Dawson was one of the 52 people who signed a letter seeking assurance from the board that a Christian chapel and an office for chaplains be given priority for the new hospital.

The signatories are mainly leaders of Presbyterian congregations across the South, but also including the Anglican Bishop of Dunedin, the Right Rev Stephen Benford,

The letter calls for a "discernable Christian presence" in the new hospital.

Hospitals and the health systems in which they operate can largely be said to be an invention of the church and they certainly rely on values espoused by the church throughout its 2000-year history, Dawson said

His further concern was the Christian faith would not be primarily represented within a city founded on Christian principles and a country in which, still, the largest group of people claiming religious adherence are Christian.

New Dunedin Hospital project director Hamish Brown told the board that management had tried to provide a "neutral and respectful approach to what is a complex and sensitive issue".

The multi-faith centre approach reflected modern health practice, and there was not enough space in the proposed hospital design for two chapels.

"It is important not to get hung up on size or square metres. It is important to consider its function," Mr Brown said.

Board member Tuari Potiki said he supported the recommendation.

He said the University of Otago operated a similar multi-faith prayer room.

"I think it's inclusive; it's practical, it sends the message that we should get on with each other."

Dawson said the university situation was not comparable to the hospital, as the chaplain's room had been rebuilt for Christian ministry as part of the prayer room development.

Source

• odt.co.nz
• odt.co.nz
• patheos.com
• Image: facebook.com

The ‘Friends of Hospital Chaplaincy' event was the first of its kind in New Zealand. It was organised by the DHB chaplaincy service so church leaders from a variety of denominations could gain insight into the scope and complexity of the hospital chaplains' role. Continue reading

Par for the course now but this was Paris during the Second World War. A world in turmoil meant people were thinking for themselves, taking up with new liberation movements and deciding not to come to church.

Like any church facing hard times, good ideas were fallen upon with enthusiasm. So when news of a priest grafting alongside the dockworkers in Marseilles hit town, the worker-priest model got legs fast.

Broadly speaking, the idea was that priests and monks were to take the good news of Christ with them as they moved out of religious houses to live and work with the ordinary folk of France.

The inevitable happened. Priests fell in love, got married, joined trade unions, the communist party and all manner of trouble-making groups. In short, the communities they had become part of transformed them.

What's more, the official good news seemed superfluous. The light already existed in the people they thought they'd come to help. As though Christ had sneaked in with no permission from the church and strangely enough, didn't realise Christianity owned him.

This is exactly my experience as a hospital chaplain. God, the Divine, the Light, the Christos, however you language this underpinning of human existence, this presence, it exists in the most basic of human interactions.

Spiritual presence that becomes apparent in offerings like cleaning up folk who can't control their bowels, in wiping blood off the floor, in carting equipment, in attending to birthing and dying, and sometimes even in arguments about budgets. It lives without fanfare, often without words and definitely without adherence to any particular faith tradition.

Get too close to those everyday actions in an effort to describe their interconnectedness and you will be blinded by their ordinary functionality, and appear ridiculous in your quest for understanding. Spirituality is a shy beast, tentative but passionate.

Being near, like the worker-priests were, offering space and acceptance, pointing to the ancient spiritual traditions without expecting belief or commitment is enough, but not always for the authorities. By the 1950's worker-priests were considered to be out of control and the project was stopped.

There's always tension around spirituality and organizations because Spirit is about liminality, walking the thin places where the Divine is sensed and known. Ways of being that are at odds with institutional creeds and mission statements.

Church or health organizations can offer an environment that encourages this fragile mysticism in motion, or exert controls that push it under.

To suppress it maintains the fiction that being religious has to be about belief instead of awakening to what lies deep within.

Source

"Making meaning is seen as one of the important elements of spirituality," writes Sande Ramage, which is not a problem at all for patients who recover, but finding meaning when there seems to be no cure "can leave patients and healthcare professionals alike feeling helpless".

In order to cope with helplessness it's possible to adopt a solely scientific approach to suffering, an approach that is challenged in a book called Time to Care, by Dr Robin Youngson. He says that beyond what medicine offers, 'the most profound healing comes from a bond of shared humanity.'

• Read Sande Ramage's article
• Image: UAB Pastoral Care

Sande Ramage is an Anglican priest and blogger