Bible Man

When Darren Seidel signed into Sugar Loaf Health Center I was struck by his uncanny resemblance to the actor, Tony Curtis. Same build, same gait, even the same eye twinkle. Coincidentally, that very same weekend I saw a rerun of a movie Mr. Curtis starred in, "The Impostor." As I enjoyed the flick I came to sense the real reason Darren reminded me of the actor's role: they were both impostors.

But I've learned that my hunches, though often right on the money, are off the mark frequently enough not to trust them completely. I need to observe and test my intuition before I can say that my initial perception is sound. So after our first meeting I kept my mind and eyes open.

The three obvious things about Darren that suggested something was rotten in Denmark were that he always carried a Bible. Always. Even to the bathroom. That suggested that he read it on the John. Whether he did or not, somehow it didn't fit. I've found that anything taken to an extreme suggests imbalance, and history well knows what turmoil religious fanatics can reek. The second signal that suggested something was up was that Darren claimed a bit too noticeably --- another sign of an impostor --- that he had a Doctor of Divinity, was an Ordained Minister, and preferred to be called Reverend. I bend my knee to the man of God, one who has chosen to serve the Lord as a profession. But anyone who waves his credentials while clashing cymbals I have learned to be wary of. The third neon blinker was the way the man carried himself: a bit too cockily

for the righteous man he reputed to be. Righteous is fine: glory to the spiritually exhalted. But SELF righteous, that smells of holier-than-thou, and to me, that smells worse than something from the fish market.

Americans do not like to be duped. And haven't we seen many dupers, even at high levels? The frontier quack selling patent remedies that claim to cure every malady from a canker to cancer. The used-car salesman who pedals the vintage coup of the little-old-lady-from-Pasadena. To the President who claims to be the servant of the people but is as crooked as the Burma Road. Worst of all, however, is the False Messiah who claims to be the right hand of God and will save all mankind if his disciples only surrender to him completely. Americans not only do not liked to be sucked in by the con artist, they often become tornadoes when they find they've been duped. I did not want to be the cause of any such storm.

When I sensed that Sugar Loaf's own Bible-carrying Reverend might be a fraud, my first instinct was to issue a warning. But I held myself in because what if Darren were what he claimed and my hunches weren't on the mark? I had to dig deep on this one: I didn't want the Residents hurt, but on the other hand, I didn't want to slander an honest man who happened to appear crooked. The only thing to do was to let time pass and check the Reverend's credentials in the meantime.

Sometimes following a paper trail can be very time consuming which I found out quickly in this case. It seems that administrators of health centers consider private records of the mentally diseased sacrosanct. No one wants to come within a county mile of revealing one's confidential data for fear he will be sued, lose his license, and never again be trusted with secrets. Consequently, the very information I sought was the most difficult to obtain. So difficult that I learned the wisdom behind the farmer's saying, "It was as hard to get as finding hen's teeth." In short, no

matter how long I looked, I found nothing to prove that Darren Seidel was or was not a true Reverend.

While this search was in progress, Darren asked for and was granted permission to carry on a small Bible study group and even oversee an in-house Sunday church service. Naturally I attended. I was impressed. Darren, though perhaps not an exhalted soul, nevertheless did not claim to be any more than a simple minister and this he was. The whole impostor mystique seemed a mistake. I fear I had been too influenced by Tony Curtis' stellar performance. That is, until another thought entered my mind. Curtis had posed as a doctor of medicine and once had to study hard to perform a real operation. Similarly, I thought, why couldn't the self-professed Reverend learn to talk the talk, thereby truly sounding like a bona fide minister, even though he may just be a loony with a dose of illusion of grandeur? Sure, he could sound like a minister --- can't most of us who have been brought up around the Good Book? I concluded that talk alone couldn't verify the Reverend's true identity.

The case of Darren Seidel banged around in my head for several months until I spent a weekend at a professional conference. One of the gist of all the presentations was that health care practitioners should be careful to treat everything professionally: that is, in an unattached mode. We should witness things but never get caught up by them, never get emotional, never get overshadowed lest we lose our objective handling of any Resident. On my way home from the seminars all manner of lights and bells flashed and clanged. Had I not lost my objectivity in the case of Darren Seidel, D.D.? Had not my personal views of frauds and impostors clouded the truth of the man? And in the long run, what harm was Seidel doing even if he were a fraud? He was helping people just as any medical doctor who prescribed aspirin, sugar pills, or any panacea. It really didn't

matter if the Reverend, aka Doctor of Divinity and Ordained Minister, turned out to be a garbage collector or ditch digger. My job was not to expose him but to see that his stay at Sugar Loaf was comfortable and that he didn't hurt anyone.

The eye-opening seminar made me re-realize another part of my job: Residents were at Sugar Loaf for a reason. For me, a non-psychiatrist, non-psychologist, non-medical doctor, and non-theologian, and therefore not qualified to call many shots, it would have been wrong to have exposed the man even if he had been an impostor. My notion that the man was doing more good than bad, whatever his true identity was, was reinforced.

My Journal notes tell me that Darren Seidel slipped into the Sugar Loaf Circuit, moving from one Health Care unit to another. I never heard from him again. Who knows, maybe he even found a congregation to minister on the outside. As far as Tony Curtis and his role, I thoroughly enjoyed "The Impostor." While entertaining, it also made me wonder how many con artists are walking the streets duping us right and left while we don't have even a clue. Sugar Loaf isn't the only place where illusions are lived and misinterpretations made.