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Lost in Eden: Dementia From Paradise Aileen Barclay
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University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom Published online: 02 Jun 2015.
Click for updates To cite this article: Aileen Barclay (2015): Lost in Eden: Dementia From Paradise, Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15528030.2015.1028696
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Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging, 00:1–16, 2015 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1552-8030 print/1552-8049 online DOI: 10.1080/15528030.2015.1028696
Lost in Eden: Dementia From Paradise AILEEN BARCLAY
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University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
I look at dementia from an eschatological perspective through personal experience as I supported my husband through his journey into Alzheimer’s disease. Building on the notion of a monastic garden, I draw from the contemplatives to understand my own “kairos” moment that changed my perspective on the way church and other providers offer care. Comparing the church to a garden, I argue that people with dementia are priest-bearing sacraments in whose faces God is seen. Looking into the faces of those with dementia, these priests shepherd us to recognize our illusions about life calling us to greater humility. KEYWORDS aging and spirituality, dementia, prayer, religion, spiritual experiences
This article arises from my personal experience of having built a healing garden in the nursing home where my husband who had dementia was living at the time.1 The article arises from a “spiritual moment” I sensed at the beginning of the garden project as we began to work together to build the garden where everyone within the community—relatives, residents, staff, and friends—could find an expressive, creative space that might help transform the utilitarian rhythms of care common to the residential care of older people within our society. As the story unfolds, I refer to aspects of the project. Drawing on insights from Christian contemplatives and mystics, I attempt to put into words my experience of a spiritual moment as the basis for understanding the character of healing gardens as compared to therapeutic gardens. Bringing together the natural and cultural, I suggest that spiritual truths can be discerned in healing gardens, proposing that their soteriological and eschatological significance challenge our relationships not only with
Address correspondence to Aileen Barclay, University of Aberdeen, King’s College, Aberdeen AB24 5UA, United Kingdom. E-mail:
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those who have advanced dementia but also with ourselves in ways that celebrate life in all its fullness between Cross and Resurrection.
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THE HEALING GARDEN PROJECT In my first encounter with the home, I noticed a large, sadly neglected garden at the rear of the house. Set on the banks of a river in an area known locally as a beauty spot, the home overlooks a beautiful turn of the river where the current flows swiftly, tumbling down over boulders, rocks, and islands as well as being directed by the remains of the nineteenth-century paper-making engineering of mill lades and canal offshoots. Little use was being made of the garden apart from a small tired patio area with a few flowerpots containing the dead remains of summer plants. The sodden unkempt grass was impossible to walk on in November, with slippery deep ruts and puddles. Although the river view was hidden by shrubs and bushes left to their own devices for many years, the eternal sound of the water, birdsong, and the rustle of ancient beech trees on the steep bank beyond the garden spoke a timeless language to me. I felt again the deep sadness of having had to leave my “dementing” husband in the home as a full time “Service User” a few months previously. The word “spiritual” is bandied about as if we all know what it means, but at this moment, it was indeed a “spiritual moment” that led me to reflect in prayer somewhere between lament and despair (Barclay, 2012). Emerging from a confused sense of failure as a wife and compassion for those whose lives are reduced to a timetable arranged around shift patterns and a flagging trust in God, the “spiritual moment” began to unlock for me a new understanding of dementia as gift.
