This article was originally published in THE CORD 28 (1978) 357-365. I eventually developed Wellness into a spirituality characterized by biblical and Franciscan tradition. See my CV for the books, articles, and audio-tapes I published on the topic. I also subsequently shortened my definition: Wellness is one way of making sense out of life. A spirituality is a way of life, based on an experience of God (or transcendence) and shaped in response to that experience. Wellness spirituality, therefore, is one way of making sense out of life based on one's experience of God (or transcendence) and shaped in response to that experience. The characteristics of caring presented in this article would be one of many elements in Wellness spirituality enriched by Franciscan inspiration. JJP 10/98
A NEW WORD has entered many vocabularies: WELLNESS. It's such a simple sounding word; yet everyone seems to understand it differently. Let me share with you my favorite definition of wellness: an ever expanding experience of pleasurable and purposeful living, which you and I create and direct for ourselves in any of a million different ways.
With this definition's emphasis on purposeful living
and self responsibility, it is possible for a person to be disabled, chronically
or even terminally ill, yet still have a high level of wellness. Conversely,
a person can come away from a physical examination certified to be fit
as a fiddle or healthy as a horse, but go home and put a bullet through
his head, suggesting a low or non-existent level of wellness.
Clearly, the aged can have a very high level of
wellness. Father Alfred McBride suggests that high levels for wellness
in the aged are manifested in two special ways: wisdom and holiness. Not
that these aspects are absent in younger people; rather, they reach their
maturity and uniqueness in the senior years. The question for those involved
in a ministry to the aged is, How does one care for the aged? How does
one respond to their wisdom and holiness, and promote even higher levels
of wellness for them? The answer is simple: lovingly.
Saint Paul's advice on the subject is well known:
Love is patient;
Love is kind;
Love is not jealous,
it does not put on airs,
it is not snobbish.
Love is never rude,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not prone to anger.
Neither does it brood over injuries.
Love does not rejoice in what is
wrong, but rejoices with the truth.
There is no limit to love's forbearance,
to its trust,
its hope, its power to endure.
Love never fails....
There are in the end three things
that last:
faith, hope, and love,
and the greatest of these is love [1 Cor. 13]
This is how Paul has developed the basic affirmation
of Jesus: "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for
one's friends" [John. 15:13].
One evening Francis and a companion came into the house of a rich and powerful nobleman, who received them with the greatest kindness {con grandissima cortesia}. He embraced and kissed Francis as a friend, washed his feet, lit a cheerful fire, fed his guest well, and tended to them tirelessly with a cheerful countenance. He placed hisWhat is this cortesia of which Francis spoke? It is an open heartedness to God and to the world. It entails a certain solidarity and empathy with the suffering and the poor. Yes, it contains much delicate reverence, but it also demands real down-to-earth involvement rather than love at a distance. It bespeaks the willingness to enter into a highly personal relationship. One must always look to the other as person, not simply as client, patient, penitent, student, etc. Cortesia in the Fioretti passage can be translated as nobleness, solicitude, almost hovering attentiveness, empathy, or caring.
riches at Francis's disposal. Francis had only to ask for whatever he needed, and this nobleman would foot the bill. When they took leave of him, Francis said to his companion: 'This kind man could be just right for our company. He is so thankful to God and has such cortesia he lavishes his sun and rain on the just and unjust. Cortesia is a sister of charitableness, erasing hate and safeguarding love. Having seen such great and godly virtue in this man, I would gladly have him as a companion.'
Prayer to the God who Warms Old Bones:
Locked arm in arm,
the wool of winter still around them, three old women hobble
across the young grass of June. They have staged a geriatric escape
from St. Andrew's Old People's Home
but varicose veins have forced them
to rest on the bench outside my window.
They settle down for an afternoon
of people watching.
No one can resist.
The boy with the baseball mitt says Hi.
The truck driver waves. The mailman
asks how the girls are today.
They giggle and thing him silly.
The ladies on the bench believe life
is friendly and when it is not,
they scold it
like a child who must be told he is good.
Yet they wait
(and so do we)
for a passerby, an afternoon visitor,
perhaps that woman
with the baby stroller
to tell them the good news -
they do not need coats in summer.
Shea's prayer is rooted in the brotherhood and sisterhood
of all God's creatures which does make us one another's keepers. Each of
us must care for the others. Francis knew this well, but he urged his followers
to adopt that mentality in a very radical and special way:
And let one unhesitatingly reveal his need to the other, that the latter may find and provide what is necessary forhim. And each should love and cherish his brother, as a mother loves and cherishes her child, in those things wherein God shall give them grace [Unapproved Rule, ch. 9].
And wherever the brothers are located or meet one another, let them act toward one another like members of a family. And each should with assurance make his need known to another; for if a mother tends and loves her child in the flesh, with how much greater attention must anybody love and tend his brother in the spirit [ch.6].The Franciscan style of caring is rooted in love and expressed in an almost hovering attentiveness to the needs of others. Its special characteristic is that it surpasses customary human levels of caring experienced in kinship relationships. That is the challenge to one who would embrace the Franciscan style of caring.
