Forgetting Whose We Are: Alzheimer's Disease and the Love of God 1st edition by Keck, David (1996) Paperback

by David Keck

Alzheimer's disease - a degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized especially by premature mental deterioration - is the most publicly visible and widely discussed form of a range of disorders known as senile dementia. The nature of Alzheimer's disease, especially its progressive debilitation of the memory, raises key theological issues. What does it mean to be truly human? Does our ability to remember define who we are as persons? When the mind loses its ability to remember, what happens to the life of the soul? When we forget God, does God still remember us? Forgetting Whose We Are offers a Christian understanding of and response to the difficult theological, spiritual, and pastoral problems raised by Alzheimer's disease. Filling an important gap in existing literature by directly confronting the theological challenges of Alzheimer's disease to victims, caregivers, and their communities, the book affirms the classic Christian doctrines that witness to the reality of grace and the promises of salvation even for those who can no longer remember themselves, their families, or their relationship with God.

Paperback

First published August 1, 1996

About the author

David Keck is a New York based writer and teacher who grew up in Winnipeg, Canada.

His novels are published by Tor.

On long winter evenings, he filled pads of newsprint with drawings, cartoons, and stories. His mother made him write on both sides.

After completing degrees in English Literature/History and Education in Winnipeg, he traveled to Britain’s University of Sussex where he earned an MA in creative writing and indulged his taste for exploring the medieval and the Neolithic.

Over the years, he has had the chance to climb through countless castles, cathedrals, tombs, and henges from the South of France to the Orkney Islands. There is something about really being in these places--getting chased by the farmer's dog--that brings the past to life.

David loves to dig up stories that show traces of earlier ways of thinking. He’s endlessly curious about how people actually lived in other times and places, and he wants his readers to join him in an older, stranger world.

In 2004, he moved to New York to marry editor and author Anne Groell. They met in Montreal at the World Fantasy Convention in 2001, and now have an intrepid young daughter together.

For twelve years, he has been teaching English at a public middle school in Washington Heights. He tries to bring his drawings and his imagination to every class, and has become a great proponent of educational technology.

From the streets around the school, you can often see the tower of The Met Cloisters museum, with its medieval treasures, peeking out above the trees. The past is never far away.

David recently fulfilled his childhood ambition of getting his cartoons into print, placing work with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog Magazine, and Random House’s Suvudu website, before it became Unbound Worlds. He currently enjoys populating snapshots of New York's subways, streets, and secret forests with pop-eyed monsters. But, in his fiction, a reader will find the darker side of his imagination.

Reviews

[Mark Watney · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Forgetting Whose We Are, David Keck argues that Alzheimer’s is a “theological disease” because it reminds us of our spiritual dementia, a dementia in which our identities are rooted in who we are as autonomous beings, rather than in “whose we are” as image bearers of God. We ask “Who am I?” rather than “Whose am I?” We boast of knowing God, rather than of Him knowing us.
We keep forgetting, as Keck simply but profoundly puts it, “whose we are.”

[Theresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author 's mother has Alzheimer's Disease. This book is his effort to reconcile disease and the love of God. I found it dry and not well presented, although there were good passages here and there.