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For Spiritual Care Professionals: Toward a Description of Spiritual Care Linda Watson The heart of Spiritual Care is relationship and paying attention. It is a relationship, in fact, in which a Spiritual Care practitioner (or a spiritual friend) pays attention alongside another to matters of meaning and value. Formal Spiritual Care involves a relationship of trust between such a practitioner and one or more others. The relationship is a fiduciary one. It is well-differentiated and it is surrounded by an ethic of care and non-harm. At the same time, it is truly a field of connection and mutual recognition. Indeed it is in the space created by differentiation and mutual recognition that healing and transformation take place. It is here that the Spirit (God/dess, Love, the Life Force, Ultimate Reality) works to draw us to new levels of wellness and flourishing, whatever that may mean for each of us. Sometimes the attention-paying may look like active listening. Sometimes it will look like speaking in ways that name, validate or re-frame. Sometimes it may look like handling concrete symbols invested with meaning—a chalice, bread, a stone, a candle, a feather. Sometimes it will look like a ritual of some sort—a ritual of ending or of beginning, of blessing or of joining. Sometimes it may look like just “being there” in a moment of decision, crisis or change. It is my experience that life at points draws individuals and groups to places of disruption. These places of disruption are points at which the old ways of knowing, being or relating are seen to be inadequate to new experience. These places of disruption may occur because of birth, discovery, joy or passion. Very often, it seems, they occur as a result of death, loss, fear, failure, betrayal, attack, disease or abandonment. Even the happy changes can involve a level of grief as familiar postures and assumptions must be left behind. Such moments shake us up. They create a state of disequilibrium that goes deep and that may for a time occupy our entire being in the search for resolution. Most of these moments of disruption (and sometimes these “moments” last for years) involve rupture and dissolution. As such they are painful, they cause us distress—mentally, physically, emotionally and socially. The inclination of most humans in the face of such disequilibrium is resistance, denial and anger. It is not unusual to observe desperate efforts to restore the former equilibrium. Depression and withdrawal may be part of the way it manifests. There may also be a kind of splitting that takes place, in an attempt to isolate the point of pain. The opportunity present in such moments of disequilibrium is that of healing and spiritual transformation. However, the process can be demanding and difficult. Inside a relationship that assists us in trusting the process and naming what we are experiencing, there can be hope of profound healing, even in the context of the end-of-life. Spiritual Care, as such, can occur in the context of an established religious or faith tradition. Indeed, it is often the first place a person might look for such a relationship. However, it is not limited to such contexts. It is always, however, situated in a culture, something to which attention must be paid. Wherever it happens, Spiritual Care is a relationship and a process in the service of transformation. © Linda Watson, May 2003
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