The Spirit of Spirituality

“So, who provides spiritual care to patients?”

I had just met him, a few hours ago. A man in his 60s, in great physical health doing volunteering work for nature preservation projects.  A man who once was a healer, in a professional capacity.

“Did you make spiritual assessment of your patients along with biological and social?” I asked.

“I did, but the system did not allow me to use it. If pills and scalpel could not cure or manage, then we hoped that that family and friends could help. Or, wish for destiny to be kind.”

… Camus and Heidegger. Existentialism and absurdity. Spirituality and loneliness.

Illness as a life event, can survive much insults from healers. But at the end, ill or not, we face the crossroad between life events and their dead ends. Life becomes a cul-de-sac. And we call it “end of life decision”; and we wonder if spirituality can assist with final decisions by adding quality to the process of that ending.

Or is it a passage?

“You can be an existentialist as much as you want when you can jump out of bed with a full bladder in the morning”, my interlocutor said. “But when the bed seems too high to climb into or too steep to get down from, then you become spiritual.”

“Is that the same as saying “there are no atheists in foxholes”?

“No,” he replied immediately. “Foxholes are temporary – if you get out alive you need to learn about forgiveness toward others and reverence for the beauty of life. If you do not come out alive, it is a moot point. I assume you have read some of  Albert Schweitzer's work?”

… Forgiveness – a state of inner comfort at its intersection with revolt. Comfort that is intertwined with the expectation that there is more to our existence than life itself; that somehow we will meet again in some other form, in some other space and not wonder about “end of life decisions”. Because finality will have no meaning then. Because the boundaries of timelessness are round, and they fold upon themselves in a circle, an oval, or an expanded drop of water shaped as timelessness.  

“Yet we all carry backpacks“, he continued perhaps guessing my thoughts. “These are backpacks where our ancestors live in; these are heavy backpacks. Some of us go through life gracefully, not showing the pull-down of what we are asked to carry. Others collapse under the weight. At the end it is all about grace and gracefulness.”

… Instinctively I straightened my back, almost touched my left shoulder with my right hand.  Have I been graceful? Have I learned to forgive while celebrating every moment I carried the backpack full of my ancestors’ request to keep a promise? And, will I recognize the spirituality I will need to alleviate and guide my end of life decisions?

“Just carry that backpack”, he said with a smile. “When you crouch to feel its weight, you will learn if you are ready to forgive or not.”

And as I was about to comment, he stopped me and said:

“Just do it gracefully.”

October 17, 2014

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2014