Spiritual Moment Academic study brought me to identify with Luther’s theology of the Cross. He asserts that it is as we give up ourselves and our feeble attempts to do our best, and on our knees confess our inability to do so that we discover the Holy Spirit already with us, raising us up to new life in the abundance of God’s love, which Luther experienced many times during his life (Forde, 1997). Within the reformed evangelical church of which I am a part, there is, however, a received wisdom that seems to hold to the notion that “getting saved” happens once and for all when one accepts Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Thereafter, life is sweet. The experience of living with dementia, however, highlights that this may not in fact be the case. Perhaps in trying to put into words my experience of a spiritual moment, the line from the Lord’s Prayer, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10, KJV), is as good a place to start as any. Yet, it is important to state categorically from the outset that the experience came first, followed
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by this critical reflection a year later. Depressed and broken with the years of struggle trying to care for my “fella” at home, combined with the guilt of eventually having requested full-time residential care for him certainly preceded this particular “God” moment. Yet, it seems to me that thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10, KJV) takes us into the fertile ground of Christian imagination, where we imagine what it would be like if we were able to do on earth as it is in heaven, this side of eternity. It could be that my years of repeating this prayer were met with an answer that day or it could be just wishful thinking. Actually, I really don’t care that much to seek a reason why it may or may not be so. All I know is that on that day, at that time, and in that place, a new horizon opened up to me that over time caused me to see dementia differently. Somehow, the beauty of the natural environment on one side of the home met with the despair of dementia within the home, changing my understanding of God’s story. Some may want to call it a kind of psychological sublimation (Hunter, 1990, p. 1230), while others might evaluate it within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1999) or through Fowler’s stages of faith development (Fowler, 1981). Of course, it may well be. Still, I cannot say that any of these frameworks truly resonates with my experience. More certain for me is that the moment was a kind of spiritual purification where the barriers blocking me from truly sensing God’s love began to be removed, possibly more akin to the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35, NIV). This kairos moment, as I understand it, in Christian thought, is a time when God acts. As Thomas Merton (1999) noted, It is an awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God’s creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life. . . . It is a pure and, virginal knowledge, poor in concepts, poorer still in reasoning, but able, by its very poverty and purity, to follow the Word “wherever he may go.”
Following the Word “wherever he may go” in this article may or may not, at a secondary level of theological reflection, be understood as a kind of evaluation of what I previously knew of my faith combined with a different kind of knowledge—a new ontological knowledge. It represents shifts away from my old beliefs, choices, and behaviors in my faith life where some of the old is becoming friends with the new, but probably, some will likely be left behind forever.
Gardens Gardens are about change and transformation. Like life, they are also about uncertainty from which can spring a sense of awe and wonder. As symbols of eternal change, they are places of reward, of harmony and serenity
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where the depredation of time ends in everlasting existence. As Ursula Badenhorst observes, gardens create boundaries, while simultaneously going beyond them, becoming a sacred space filled with ideas of hope and happiness (Badenhorst, 2009). Transcending the here and now, gardens draw participants into experiences that rely on all the senses, enabling them to move beyond the barriers and experiences usually understood and vocalised through human reason where new spiritual truths can be discerned.
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Therapeutic Gardening Therapeutic gardening, a practice encouraged among people with dementia is designed specifically to address the physical, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual needs of people who use the garden (Trellis [Scottish Therapeutic Gardening Network], 2011). In relation to older people, especially those with dementia, a growing body of research highlights the specific benefits of access to the natural environment by providing easy access to the outdoors and to natural light, something known to be in short supply for residents living in full time nursing care (Chapman, Hazen, & Noell-Waggoner, 2007). Researchers noticed a reduction in pacing and wandering and other agitated behaviours observed in people with dementia. Most of all, therapeutic gardens provide relief from the boredom and fatigue of regimented life in care homes offering opportunities for engagement in complex tasks often thought to be beyond the abilities of those whose executive functioning is failing. The physical benefit of walking in a safely enclosed garden is also restorative, evoking memories of familiar activities from an earlier life and offering sparks for conversation with everyone within the community. Yet, although therapeutic gardening expresses something of the spiritual, in Christian terms, it might be described as a movement that has a kind of godliness that denies its own power (2 Timothy 3:5, NIV). By locating gardening within a theological framework, healing gardens have emerged as spaces where godly power can be and is experienced and understood by Christians.2 Instead of just reminiscing with people who have dementia, the healing garden points us beyond the not yet of Christian life, this side of the kingdom to the eighth day where, led by a child, wolves lie with lambs, and leopards with goats (Isaiah 11:6, NIV).
