Page 220 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

fr om carative fa c to r 10 t o C ar it as ProC e s s 10
We live in a world in which we can invite new views of science,
art, spirituality, and the mystery of life back into our world. A Caring
Science framework acknowledges that we ultimately dwell in mystery;
life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived; human
problems reside in ambiguity, paradox, and impermanence; suffering,
healing, miraculous cures, synchronicity are all part of the dynamic
of vibrating possibilities in our evolved consciousness. Thus, within
the Caritas Consciousness Model of Nursing, the nurse is open to what
Resurrection Health called “allowing for a miracle,” whereby the
Caritas Nurse holds the patient’s hope for a miracle. The Caritas Nurse
is open to other happenings at a higher order even in the midst of
modern science and concrete treatment; thus, he or she is always open
to the mystery of a deeper order of the universe unfolding within a
bigger picture than the human mind.
This Carative Factor/Caritas Process honors the reality that when
anyone has a major life change, the person returns home evoking at
a deep level an existential-spiritual crisis. A sudden life change as a
result of a new diagnosis, illness, trauma, or abrupt life-death circum-
stance requires a total reexamination of one’s life: questions arise as
to what is most important. What are one’s priorities? What matters
when one has to stop midstep in the midst of one’s usual life? These
questions are existential-spiritual in nature and are responded to based
on the experiencing person’s phenomenological life view. Everyone
responds differently depending on their experiences, values, belief sys-
tem, perceptions, the meaning of the condition, situation, support sys-
tems, courage, determination, and so on—all of which give them the
strength to face life and its vicissitudes of change and impermanence.
The personal struggles and inner crises of experiencing suffering
and turmoil in one’s life and health do not fit into any categories of
modern medical science; they are existential and unknown in nature,
unique to that individual and his or her life circumstances. It is Caring
Science, not medical science, that can offer another way to view human-
ity and the human condition of Being-in-the-world; to look at and into
the inner-life world through the other person’s eyes, not through a
medical science lens. For it is only through a broader, more existen-
tial-spiritual lens that we can surrender to the mysteries of human life

192