SPIRITUAL CARE: HEALING PRESENCE

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SPIRITUAL CARE HEALING PRESENCE

• Presentation to the
• Ontario Multifaith Council
• Rev. Dr. Peter Barnes
• June 24th, 2008, Toronto

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Outline

• Introduction
• Presentation Healing Presence
• Doing the inner work
• Spirituality
• Spiritual Essentials
• Comments and Questions
• Conclusion

• 1030
• 1035
• 1135
• 1150

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The Gravy Metaphor

• I want to think of your life and acknowledge and
  understand, Healing Presence. Now imagine you
  are making gravy flour and water mixed together
  in a bottle and poured slowly into the stock. You
  see the mixture getting thicker and smooth. Its
  like your healing presence, deepening, warming,
  connecting, loving, nurturing. Done
  intentionally with care.

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Objectives

• To define healing.
• To consider obstacles that impair healing and
  presence. And the value of naming the obstacles.
• To explore the significance of spiritual
  essentials that foster healing presence.

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Your Objectives/expectations

• ?
• ?
• ?

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HEALING PRESENCE Healing presence is the
condition of being consciously and
compassionately in the present moment with
yourself, another or with others, believing in
and affirming their potential for wholeness,
wherever they are in life.
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• The difference between healing and curing
• Curing the alleviation of symptoms or the
  termination or suppression of a disease process
  through surgical, chemical or mechanical
  intervention
• Healing may be spontaneous but more often its a
  gradual awakening to a deeper sense of self (and
  of the self in relation to others) in a way that
  effects profound change. Healing comes from
  within and is consistent with a person's own
  readiness to grow and to change.
• Healing is the integration of self. People move
  from a
• sense of brokenness to a sense of wholeness. C.
  Puchalski

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Healing is

• Becoming whole, a life-long journey of becoming
  fully human, involving the totality of our being
  body, mind, emotion, spirit, social and political
  context, as well as our relationships with others
  and with the Divine. Healing does not
  necessarily mean being happy or getting what we
  think we want out of life it means growth, often
  with pain.
• Becoming our authentic self, releasing old unreal
  self-images, discovering who we really are, not
  what we think we should be, knowing why we are
  here and what we really value, restoring our
  ability to heed our aspirations.

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Healing Presence

• You cannot do healing presenceyou become healing
  
• presence, expressing it gently yet firmly in
  various ways
• Listening, holding, talking, being silent, being
  still, being in your body, coming home to
  yourself, being receptive
• You can deepen your healing presence by
• slowing down, doing only one thing at a time,
  reminding yourself regularly to come back to the
  present moment
• You can encourage healing presence by being
• appreciative, forgiving, humble, kind.
• Miller, EJ and Cutshall, SC. 2001. The art of
  being a healing presence. A guide for those
• in caring relationships. Willogreen Publishing.

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Why Healing Presence Matters

• When one is truly present to another there is
• An alleviation of loneliness
• An affirmation of ones authentic self and
  invitation to wholeness
• Potential for spiritual bonding
• A deeper sense of our common humanity
• A recognition and acknowledgement of the other as
  person
• An invitation to self-transcendence
• Possibility for greater self reflection self
  revelation
• Sharing on a deeper level, spiritual level
  Butler

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Breath and Music

• Awareness of your breath in order to focus
• Recall a tune that lifts your spirit or evokes a
  positive memory.

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Questions for reflection

1. To what degree do others experience me as a
   healing presence?
2. What kind of person must I be to be a healing
   presence?
3. When I am exhausted and running on empty how do
   I renew my spirit and ability to care? What is
   life-giving in my life?
4. In what ways might my lifestyle need to change
   for me to become a better healing presence?

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Healing Presence Attitude

• An attitude of anticipation that you bring to a
  relationship. The anticipation of making a
  difference, of something changing because of the
  engagement, the relationship.