Healing Gardens Modern healing gardens go beyond the utilitarian approach of therapeutic gardens, attempting to enter the rhythms of life practiced within the medieval cloistered garden. Whereas therapeutic gardens speak about human spirituality, healing gardens draw in and build upon the spiritual truths found in the Christian tradition, including Christian imagination and beauty. By their very nature, secular therapeutic gardens cannot enter the eschatological
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and soteriological dimensions of healing gardens and therefore do not encompass the truths of Christian spirituality in all its fullness.
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What Spiritual Truths? Alister McGrath refers to the powerful images and metaphors of gardens that provide for us windows of perception that turn out to be spiritual truths (McGrath, 2003). The images and metaphors become the doors or gates by which the mind3 enters a reality beyond the physical world to a reality that can offer salvation and hope for the future. Clare Cooper Marcus (1999) proposes that a garden as archetype demands an answer to the question, “What do gardens mean?” For us Christians, there is both eschatological and soteriological significance in gardens. Our Christian story begins and ends in a garden with the cross, at the center of our faith, prompted from events that took place in the garden of Gethsemane. In addition, one of the most important resurrection scenes in John’s Gospel is set in a garden with the risen Christ meeting with the grieving Mary Magdalene. Who among us could not be moved by the words of Christ to the repentant offender being crucified beside him, I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43, NIV)
Notions of heaven or paradise in Scripture are sprinkled liberally with metaphors and images of gardens. The Garden of Eden is a common one, lost in the mists of time mingled with the repeated attempt of human longing to be restored there one day. Ezekiel’s Garden of God (Ezekiel 28:13, 31:8–9, NIV) and Isaiah’s Garden of the Lord (Isaiah 51:3), both seem to speak symbolically of innocence and harmony, as places of peace, rest, and fertility. If McGrath is correct, and I think he may well be, then gardens have to do with the nature of humanity and its final destiny (McGrath, 2003). The human desire for a return to paradise is a yearning for a specific spiritual state. Indeed, Augustine of Hippo drew attention to the human sense of longing, interpreting it as the anticipation that paradise would be regained in heaven. Similarly, Anselm of Canterbury asserted that God created humanity with the explicit intention of leading them into eternal blessedness, and therefore made them yearn for that final goal. For Irenaeus too, human salvation is characterized by the events of Eden, when our final place of restoration will bring to perfection the conditions of paradise (McGrath, 2007). McGrath asserts that the image of the garden brings together the natural and the cultural—the raw beauty of nature combined with the human desire
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to allow the beauty to be showcased, and presented to best advantage by framing it in a certain manner (McGrath, 2003). In the Christian tradition, gardens are often presented and showcased as paradise, expressed through the human longing for life in all its fullness, living together in perfect harmony with God. Suggesting that deep within the human soul there nestles a sense that something is wrong with the world, as we know it, McGrath notes that somehow the world is not quite what it ought to be and seems to be crying out for restoration or renewal (McGrath, 2003). Surely, McGrath’s point has never been so pertinent within twenty-first century culture as it works itself out in relation to the ever-increasing incidence of dementia and the struggles we have as a society to respond to it. Yet, dementia, although a very raw experience for sufferers and carers alike, is sadly often a very natural part of the ageing process. Culturally though, dementia is most often understood as a problem (Dewing, 2008). Even in research concerned with the spiritual dimensions of old age, such a notion can be heard. Reflecting on the hope that dementia will never happen to either of them, MacKinlay (2004) observes a conversation between researched and researcher: Flora and interviewer laughed together about something they hope will never happen to either of them. (MacKinlay, 2004, p. 49)
In a sense, gardens can be understood as a microcosm of the Christian world that have both beauty and utility. They are portals that can lead us to a new world, something understood well within the monastic tradition where cloister gardens were central to the rhythms of their lives together.
