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Social Responsibility Adviser
Alison Webster
Social Justice 
Just Care Spirituality and Social Care
Just Care Spirituality and Social Care
| Spirituality and Social Care |
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Spirituality: An Introduction‘…the sacred…has left us without leaving us alone…’ (Julia Kristeva) Introduction Apparently within hours of the tragic train crash at Ladbroke Grove in October 1999, passers-by had begun to place flowers on the road bridge that passed over the railway line nearest to the crash. As time went by, bouquets accumulated, including from relatives and friends of those who had died. Sometimes, families of those killed on our roads turn the fatality-sites into roadside shrines, tying flowers and soft toys to lamp-posts and road signs. When there are major disasters, such activity causes much angst to those in local authority emergency planning departments who are charged with deciding what to do with the mementos (if that is what they are); how to ‘dispose of them’ in an appropriate manner. To know that, you’ve got to understand what’s at stake – what is their significance. And no-one is really quite sure. On anniversaries of such tragedies, symbols appear again. Remember how we were encouraged on the anniversary of the Dunblane shootings to light a candle and place it in our window? Some have argued that we have, as human beings, a kind of ‘essential spiritual core’ transcending time and place, manifesting itself differently according to circumstance. Whether or not that is true, I would argue that in extreme circumstances, when meaninglessness and futility threaten to overwhelm order and rationality, human beings need forms of linguistic and symbolic expression that speak of mystery, meaning and transcendence in ways which connect with, but go beyond, everyday speech. I would argue that in our contemporary context the word ‘spirituality’ functions as a catch-all signifier of this largely unarticulated need. Health and sickness, birth and death, are, of course, life-experiences that call forth both the need and the possibility of such forms of expression. Defining Spirituality Various attempts have been made to define and pin down ‘the spiritual’ in order to facilitate policy-making in this arena, but clarity has so far proved elusive. Rabbi Julia Neuberger, formerly Chief Executive of the King’s Fund, has summed up the difficulties as follows: ‘…is “spirituality” that sense of “the other” we heard so many people describe at the time of the death of Princess Diana? Is it somewhat mawkish and sentimental, ill thought-through – but “a good thing” all the same? Does it fit with groups of young women sitting on the grass at Kensington Gardens, meditating around a candle, with masses of flowers? Or is it more to do with the angry coming to terms with the impending death of the terminally ill person who recognises she has not got long to go? Or is it the mood of calm engendered by communion brought to the bedside, or the lighting of Sabbath candles? Or is it all of these things?’ [1] Let us explore some of the other definitions that have been offered. The National Schizophrenia Fellowship, now called ‘Rethink’ has a Policy Statement on ‘Meeting the spiritual needs of people with a severe mental illness’ which deploys the following definition of spirituality: ‘It’s a quality that goes beyond religious affiliation, that strives for inspiration, reverence, awe, meaning and purpose, even in those who do not believe in any god. The spiritual dimension tries to be in harmony with the universe, strives for answers about the infinite and comes into focus when a person faces emotional illness, physical illness and death.’ Another writer, David Lyall turns to the nursing literature for help. He discovers Linda Ross who has, ‘defined the spiritual dimension as “that element within the individual from which originates: meaning, purpose and fulfilment in life; a will to live; belief and faith in self, others and God and which is essential to the attainment of an optimum state of health, well-being or quality of life’. Another author cited by David Lyall speaks of spirituality as being characterised by ‘interconnectedness and self-transcendence.’ [2] Theologian Stephen Pattison has given systematic attention to analysing the development of the concept of spirituality in healthcare contexts. He says, ‘“Spirituality” is often used as a more inclusive substitute for the word religion. Definitions are various, fluid and imprecise. Spirituality can be understood as that aspect of human existence which relates to structures of significance that gives meaning and direction to a person’s life and helps them deal with the vicissitudes of existence. It is associated with the human quest for meaning, purpose, self-transcending knowledge, meaningful relationships, love and a sense of the holy. It may, or may not, be associated with a specific religious system.’ [3] Spirituality, then, is to be understood as distinct from and going beyond organised and institutionalised religious systems and traditions. Belief in God is not necessary to it, though belief itself is, but this can encompass a variety of things: belief in the harmony of the universe; in the possibility of self-transcendence; in meaningful relationships; in a meaning and purpose to life. Spirituality is variously perceived as essential to optimum wellbeing, or as that which comes into focus mainly at times of crisis. Why is spirituality increasing in popularity NOW? The search for spirituality must be in some way a reaction to the postmodern cultural context in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century. ‘Spirituality’ is often twinned with another word: ‘alternative’. What, then, is spirituality an alternative to? We live, now, as ‘cyborgs’. Our high-tech world makes the boundary between humans and machines very fluid. We live with the delusion of transparent communication, the illusion of constant availability and the hope of perfect safety and security. We imagine that help is always at hand. All we need do is phone or text a friend, or the emergency services, or the car breakdown company. The ubiquitous mobile phone is great, of course, unless the train crashes, or the plane is blown out of the sky – or we forget to recharge the battery. Only then is the fragility of our communication systems exposed, along with our personal vulnerability and the precariousness of what might have passed for ‘security’. Our identities textured by the vagaries of these new forms of communication. On the ‘plus’ side, we are offered a fuller range of contact possibilities. There is no longer necessarily a need to be with those with whom we share physical proximity, for we might rather ‘be with’ those who are far away. Communities are now virtual as well as geographical. The ‘down’ side is that this can afford a heightened and more acute sense of loneliness. Once the computer is turned off and the mobile has gone quiet (because everyone has, we imagine, more important things to do and other people to see), we are on our own. This isolation can hit us all the more forcefully when it is experienced in contrast to a virtual babble of communication busyness. The silence feels strange. In his huge but hugely readable recent book, The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression, Andrew Solomon offers he following observations on the corrosive potential of our post-modern ‘cyborg’ context: ‘The climbing rates of depression are without question the consequence of modernity. The pace of life, the technological chaos of it, the alienation of people from one another, the breakdown of traditional family structures, the loneliness that is endemic, the failure of systems of belief (religious, moral, political, social – anything that seemed once to give meaning and direction to life) have been catastrophic.’ [4] Solomon highlights powerfully some themes that we have already identified as being important to any ‘spiritual’ agenda. He too, for instance, points to the importance of human relationships, and the need for an ‘identity’ – a meaning and purpose to life. What makes for Wellbeing? There has been a recent explosion of interest in people’s happiness and wellbeing, particularly on the part of government [5]. This has been sparked by the devastating research finding that whilst economic output has nearly doubled in the last 30 years, life satisfaction in the UK has remained flat. In his 2003 Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures economist Richard Layard looked at levels of life satisfaction in the UK from 1973 to 2002 and summed up the findings: ‘It is striking that the level of life satisfaction in the UK has been remarkably flat – averaging 6.9 on a scale of 0 – 10. So despite GDP per person increasing by over 80 per cent in real terms since the 1970s, people’s satisfaction with their lives has not really changed at all in 30 years.’ [6] I suggest that the ‘spirituality’ agenda is about an agenda of frustration with the predominant values of a ‘money culture’. For is not the current interest in ‘work/life balance’ a manifestation of this rejection of the money culture in favour of living life more imaginatively – or, at least, with more integration? Novelist and social commentator Jeanette Winterson in her book Art Objects has reflected powerfully on the nature of art, imagination and the human spirit, and I think her reflections are relevant here in talking about spirituality as being about alternative ways of living. She says, ‘I do not think it an exaggeration to say that most of the energy of most of the people is being diverted into a system which destroys them. Money is no antidote. If the imaginative life is to be renewed it needs its own coin.’[7] Winterson calls to our attention the need to recognise and prioritise the imaginative life and the arts because, in her words, ‘…the arts stimulate and satisfy a part of our nature that would otherwise be left untouched…the emotions art arouses in us are of a different order to those aroused by experience of any other kind.’ [8] She speaks prophetically, inspiring us to see art not as an add-on luxury, important to human well-being only after all our material needs have been met, but as necessity; she inspires us to see art as very much like religion: ‘Art is visionary; it sees beyond the view from the window, even though the window is its frame. This is why the arts fare much better alongside religion than alongside either capitalism of communism. The god-instinct and the art-instinct both apprehend more than the physical biological material world. The artist need not believe in God, but the artist does consider reality as multiple and complex.’ [9] It is this terrain, beyond the material and the financial, that an engagement with ‘spirituality’ aims to address. Alison Webster, Social Responsibility Adviser, Church of England Diocese of Oxford References
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