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Levels of helping relationship
Expert I treat your problem Coach I help and
guide the changes you need Trainer I provide
information and possible motivation for what you
what you have to do Mutuality Relationship is
key we enter into a stage of mutual
vulnerablility and learning.
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Collaborators

• All of you in the healing enterprise are Gods
  collaborators in making this a better world
  more compassionate, gentler, more caring, and
  more sharing we need each other to become truly
  free, to become human, and enjoy the spiritual
  well-being of our creation in relationship to God
  and each other..Tutu, Address to WHO, May 20,
  2008.

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Martin Buber
Martin Buber speaks of the I-Thou relationship
as a reverent being-with the other through which
ones own humanity is confirmed. The primary
word I-Thou can be spoken only withconcentration
and fusion into whole being which can never
take place alone, nor can it take place without
me. I become through my relation to the Thou as
I become I, I say Thou. - Buber, 1958
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• When we honestly ask ourselves which persons
  in our lives mean the most to us, we often find
  that it is those who instead of giving much
  advice, solutions or cures, have chosen rather to
  share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle
  and tender hand. The friend who can be silent in
  a moment of despair or confusion who can stay
  with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who
  can tolerate, not knowing, not curing, not
  healing, and face with us our powerlessness, that
  is the friend who cares.
• Henri Nouwen Out of the Solitude

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Wounded Healer

• Henri Nouwen

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Wounded Healer

• What does it mean to be a wounded healer?
• What does it suggest about my attitude towards
  weakness, deficiencies and vulnerability?

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Henris words

• And where I am injured, I touch my own heart,
• my real identity. I surrender the illusion that I
  am
• perfectly healthy, strong and complete.
• I acknowledge my broken self. This enables me
• to remain vital and more human, compassionate
• and gentle. At the sites of my injures lie also
  my
• treasures. That's where I am in touch with my
• real identity and my vocation.
• There I also discover my potential.

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Being In Life

• In the stillness, in the solitude, in the being
  there is life.
• Energizing life, reaching deep into the core, the
  centre, the self.
• Nurturing heart, nurturing love of self and
  others.
• Responding in faith by being real, genuine.
• Believing in oneself, created whole, well, full.
• No void to be filled, no emptiness, a complete
  package.
• Life is unwrapping the package, finding truth,
• finding home within.
• No searching, no escaping, discovering peace,
  wholeness.
• From the womb weve come and to the earth womb we
  return.
• Remaining, living, connected by the cord, the
  thread of life
• the heart beat.
• Life pulsating in beautiful rhythm, music to the
  ear.
• The beat of life plays on and on and on.
• Peter Barnes, July 14th, 2007 Anamcara, Cupids,
  Nfld.

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The Cave

• The Cave is the place of rebirth, that secret
  cavity in which one is shut up in order to be
  incubated and renewed. C.J.Jung

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Courage to Face a Deeper Pain

• The explosion of anguish leads us to poverty and
  humility. It is this recognition of our
  brokenness and of our wounds which takes us off
  our pedestal in our own eyes, and sometimes in
  the eyes of others, we have been plunged into the
  pit. But if we are helped, we can discover the
  gift of these truths we are no different from
  those who try to serve we too are broken and
  wounded like them in a way we had not realized
  before we are truly together brothers and
  sisters we are a wounded people we can love
  each other, forgive each other and celebrate
  together our oneness.Vanier (1988) p.92-93.

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Spirituality

• The term spirituality refers to direct experience
  of the sacred. Walsh (1999),3.
• A search for the sacred.
• Pargament(2007),32.

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Desmond Tutu at WHO

• You see, we faith and health have been
  together
• a very long time. Health is not only freedom from
  
• suffering and illness Perhaps it would be good
  for
• us to include the recognition that there is an
  intrinsic
• relationship between God and humankind, which
• can be acknowledged as spiritual well-being?
• Perhaps one day this notion of well-being can be
• included in the WHO definition of health?Desmond
  Tutu,
• Address to WHO, May 20, 2008.