The Cloister Garden The cloister garden as an ancient cultural archetype of the contemporary therapeutic garden had sheltered, spacious walkways that gave welcome and a sense of enclosure. The form, pattern, and contents of a sensitively created garden, was thought to foster the link between the inner and outer spiritual journey. The cloister garden was designed to enhance the relationship between the real environment and the one perceived by the individual offering a portal that evoked a sense of the harmonious essence of the divine in their own unique inner world (Roderick, 2010, p. 4). True monasticism, nevertheless, was never intended to lead to isolation, since its task was not only to unite humans to the Holy Trinity, but also to express its human truth among people. The Monastic State was a way of self-expression that needed no pre-requirements, but devotion. Therefore, it was seen as being for every believer.
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Every believer is called to exercise the calling to perfection of the Gospel. He is required to sell everything, offer himself and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. As the beggar of grace, who discovers the One more miserable than himself, he begs for love at the door of his heart and there finds “Eros” flowering into agape and to love of neighbour. (El-Murr, n.d., p. 16)
It is my contention that those who have a close relationship with people with dementia begin to experience something more of their own inner and outer life, including the acknowledgment of the difference between their own lives and those of their relatives, clients, or friends, in as much as we are all unique. However, that does not necessarily separate us from each other, even in the advanced stages of dementia. Gardens, as microcosms of the whole of creation provide a sacred space where all within the community are bound together in harmonious dependency. As Joseph Silter (2000) urged us to remember 50 years ago, creation is a dynamic and interrelated whole. To some extent the notion of the cloistered garden remains part of contemporary approaches to therapeutic gardening, although the depth of Christian thought and understanding is minimal, perhaps bordering on what believers might describe as syncretism. Describing it thus, though, is to fail to see something of the Divine in every person. The Church, however, as the unique community that bears witness to the Christian story, is infused with metaphors of the meaning of healing gardens in Scripture—tradition and experience that can open up new portals for us about the beauty of God’s creation.
Church as Garden As a called out community, the church can be described as a garden, a walled enclosure in rough ground, tended, watered, and cultivated with both beauty and utility acting as a door or gateway to paradise for those within its walls and those without. Allegorically, the church understood as garden is a celebration of the love of God for the world. You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. (Song of Songs 4:12–13, NIV)
In this garden, the tree of death—Gethsemane—has become the tree of life. Joy, gladness, peace, the sound of singing in the eternal presence of God characterises the community, with provision made for everyone, so none need fear the wasting of old age.
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a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:27, NIV)
All, that is, who do not suffer from dementia. Often more knowledgeable about dementia as a problem, than as a gift, like the society in which contemporary churches exist, people who are dementing are often cast aside like weeds—plants that are growing in the wrong place. Yet even in the dung heap as it were, there is life if we Christians could only see it. To do so, we would have to go beyond the limitations of our own rational horizons and the poverty of our understanding of the story to which we bear witness, and enter through the garden gate as lost uncertain people ourselves, as beggars before Christ. There, amidst the soporific atmosphere of aromatics, textures, contours—feral spaces common to healing gardens—we might find ourselves moving closer to the One who made us, open to receiving new spiritual truths about ourselves as well as other members of the community. Come with me by yourselves and get some rest. (Mark 6:31, NIV)
Practically, the dung heap, although often hidden, plays a vital role in the garden. Metaphorically, the dung heap is the place where distillation happens—our lives, our thoughts, our beliefs and choices in preparation for new life.
