February PCSBV Newsletter 2023

Spirituality in Palliative Care

The spiritual journey has taken many forms over 10’s of 1000’s of years, in the human quest for meaning, for ultimate connection and sacred assurance. If one side of the coin of human need has been carved with circumstances of illness, fear, suffering, loss, death and the cry of love, then the other side has been carved by the desperate hope to restore life as it was, where divine intervention has often been sought to make all things whole again. In the program run by Bill Harder, to train volunteers to serve with the PCSBV, one of the modules is dedicated to the discussion of spirituality. With many ways to express spirituality it becomes important to prepare how one might best respond if spirituality were to arise in a conversation with a person living with a life- limiting illness. For two years it has been my privilege to facilitate this module. “Spirituality” can be an activating word today; can conjur negative associations, even a repulsive reaction. The Christian faith, for example, has much to answer to, for 1700 years of playing chaplain to empire. Nevertheless, one might still choose to draw upon the Christian prayerful experience and there find a source of inner peace, hope and personal inspiration. It can be a great comfort. In a sense, spirituality, in all its forms, lives on. My hunch is that the couple who came to church that day, felt the same. They came in their need. They held each other. They prayed.

It was a few years ago, she shook my hand, looked in my eyes and started to say something that was suddenly swallowed by emotion. Straining to regain her composure, she whispered to me, “My cancer has come back.” I glanced over to her husband and noticed lines of wet tears running down his cheeks. I opened my arms to them and the three of us embraced and stood there for a moment. There were no words to easily soothe the fear and sadness being shared. Of course, we were also aware that there were other people behind, in line, wanting to proceed out of the church, who did not likely realize all that was transpiring ahead of them. Why were they in church that day? Does there need to be an answer? When a circumstance suddenly crosses our path, dislodging everything in life, a person might reach out to some imagined, greater, loving power and plead for intervention. Teilhard de Chardin once wrote, “We are not so much human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on the human journey.” Suggesting spirituality is part of our DNA. A natural capacity that one can touch by pausing, turning inward, reaching down into the well of our soulfulness, from which, to our surprise, a knowing can arise, “We meet again.”

Richard LeSueur

Thank you to Rev. Richard LeSueur for his contribution to our monthly newsletter.

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