STRONG AT THE BROKEN PLACES:Tales of the Soul ArousedDr. Charles A. Garfield

“I am this groping intensity that is a soul.”

God knows how long I’d been staring at the Borges quote over my desk when the phone rang. It was Jim D., a uniquely tortured soul when I’d known him years ago as a patient at the Ft. Miley VA Hospital in San Francisco. Jim was now Director of Volunteer Ministry at First Calvary Presbyterian Church in the City. He wanted to get together to reminisce about a humbling and hair-raising time we shared one winter solstice over a quarter century earlier. Strangely, the soul words of Borges and Jim’s torment of long ago felt connected; the kind of synchronicity that amazed me yet I’d grown to respect.