Beyond Our Horizons Philip Roderick, the director of the Quiet Garden Movement, contends as a former hyper activist (like myself) that the capacity “to be” is God’s gift to us, and a key part of the journey to wholeness (Roderick, 2010). Roderick uses the metaphor of embodied mysticism through prayer where the word does indeed become flesh. Drawing on the words of Paul Evdokimov, the eminent Russian Orthodox theologian, Roderick asserts that we need to become not pray-ers, but prayers. The invitation not only to offer prayer but also “to be” prayer may be part of what Peter meant when he affirmed Christ’s followers as participants of the divine nature. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:4, NIV)
Evdokimov postulates that all of life, each act, each gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become an offering, a prayer (Evdokimov, 1969). Drawing deeply on the Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
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mercy on me a sinner Evdokimov challenges our ofttimes superficial worship, poignantly noting that it is not enough to have moments of praise, for what is of worth for the objects of human love and desires all depend on what is in the heart. And yet, prayer is rarely the first spiritual practice in our feeble attempts to live in harmonious dependence with people who have dementia. All humans, Evdokimov contends, are essentially universal priests. Gardener priests may not like the smell of rotting weeds in the dung heap, but they will cherish its life-giving properties, knowing that without the dung, the rest of life in the garden will be seriously diminished. Similarly, another Orthodox theologian, Oliver Clement, in a reflection on the first verse of Psalm 130, Out of the deep I cry to you, O Lord (Psalm 130:1, NIV), notes that true prayer is not only of the mouth, but of the heart, the whole being, out of the deep (Evdokimov, 1969). Clement argues that there is a correspondence between the depths of the heart and the heights of heaven, a place where our perception is cleansed and where tiny bits of the everyday become revealed in their true glory. The cry presents the focus for our wonder and creativity leading us to the place where the mind of Christ dwells in us in paradisiacal time. It is all very well to speak about the depths of the heart and the heights of heaven and even of the place where the mind of Christ dwells in us richly in paradisiacal time, but what do these ideas mean when we are considering advanced dementia?
CREATION, CROSS, PARADISE Creation as Nature McGrath (2007) asserts that the intellectual foundation of notions of creation rest on the fundamental belief that nature, as God’s creation, mirrors the beauty and wisdom of its Creator. Augustine, too, thought that our feelings of dissatisfaction were a natural consequence of the Christian doctrine of creation since we are all made in the image of our Creator. Moreover, Aquinas thought that the beauty of creation brings about a longing to contemplate the greater longing of its Creator. If, however, the beauty of creation moves us deeply, how much more would we be overwhelmed by the sight of the one who created it? To delight in creation is to be nourished by the anticipation of beholding God face to face. Culturally and in a great deal of practice, the church does not seem to recognize people with advanced dementia, far less acknowledge their presence at all. Yet, if we contemplate on the “priesthood of all believers,” a central tenet in the reformed tradition, then it can be argued that people with dementia are priest-bearing sacraments in whose faces God is seen. Of course, speaking generally about creation tends to conjure up in us images of beautiful mountainous landscapes, or well laid out gardens. It is much harder to see beauty after a storm. Storms upset the expected normal.
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They burst forth blasting and tearing through all that previously seemed to be safe, causing destruction and devastation in their path. Only in their wake can one see the full extent of the damage and ruin. There, in desolation, the wrathful experience of the storm lifts its grotesque head before one’s eyes. Storms are part of the natural, an unwanted gift that forces change where none was wanted. Storms cause despair, a loss of the self, a breakdown of the accepted order. Storms are malevolent, gargoyles that stare unrepentantly amidst the saints. For carers, the lived experience of dementia is very often such a storm that confronts and challenges thoughts of a delightful creation. How can such an unwanted gift possibly fit into our romantic images of creation? To find an answer, a return to the center of our faith, the cross presents a love that transcends all our human longings, expectations, and desires, even after the storm.
Cross In the heat of the day, the terrible beatings, the nails, the crown of thorns, fear, loneliness, and the struggle to keep breathing, the person of Jesus on the cross presents to the human world an image of God, no longer in full control of his faculties. Diminishing physical strength, self-awareness, and control, this God, it can be argued, is beyond rational human reason and perhaps reflected in the lives of people in the advanced stages of dementia, moving in the direction of silence but ultimately towards perfect union with the resurrected Christ. It is this image of the dying Christ that may offer hope for the future. As Teresa of Avila suggested, for example, we are not called to think about Christ, or to form numerous conceptions of him, or even to make long and subtle meditations with our understanding. Instead, we are only asked to look at him (St Teresa of Avila, 2003).
Resurrection Looking at Jesus hanging on the cross in the final throws of death repositions us toward the paradisiacal image of a Garden made new after the storm, where the dung is about to be spread for new growth. Looking at dementia through this lens showcases what we can learn about the life-giving properties of dementia, when lost ourselves, we find ourselves wandering aimlessly in Eden.