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Value of Spirituality

• Strong faith, spiritual practices, ritual
  observances, prayer, and the felt presence of
  ones God and spiritual community often can
  transform anguish into bearable suffering.
• Griffith (2005)

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Religion

• In particular it implies a concern with the
  sacred and supreme values of life.
• Walsh (1999),3.

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Spiritual Needs

• Meaning and purpose to life
• A sense of belonging
• Relationship to self/others/God/Sacred Ultimate
  Being
• Hope
• Creativity

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Spiritual DistressOccurs when the person is
out of harmony or out of their comfort zonesoul
pain

• 
  Behaviors

guilt anger or resentment
sadness or grief lack of meaning and purpose,
powerlessness despair/hopelessness
fear of death feeling life or God has been unfair
religious doubt
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Spiritual Assessment

• Understanding the other not fixing
• Assess through relationship-inviting story
• Exploration of meaning for client
• Evolving processspiritual pathway
• Being presentno need for talking

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Taking a Spiritual Pulse

• How are you within?

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Spiritual Essentials

• Spiritual Pathways
• Reconciliation
• Rituals
• Compassion
• Recognition of guilt, love, suffering, anger
• Hope faith and courage
• Sacred Texts
• Humour

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Tutus Perspective

• Goodness, compassion, love, justice, laughter,
  caring -- these are what will prevail, will
  triumph over their ghastly counterparts. Tutu,
  Address to WHO, May 20, 2008.

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Spiritual Pathways

• Over thousands of years, religious traditions
  have developed pathways to assist individuals in
  their attempts to hold on to the sacred. People
  can construct their own non-traditional pathways
  as well.Pargament (2007),78.

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Reconciliation Path Self, Others and ones God

• Healing Forces such as rebuilding trust and love,
  justice,
• Addressing barriers such as resentment, power,
  fear, anger, defensiveness,

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Forgiveness

• Forgiveness is a spiritual process that has the
  potential to break the individual, family,
  institution, or nation out of previous set
  behaviours and to open up new options for
  self-understanding and action. Balmer
  (2001),P.142.
• Forgiveness operates when love and trust are
  established or reestablished with self, others,
  with the world, and with a power greater than
  oneself. Balmer (2001), P.148-149.

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Engaging/Encountering Self and Others in Illness
transformative and redemptive

• Together they demonstrated that when those who
  hurt us reach out to heal us, reliably and
  repeatedly, and we support their efforts to bind
  our wounds, something extraordinary takes
  placesomething transformative, something
  redemptive.Spring (2004),P.123.

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Rituals

• Rituals are symbolic acts or gestures that can
  assist us throughout our healing journey. They
  are conscious actions that recognize and support
  a life change. Sometimes it is important to
  involve supportive friends in rituals so they can
  bear witness to our grief and our efforts to
  heal.
• -- Ennis, Boland, Murphy (1995) p.121.

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Compassion to Self and to Others

• As we learn to have compassion for ourselves,
  the circle of compassion for otherswhat and whom
  we can work with, and howbecomes wider.
• Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, p.105

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Compassion is Healing Presence

• For compassion begins within oneself and moves
  out to others.
• Begins now, in the present, is immediate and
  momentary.
• It is nurtured and fostered in the loving-heart,
  in the eyes that seek beauty.
• It grows in the goodness, in the openness, in the
  acceptance.
• Compassion ebbs and flows, in rhythm, back and
  forth, like fog along the coast.
• Compassion moves obstacles, transforms, renews
  and heals fractures.
• Compassion is infinite, everlasting, available
  and restorative.
• Compassion deepens love, acceptance,
  understanding and defines truth.
•  
• Compassion fosters forgiveness.
  Forgiveness fosters reconciliation.
• Reconciliation fosters community. Community
  fosters love.
• Excerpt from the poem Compassion, by Peter
  Barnes, July 11, 2007

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Potential Impact of Guilt

• Potential harmful side effects to clients such as
  guilt and implanted belief that ill-health may
  result from insufficient faith.Sloan (2001)

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God and love

• NO WOUND is so trivial that the love of God is
  not concerned with it. No pain is so deep, so
  long-standing, that the love of God cannot reach
  it. Every shock, every bleeding wound, every
  anger and grief is not only encompassed by that
  love but is also held and transformed by that
  love.
• -- Flora Slosson Wuellner PRAYER, STRESS, AND
  OUR INNER WOUNDS

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Suffering

• Dont turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged
  place. Thats where the light enters you. Rumi,
  from The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks (1995).
  
