“Two of the great 20th-century theorists of care for the dying urged people to be on the lookout for such moments. The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, author of On Death and Dying (1969), encouraged family and medical staff to listen for the ‘implicit communications of dying patients’. The hospice care pioneer Cicely Saunders spoke about the need to attend to a person’s ‘total pain’: not just physical, but social, emotional and, yes, spiritual pain, too.
“Such broad, nuanced forms of care as these are anticipated in the Scottish government’s report ‘Strategic Framework for Action on Palliative and End-of-Life Care’ (2015). The Framework aims to create a ‘culture of openness about death, dying and bereavement’, and to find ways of incorporating people’s spiritual and psychological needs into end-of-life care. But it also prompts the question: why, a generation after Kübler-Ross and Saunders, are such things being ‘called for’ as though they were new, unusual and brave? Why is spirituality not already a routine part of end-of-life care?”
Here are some of my own thoughts in a post “Religion and the Doctor.”
I was able to spend four nights on a cot in my father’s room as he lay dying in a coma at age 94. Waking at night listening to his deep Kussmaul breathing, I stood and prayed at his bedside. I’ve heard that prayer is simply talking to God. I did feel a presence in the room as my father’s soul began to separate from his worn out earthly body. It was so quiet and peaceful after his last breath. Was this “presence” wishful thinking? Perhaps, but just “being and not doing” helped me in the moment. Or was it the “mysterious mutuality of being and doing?”
Your End of Life blog statement of your religious beliefs is a perfect segue to the Presbyterian church’s apology for its “evil acts.” You have twice in recent postings referred to “saving the souls” of kids. This is exactly the thinking and outreach the Presbyterian church is now apologizing for.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2016/10/22/presbyterian-church-apologizes-for-boarding-school-abuses-as-afn-wraps-up-its-convention/
Grown ups who wish to proselytize should do so with their own size.
I don’t have any idea of where you’re coming from on this comment! I disagree with your contention that, “You have twice in recent postings referred to ‘saving the souls’ of kids.” I treated adults and would occasionally explore their spiritual beliefs with them. Do you see a problem with that? I’m certainly not into saving souls, adults or kids!
I was referring to your blog posts, not your former job.
Two of your recent posts have subject headings about “saving souls” and “salvation”. What is confusing about that? What was confusing to me was that a rational person could think it proper or possible to foist their spiritual beliefs onto anyone else, let alone onto young people.
By it’s nature, a “spiritual belief” is, like any other belief, within one’s own head. We can profess to believe anything. It requires no proof to say “I believe.”
One may have a belief that a god or another person, sentient or otherwise, can read one’s mind. One may say there is proof of this condition. Others can argue to the contrary. Either way, columnist Brooks story was about a couple who invite young people to dinner and offer them a place to sleep. If the hosts, Brooks, or his readers see that as an attempt to influence the guests’ relationship to a spiritual world, they should state this from the outset. As I read the Brooks story, the hosts’ offered food, shelter and community. I don’t know where the saving souls reference in your subject heading came from. But it was soon followed by another post about a young man’s salvation.
In terms of the Brooks article “Souls are not saved in bundles. Love is the necessary force” is a stand alone paragraph and a direct quote in the article. It seems to me that Brooks was using “salvation” in a non-religious sense. In the https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/salvation, the first definition is “Preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss.” So the term is not necessarily co-opted by Christianity. In the “Yo yo” article, this young man’s “salvation” was similar – “1.1A – source or means of being saved from harm, ruin, or loss.”
In editorial terms, many articles and comments are sent to me and are mostly put up in the blog. Using my editorial prerogative, I’m not going to shy away from politics, religion, spiritual beliefs, or social justice. The attempt is to keep the blog fun, interesting, and eclectic. Some might find my stances irrational, but I still think the two traits that make us human are the abilities to be rational and free. Free to believe or not to believe.
Thanks for replying to my comments. This is your blog. You use your editorial prerogative to voice your ideas and you encourage your readers to express theirs. One can not ask for more.
One question, then, is : If the blogger respects being “free”, how do they decide which topics to reply to and which to ignore?
With the very antithesis of freedom, I submit. This “fun, interesting, and eclectic” blog is written within a strict economic, social, racial and religious confinement. I contribute in order to discuss exactly the question of freedom. Society is dragging its collective feet. (You are not alone – if you will excuse what might sound patronizing in this.) I should not belabor the same theme of freedom from those who profit off of us that I have brought up so often in past comments.