LOST IN EDEN There is a sense in which losing ourselves is always part of our learning and becoming (Macmurray, 1999). Moving forward always depends on giving up something of the past, often some of our most deeply held convictions about
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our worldview and ourselves. It is often part of growing older, and perhaps, wiser, but it might also mean the end of old ways of doing life, such as the endless wrestling and warring against dementia and all its consequences. Certainly many of the patristic Fathers, contemplatives, and mystics seem to have been well aware of this (McGrath, 2007). Losing ourselves is equally as much to do with our inner life as it is about our exterior life as we gaze at the devastation after the storm. It returns us to consider anew what Paul Tillich called the Ground of all Being4 only to discover ourselves in an eternal sacred space that offers hope and joy.
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The Ground of the Garden In the garden, advanced dementia expresses its human truths to us taking us beyond the limitations of our own horizons and confronting us with the futility of human time. As we worked on the healing garden in the nursing home, I did not expect to grow fond of people whose noses drip, who spill their food, soil themselves or make senseless noises, but I did—like Thomas Merton, on a shopping trip away from the monastery, beyond his own horizon he realized I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realisation that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs. . . . Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. (Merton, 1999, p. 221)
Human Time in the Nursing Home In the nursing home, the timetable is the important thing. Getting people to the toilet at specific times, moving through to the dining room for meals, unannounced visits from other professionals, getting up and going to bed take precedence over what is described by professionals as “quality” encounters. “Quality” time, however, is a nebulous term (Kendall, Crawford, Taylor, Whittington, & Rose, 2012). On the one hand, it can refer to time during which one focuses on or dedicates oneself to a person or activity. On the other hand, in management terms, it can refer to a set or requirements aimed to meet a set standard. Quality in this sense is always a question of degree. The singsong has to stop, the walk around the garden takes second place, and even the tea trolley interrupts. In some ways, it is like an infant classroom where children learn to obey the teacher, sitting up straight, not moving out of the allocated space and being “helped” back to their seat if they disobey. Kitwood (1997) uses the term malignant social psychology to describe such practices. Malignant moments are not merely confined to individual encounters but encompass the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual
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aspects of life in a nursing home, diminishing the humanness of those who live and work there. Therapeutic gardens certainly do hold the possibility of reducing these malignant interpersonal interactions and communications. In a therapeutic sense, they are places where the utilitarian, dehumanizing aspects of life in a nursing home can be reduced, but not necessarily transformed.
In God’s Time
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In contrast, healing gardens are living examples of what it means to live in God’s time, where one day is like a thousand years. A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered. (Psalm 90:4–6; 2 Peter 3:8, NIV)
This prayer of Moses, the man of God, reminds us that life is short. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant source according to Merton (1999). Yet, in our culture, we do not like to think too much about death as part of life. McGill, in his exploration of suffering notices the way our society cushions itself against the reality of death by describing it in demonic type language. While he used cancer as his example, I rephrase his words using dementia: Take for example, a disease like [cancer] dementia. At the top of their minds people know that dementia involves a breakdown in brain function. . . . But at a deeper, less conscious level they think dementia primarily as the bearer of an energy of destruction. It is . . . an instrument of obscure forces that is released into the brain. There is an occult quality associated in the public imagination with the power of dementia . . . real decisive power seems to belong to the disease. (McGill, 1982, p. 39)
Death seems to be the last taboo in our society, the thing over which none of us has any control. We see its fear in the language used in the literature, policy papers, and research about dementia—even in theology where words and phrases such as “rising tide,” “alarming increase,” “economic burden,” and “epidemic” abound. Our faith, though, holds to the notion that death is not the end, but a new beginning. A healing garden in the nursing home is a cloister where the fear of death does not hold sway, for it lives and grows in God’s time. Kimble contends that our culture lacks symbols of transcendence
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and rituals that give meaning to ageing but healing gardens are signs that suggest this may not in fact be the case (Kimble, 2003).
