Module 09 Written Assignment

CAMPS questions (“So… what are some things that you are passionate about that you would hope to focus more on now that you are facing retirement?”) as situations warrant.

Bad news Recall again our definition of spiritual care (“helping people to connect with the things that really matter to them”) and that of palliative care and hospice consultant J. S. Lunn (“meeting people where they are and assisting them in connecting or reconnecting to things, practices, ideas, and principles that are at their core of their being.”) These are particularly good frameworks for spiritual inquiry in the setting of “bad news.”

Meeting people where they are means, first, recognizing and honoring the suffering that people bring. Several years ago, I met with the father of a young man who had been killed in a motor vehicle collision with a moose. Tragically, people die every year in Maine running into moose; they are twilight-colored and hard to see at a distance, they have no sense of roadways being human territory, and the bulk of their massive bodies is at windshield height. I recall the first conversation with this distraught man having little to do with meaning, purpose and spiritual sense-making; it really had to do much more with my attempt to just be a caring presence and to give him the opportunity to tell his story about the accident and about his son.

This is an essential first step in conversations with people about bad news… the bank teller who has been held up at gunpoint, the man who has just had a stroke at age 53, the woman who has just learned about a recurrence of ovarian cancer… being present to them with healing intention and creating the emotional and spiritual space for them to tell the stories they need to tell. Focusing on the noble questions of how people cope or where they find spiritual support before they feel heard and understood can be terribly dismissive.

As we meet people where they are, we move to the complementary piece of supporting people’s meaningful connections…

Pick One or Two Areas to Inquire about People’s Spirituality

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“connecting with the things that really matter,” or “…assisting them in connecting or reconnecting to things, practices, ideas, and principles that are at their core of their being.” The spiritual inquiry, therefore, involves:

• What are the “things, practices, ideas, and principles that are at their core of their being?”

• How are they doing with the “connecting or reconnecting?” • What can they do to further strengthen their connections or

re-connections with these things, going forward?

Clinician: So the two of you have gotten over the initial shock of Melissa’s breast cancer diagnosis and you have decided to go for the mastectomy. How would you put into words what’s going to help you make your ways through this? Melissa: We’re in it together… I couldn’t go through this without Steve. Steve: Yea… that and our faith… we’ve kind of fallen away from church in the last few years, but we were talking about our faith always still being there and being important to us.

Clinician: Your caring for each other… great. When you mention “your faith,” how is it that that is important to you right now? Steve: God doesn’t give you more than you can handle… Melissa: That and the idea that everything happens for a reason. Clinician: Is there some “reason” that you see at this point? Melissa: I don’t know… maybe it’ll make us closer… I guess it has done that… maybe it’ll bring us back to church. Steve: Closer, yea… but I’m still kind of burned out on church… for me, the main thing is just trusting God together to work this out.

This brief spiritual inquiry has established a number of points. Caring for each other is sustaining for this couple, and they hope that Melissa’s illness may bring them closer together. “Faith” is important to them, not so much in the form of institutional connections, as privately.