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Guest Editorial
Symposium on Health, Illness and Spirituality
Charles Waddell
St Mary's, The Goldfields, WA
Abstract
Until recently, each morning a lone magpie hurled itself at my office window: thud..thud..thud-a dozen times or more. On the third day it laid dead beneath the window. Long-term parishioners of the Goldfields debated the bird's motivation: all alone in the world and seeing its reflection, did the bird try to attach an enemy or greet a long lost mate? I sided with the latter faction but, in fact, it made no difference: there was no enemy; there was no lover. There was only the reflection of a lone bird; the projection of foe or lover eventuated in futility.
Beneath the disparities between bird and human, the chronically ill person, the person who has survived cancer but who constantly fears its return, the person who searches the self, is that lone bird. Its flight against the transparent limits of desire is the flight of all such people for a cure, for release, for peace. Its work is theirs; its suffering is theirs; its longing is theirs.
The works of Aaron Cross, Catherine Garrett and Heather McKenzie in this symposium conjure up people 'grounded' by their bodies: young people in mutual search for a transcendent sense of the aesthetic; people with persistent chronic illness; and people who have survived cancer but who are constantly fearful of it return-all are besieged by multiplicities of desires to transcend the everyday. And those who are ill and who fear their mortality desire for cure while they stand apart, alone, and suffer consciously. But they also show that there is a way to burst that veil of reflective illusion, the often futile desire for cure, and to healed. There is the possibility to be part of something larger than self: no longer isolated and debilitated but a powerful member of a larger, even cosmic, enterprise; no longer cursed for having a chronic illness, but whole and holy in accepting it as a gift to larger, transcendent meaning. This possible way to health is spirituality.
For Aaron Cross, this spirituality takes the form of the 'peng-drill', derived from the Chinese meditative, self-healing martial art of Taijiquan. Of relevance here is that the practitioner of the 'peng-drill' evidences an 'opening out' from self so to make 'sensuous meaning' and generate a sense of being a Taiji practitioner, of belonging to a creative group of Taiji practitioners. For Aaron, the 'peng-drill' emancipates the person from bodily introspection so that he (or she) may step out into the largeness of a healthier, more meaningful, more spacious journey.
Catherine Garrett beautifully attends to spiritual experiences in healing - in enabling people to 'live well' in the face of chronic illness. Spiritual experiences source inspiration, transformation, so to generate meanings and a sense of belonging to something larger than self, something transcendent. Dismissing this generation as a 'coping stratagem' is to fail to understand the underlying spiritual experience. For Catherine, the task of health sociology is not to explain away the mystery of 'living well' with a chronic illness; the task of health sociology is to delve into understanding the mystery of the spiritual experience that generates such inspiration and transformation so as to live well.
Spirituality, here, is not a project so as to avoid the reality of chronic illness. Spirituality is a process that happens and enables the person to traverse his or her illness so as to become the journey-the journey of a unique and intrinsically valued life rather than a life stuck in and as one's illness.
Heather McKenzie transports us back 1600 years, to the writings of Augustine. His radical reflexivity takes one beyond self and is capable of bringing a person to God. For Heather, cancer patients, who turn inward, who engage in radical reflexivity, confront their vulnerability and mortality within the contexts of their everyday lives: where they lacked courage or honesty, they now grasp integrity; unresolved distressing emotions are resolved; suppressed anger is released. Radical reflexivity does not bring all to God, but does transform ordinary, profane behaviour and relationships into something sacred, something to hold dearly, with a sense of awe.
The goal of radical reflexivity is not narcissistic self-absorption but the manifestation of the larger possible purposes of life through the incarnation of the individual into something sacred. Through this reflexivity, the person-chronically ill or fearfully 'well'-becomes the carrier of transcendent wonder. This wonder is shrouded in mystery and it is that mystery of wonder which gives rise to an enlargement and acceptance of self, illness, relationships; of life as something whole, dear, comforting.
Today's West Australian (Monday, November 11 2002: 3) reports a British study which concludes that 'a positive mental attitude does little to improve the chances of surviving cancer'. Neither may spirituality. Spirituality addresses how to live well with illness, vulnerability, suffering and loss and how to die with some sense of well-being.
Managing to live and die with some sense of well-being is no small matter for a person who is chronically ill or who has survived cancer. It is a mystery of wonder. The study of spirituality and the experience of chronic or terminal illness, when human vulnerability and morality are obvious, is to enter deeply into this mystery. Health sociologists are privileged to enter this mystery; they must also realise that they are not exempt from the process of this mystery. How to live with illness, vulnerability, suffering and loss and how to die with some sense of well-being is not a mystery to solve, not a problem to solve, but a mystery to ponder and, for each of us, to enter with circumspection.
As health sociologists lingering in this mystery, our understanding gradually metamorphoses into the pleasure of being affected and changed by our research - by our participation within the lives of our respondents. We are different just for having the patience to remain within the mystery for an extended time. We live on the cusp between the inadequacies of our sociological explanations and the reality of our experiences, and it shows!
The health sociologists who have entered this mystery are slow to communicate within conventional sociological paradigms. A shift is needed into a new way of perceiving and living health sociology. A shift not so that we appear to have mastered the subject matter, but so that we do it justice and, possibly, help others and, if needed, ourselves, enter the mystery and live with a sense of well-being.
In their study of spirituality, health and illness - and especially chronic or terminal illness - health sociologists may find three tools useful:
- Activation of their sociological tuning fork so as to attune themselves to what speaks to them cognitively, but also emotionally and physically as they delve through the entire gamete of experiences persons with chronic illnesses or fear may traverse
- Wisdom and courage to encounter depth. Entering the mystery of spirituality and illness pulls health sociologists deeper into life and opens them to facets of living that course beneath traditional sociological concepts and perspectives. To be pulled into the depths of this mystery is to encounter depths within ourselves that animate the social fabric and enlarge sociological consciousness
- The third tool is to honour the mystery. Whatever the experience of spirituality, its movements are profoundly multifaceted and autonomous. Acknowledging the existence of these multifaceted, autonomous movement enables health sociologists to track the mystery as it gives rise to a sense of well-being amidst suffering, fear, loss and death.
The veil on the fragility and finitude of life is lifted for the person who is chronically ill or fearful; try as one may, this reality will not be hidden. While his or her desire for cure is poignantly human, when it dominates, he or she will be stuck in futile moves, as was my lone magpie, that ultimately are not life enhancing.
Recognising, experiencing the sacredness of one's fragile, finite life enhances life, increases a sense of well-being. This recognition often arises in the strangest places: even as we bash our heads against windowpanes.
Unlike my magpie, the person chronically ill or fearful can burst through his or her transparent illusion, and bear witness to the sacredness of life. As the papers in this volume testify, so too can health sociologists.
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