tied to his jobs and his performance in them.

It seems that he had retired not long before his TGA episode. I asked about that, and his brow furrowed. “I feel lost now,” he said plaintively. “I’m not sure who I am any more or what I’m supposed to do.” I told him that from a spiritual perspective perhaps his TGA episode was a gift from God – a touchstone, if you will.

Maybe now that he was retired, and there were no more corporate or military masks to wear, his spirit had encountered something within that frightened it. Perhaps something vulnerable had suddenly become exposed, something that was childlike and needy, something that wanted to love and be loved, that might’ve always been there, but had been ignored.

On the other hand, perhaps his spirit was telling him through the TGA that there was something about himself he wished he could suppress or forget. Only he could know for sure what it meant. I encouraged him to explore with God through those he loved and who loved him what the gift might mean.

I listened some more, and was reminded of an observation a co-worker had shared with me decades ago. In a moment of blinding, bittersweet honesty, he had acknowledged his material success and in the same breath said he’d become “everything I never wanted to be.”

I wondered whether the patient in front of me would’ve described himself that way. Perhaps he might’ve even ruefully agreed with Thoreau that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to their graves with the song still in them.”

A chaplain’s job is not to help people feel miserable about themselves, but simply to listen and perhaps say or pray a thing or two that might help a person explore themselves a bit more deeply, and uncover the beauty and power with which he or she has been graced by God. So I kept Thoreau and my co-worker to myself, but I do wish to share them with you. If you choose to think about them, consider doing so in the spirit of Mark 8:35-36: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”