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Gardens as Sign Healing gardens as signs offer something much more profound. Gardens as a paradisiacal sign provide plenty of symbols of transcendence and the possibility of rituals that give meaning to ageing and to dementia. In the nursing home, the cloister is where we meet face to face with Jesus in the throes of impending death in the lives of people with advanced dementia. Merton was deeply moved by Evdokimov’s assertion that all human beings are essentially universal priests (Shannon, 2005). If he is right, then people with dementia are priests called to remind us of the profoundly, mysterious God that defies all human attempts to propose who or what God truly is. Instead of always looking back though our eagerness to encourage reminiscence work among people with dementia, is it possible that there comes a point when encouraging stimulating brain activities for people with dementia say more about our worldview of life than about engaging in true empathy with our patients or relatives? For as Edith Stein wrote, empathy is an unflinching encounter with alterity that refuses to reduce the “other” to the horizon of the same (Stein, 1989). For this reason, I like Swinton’s use of the term “wilful love” (Swinton, 2012). As he describes it, wilful love requires determination, fidelity, and an intentional desire to be with the other and to continue to love them, no matter what. In some respects though, Swinton’s definition presupposes that I, and others like me, will be able to remain determined, faithful, and intentional lovers no matter what happens. In my experience, such determination, fidelity and love is not always possible, when it relies only on human effort and ability, from an “I.” Wilful love seems to me to be more about letting the lifeblood of the human spirit direct action and being able to recognize the blessing that accompanies it, for the lifeblood is none other than Christ’s will worked out, however hesitantly, in God’s time. It seems to me that the mystics add another dimension to wilful love known from the depth of contemplative prayer. In that sacred space, emptied of the “I” it is God whose will is found, not our own. So long as there is an “I” that is aware of itself, an “I” that can possess a certain degree of spirituality, we still have to pass over the Red Sea for we have not yet left Egypt, asserts Merton (1999). In this place, Merton notes that we are still in the realm of multiplicity, activity, incompleteness, striving, and desire. It is as we lose ourselves in contemplative prayer that we sense the way God loves us, experiencing a gentle compassion for us rather than a demand that we get on with what we or “I” think might be right, made up by ourselves. As Merton noticed, contemplation and compassion are intimately and necessarily linked (Merton, 1999, p. 13). The true inner self, the
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true indestructible and immortal person, the true “I” who answers to a new and secret name known only to himself and to God, does not have anything, even contemplation. This “I” is not the kind of subject that can amass experiences, reflect on them, and reflect on himself or herself, for the “I” is not the superficial and empirical self that we know in our everyday life (Merton, 1999, p. 181). Perhaps these thoughts deepen our understanding of Jesus words:
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You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. (John 15:16, NIV)
For the fruit that Jesus speaks about is not fruit that gets squashed and bruised when too much is expected of it. To me, the fruit is the gentle touch, the affirmative nod, or the smile experienced in the moment when there is no longer any recognizable communication in human terms. As Teresa of Avila observed, these fruits are none other than the intimate sharing between friends that comes to us as a gift of taking time to be alone with the One we know loves us (St. Teresa of Avila, 2003). She observes that we do not need wings to go in search of him, but only need to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us. In human terms, we can see an empty, blank stare in the faces of those with advanced dementia, or contemplatively, God’s simple, lingering look of love, for none of us can truly know what goes on in the inner life of any person, even in the inner life of those with profound brain damage. The church as garden knows this contemplatively. It is the place where we hope that our false selves are brought face to face with the mysterious, unfathomable God of the cross. Practically, the church as garden provides the space for solitude and contemplation particularly in the dung heap although I have not found much of this in the institutional church but from my friends, the “Dementing Priests” in the nursing home. Lost in Eden, they teach us more about our faith. They shepherd us, guiding us to recognize our illusions about life, and, most importantly, they administer to us a different sacrament of humility, accompanied by the music of the flowing river, the birdsong and the tree of death become the tree of life. From the Latin, humus, humility means fertile ground, of the earth (Bloom, 1970). Always with us, always taken for granted, always walked on by everyone, the earth is the place where we dump our refuse, silent and accepting everything in a miraculous way. Out of the dung heap, the earth produces new riches, transforming dementia into a power of life and the possibility of creativeness. Open to storms and sunshine alike, the earth is always ready to receive any seed we sow with the capability of bringing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold out of every seed. Humility requires us to stay close to the earth, to let go of the false and to contemplate paradise.