Nothing
I suppose it was something you said
That caused me to tighten
And pull away.
And when you asked,
"What is it?"
I, of course, said,
"Nothing."
Whenever you say, "Nothing."
You may be very certain there is something.
The something is a cold, hard lump of
Nothing.
The aim of careful listening is to hear and understand
the other from the other's viewpoint. It requires an appreciation,
not only of the thoughts, but the feelings and emotions conveyed
as well. In a discussion on holistic approaches to health care which
would include the active involvement of a spiritual counselor (priest,
minister, rabbi, seminarian, nun, deaconess, etc.), the Jewish member
of the group said that in his experience of such an approach he felt
as if he was the object of a
conversion attempt. The Christian members immediately hastened
to assure him he was mistaken. What the Christians failed to do is
listen. They failed to hear what the Jewish gentleman was saying
from his point of view.
Perhaps what is of equal importance is to listen
to the self, and not only to the other. From a psychological point
of view such listening contributes to self-understanding and growth. From
a spiritual point of view, this is important because the inner self
is one place where God likes to speak. Biographers of the Poverello
point out that an indispensable component of Francis's psychic core was
the way in which Francis knew and experienced God, the way in which
he walked in God's
company and felt at home. Prayer, of course, is where Francis
experienced God above all. His prayer was a direct dialogue of question
and petition and answer, dealing with concrete issues and addressed very
personally to God. Francis wrestled with God like Jacob, and dialogued
with him after the fashion of Tevyeh in Fiddler on the Roof. This
intimate communion with God was essential to Francis's caring.
Responding is a second basic skill in communicating
genuine care. Responding is not just saying something, but knowing
how to say the right thing. The most fundamentally correct thing to say
is that one has understood the other, one has truly grasped the situation
from the other's viewpoint. This is basic accurate empathy. Empathy
means that a person has truly felt into the emotional experiences of the
other. It is basic when the person who has been listening has correctly
understood what has been heard, without drawing further conclusions
or making judgments. Francis seems to have had just such a knack. Again
the Fioretti supply an illustration.
Having returned from the Holy Land (in the summer of 1220), Francis, weary from his long journey, was riding a donkey. His companion, Brother Leonardo of Assisi, followed behind on foot. He too was tired, and he thought to himself: 'My parents and is parents were of the same social class. But he rides while I go on foot and keep an eye on his donkey.' Scarcely had the thought struck him when Francis dismounted and said: 'Brother, it is not proper that I ride while you go on foot. You come from a more distinguished house than I do.' On the spot, Brother Leonardo asked forgiveness from Holy Francis.On another occasion, a Brother tore the night's silence with screams from hunger pains. In imitation of Francis, he had fasted beyond endurance. Francis went to the Brother, invited him to eat, and sat down and ate with him. In fact, Francis, gorged himself so that the Brother would not feel guilty at having failed to keep the entire fast.
The second challenge: namely, to respect the other's
determination even to live less wholesomely, is difficult for everyone,
but perhaps most especially for those in the healing and helping
professions. The education for these professionals inevitably imposes on
the graduates a rescuer script or messiah complex. Parents are not
immune to this either. It takes great restraint to respect self-determination
in others.
Francis did not hesitate to urge his followers to
strive for such respect: If any of the friars is misled by the wicked
enemy and sins mortally, he is to be bound by obedience to have recourse
to his guardian. And all the friars who may know that he has sinned
must not shame or reproach him. They should rather show great mercy toward
him, and keep his sin entirely hidden; for it is not the healthy who need
a physician, but they who are sick.
Francis does not condone the sin; he does not compromise
his own convictions. But he respects self-determination and freedom. And
he urges the same on his fellow friars. Francis cherished self- determination
in others and desired the same in return. When he was founding his brotherhood
and all manner of advisers were suggesting rules and patterns for him,
he resisted, saying that the Most High himself had shown him what to do,
and no human would deter him.
The positive corollary of this attitude is to regard
the other as unique is to regard the other as unique and respond to that
uniqueness by promoting it. What a tremendous challenge to those who would
exercise the Franciscan style of caring in the ministry to the aged: to
promote their unique wisdom and holiness, and to cultivate further development
of their resources. Francis was really to the point: "And let us love our
neighbors like ourselves, and if there is anyone who has not the
inclination or the strength to love them like himself, at least let him
not bring evil on them, but do good to them."
One doesn't have to be a Franciscan to care in the
style described in this article. But Franciscans ought to be the best examples
of the style incarnated by their founder. It isn't easy, and it takes a
long time to develop. But it is worth the effort.
The Skin Horse's advice to the Velveteen Rabbit as
he continued to show interest in becoming real might apply to those
interested in enhancing their skill in communicating the Franciscan style
of caring.
"Real isn't how you are made, said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing
that
happens to you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but
really loves you, then you become real.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.
'When you are Real, you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or
bit
by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become.
It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people
who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully
kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has
been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the
joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at
all, because once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people
who don't understand.'