• When we look directly at the bandaged place
  without denying or avoiding it, we become tender
  toward our human vulnerability. Our attention
  allows the light of wisdom and compassion to
  enter.Brach (2003),37.

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Chronic and Unresolved Anger

• When important needs like feeling safe and secure
  as well as affirmed and accepted by others are
  threatened, your body immediately readies itself
  in a primitive, physical wayPhysical symptoms
  and even more serious health problems are an
  outcome of chronic and unresolved anger.W.Robert
  Nay

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Hope

• Hope is a process.
• Hope, the response of the spiritual person to
  struggle, takes us from the risk of inner
  stagnation, of emotional despair, to a total
  transformation of life.
• Every stage of the process of struggle is a call
  to move from spiritual torpor to spiritual
  vitality.
• The spirituality of struggle gives rise to the
  spirituality of hope. Chittister (2003) p.97.

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Hope

• Conversion (a shift in awareness) is the first
  stage in the flowering of hope.
• To insist on living even when we feel dead inside
  is hope come to life.
• An act of faith is the beginning of hope.
• When fear of the unknown strangles the heart, one
  tiny act of courage can bring hope alivetiny
  acts of courage are tiny acts of hope. Chittister
  (2003) p.98-100.

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Hope

• Is the ability of patients to free themselves of
  the depression and despair that almost
  universally accompany a serious diagnosis
• The ability to have confidence in their
  physician/health care team and themselves
• The ability to maintain a good quality of life
  even under the most difficult of circumstances.
  Cousins (1989) p.106.

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Theology of Hope

• (Moltmann) sees the task of theology not so much
  as to provide an interpretation of the world as
  to transform it in the light of hope for its
  ultimate transformation by God.Grenz Olson,
  (1992), p.175.
• The single most important category for
  understanding revelation is promise.Grenz
  Olson, (1992), p.177.

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Sacred Texts

• During the early parts of Europes second
  millenniumJews, Christians, and Muslims often
  lived and died side by side in peaceful
  coexistenceQuoting texts and sentiments common
  to all three monotheistic traditions, such as the
  Book of Psalms, respected the dying of all faith
  traditions.
• (Richard Groves and Henriette Anne Klauser,
  The American Book of Dying Lessons in Healing
  Spiritual Pain. Toronto Celestial Arts, 2005. p.
  33.)

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Humor and Illness

• Humor may not cure our bodily ills, but it can
  help us cope with them. Capps (2008), p.101.
• William E. Kelly found that both worry and humor
  serve as coping mechanisms in anxious situations,
  especially those over which the outcomes are out
  of ones control. Illnesses certainly qualify as
  anxious situations in this sense. The worrier
  reduces anxiety by anticipating all the things
  that could possibly go wrong, while the humorist
  reduces anxiety by minimizing the importance of
  what may in fact go wrong.Capps (2008), p.110.

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Holy Hour and Happy Hour

• We all need a holy hour where we grow in our
  faith. We feed our soul and stay focused and in
  touch with Gods presence (the Sacred) in our
  life.
• We all need a happy hour, too, where we can
  balance our daily stresses. Happy hours can be
  filled with surrounding ourselves with happy
  people.
• Happy hours can be holy hours as well they are
  the present moments when we choose to live
  intentionally, allowing those times to touch us
  in the depth of our souls. Smollin
  (2006),p.13-14.

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Thank you for Being Present and for your

• Healing
• Presence