Lost in Eden
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NOTES 1. See http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cshad/PersleyGardenProject.htm 2. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cshad/PersleyGardenProject.htm 3. When I use the word “mind” I am referring to the “mind of Christ” that dwells in our heart, not merely our brain. 4. The Ground of all Being is seen as the answer to the ontological threat of non-being. Tillich asserts that God is the ground upon which all human beings exist (Tillich, 1951).
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REFERENCES Badenhorst, U. (2009). The eschatological garden: Sacred space, time and experience in the monastic cloister garden. Rondebosch: University of Cape Town. Barclay, A. (2012). Psalm 88: Living with Alzheimers. Journal of Religion, Disability, and Health, 16(1), 88–101. Bloom, A. (1970). Beginning to pray. New York, NY: Paulist. Chapman, N. J., Hazen, T., & Noell-Waggoner, E. (2007). Gardens for people with dementia. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 21(3-4), 249–263. Dewing, J. (2008). Personhood and dementia: Revisiting Tom Kitwood’s ideas. International Journal of Older People Nursing, 3(1), 3–13. El-Murr, J. (n.d.). Paul Evdokimov general thoughts. Retrieved April 23, 2012, from http://www.ibooksdaily.com/doc-detail/paul-evdokimov-generalthoughts-jean-el-murr-383530/ Evdokimov, P. (1969). The struggle with God. NJ: Paulist Press. Forde, G. O. (1997). On being a theologian of the cross. Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Fowler, J. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row. Hunter, R. J. (Ed.). (1990). Dictionary of pastoral care and counseling. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Kendall, T., Crawford, M. J., Taylor, C., Whittington, C., & Rose, D. (2012). Improving the experience of care for adults using NHS mental health services: Summary of NICE guidance. The BMJ , 344(1089). Kimble, M. A. (2003). Final time: Coming to the end. In M. A. Kimble & S. McFadden (Eds.), Ageing, spirituality and religion: A handbook (pp. 434–449). Minneapolis, MN: Augsberg Fortress. Kitwood, T. (1997). Dementia reconsidered. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. MacKinlay, E. (2004). Humour: A way to transcendence in later life. Journal of Religious Gerentology, 16(3-4), 43–58. Macmurray, J. (1999). Persons in relation. New York, NY: Humanity Books. Marcus, C. C., & Barnes, M. (1999). Healing gardens: Therapeutic benefits and design recommendations. New York, NY: Wiley. Maslow, A. H. (1999). Towards a psychology of being. Chichester, NY: John Wiley & Sons. McGill, A. C. (1982). Suffering: A test of theological method. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press.
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McGrath, A. E. (2003). A brief history of heaven. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. McGrath, A. E. (2007). Christian theology: An introduction (4th ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Merton, T. (1999). New seeds of contemplation. London, England: Burns and Oates. Roderick, P. (2010). Quiet places: The newsletter of the quiet garden movement. Newsletter of the Quiet Garden Movement, p. 4. Shannon, W. H. (2005). Thomas Merton: An introduction. Cincinnati, OH: St Andrew Messenger Press. Sittler, J. (2000). Evocations of grace (7th ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. St. Teresa of Avila. (2003). The interior castle. Mirabai Starr (Trans.). New York, NY: Riverhead. Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy: The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 3). Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Swinton, J. (2012). Dementia: Living in the memories of God. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Tillich, P. (1951). Systematic theology. London, UK: Nisbet. Trellis (Scottish Therapeutic Gardening Network). (2011). Supporting health through horticulture. Retrieved from http://www.trellisscotland.org.uk/
