A ministry of not fixing!

Arriving for my first day as a hospice chaplain over 15 years ago I found a piece of paper stuck to the wall of my office. Apart from this, with the following quote from Henri Nouwen, the room was empty: “We tend to look at caring as an attitude of the strong toward the weak, of the powerful towards the powerless… When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find 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 kinder hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and can tolerate not knowing, nor curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend that cares.”

It has only been through the privilege of accompanying the dying and their loved ones over the years that I have begun to grasp the significance of these few words.

I found myself sharing them in most training sessions I delivered to staff and volunteers, and I remain both inspired and challenged by them.

Good spiritual care, not least at end of life, acknowledges that so much that disturbs, confuses and unsettles the human soul cannot be easily fixed with some words of comfort and a prayer.

That’s not to say that these have no place, for at times they certainly do.

But so often the way in which the light of Christ shines into the darkness within people’s lives is when others come alongside who embody that light, and in so doing help others to face whatever fears or worries need to be faced.

Whenever we sit with people in their darkness, we have an opportunity to allow a space for the discovery of the presence of Christ that is already within each soul, but which for whatever reason may be hard to find or discern.

Rev’d Steve Gurr also runs workshops to help churches and pastoral teams feel better equipped around end-of-life and bereavement care – visit an-cala.co.uk