Page 223 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

f r o m ca ra t i v e f a c to r 10 t o C a r i t a s P r o C e s s 1 0
of the human predicaments of life and death, the challenges and reali-
ties of life-death crises of existence in between ordinary life passages.
Everyone has a personal story about his or her experiences and pre-
dicaments. Each person seeks his or her own meanings to find inner
peace and right-relation in the midst of fear, hatred, threats, doubts,
despair, and unknowns.
These situations and experiences that face the nurse invite the
nurse-self to confront her or his own state of meaning, of Being and
Non-Being. When a person is able to explore her or his own existence
and evolving consciousness for maturity in engaging in the vicissitudes
of life and death, the individual’s heart is opened to more compassion,
awe, dignity, and respect for unknowns; we become more mature,
more real, and more authentic to self and others in our personal and
professional life. We open to previously unrecognized sources for
hope, courage, power, and miraculous happenings in our life as well
as in the lives of others.
Consideration of and openness to this dimension of nursing may
be the most fulfilling aspect of practice. Explanatory notions of this
aspect of nursing not only are best understood from an existential-
spiritual-phenomenological lens but perhaps are only understood
from this higher plane of seeing the world.

CoNClUsioNs
the Caritas Nurse/Caritas Nursing
This model of nursing is not for every nurse. It is an invitation
to nurses who seek a deeper dimension of their work and calling in
their caring and healing practices. In recent years there have been
calls for nursing to renew itself. One aspect of such renewal comes
from renewal of the spirit. The last Carative Factor/Caritas Process
addresses this renewal of the spirit of self and system by attending
to this awareness, this awakening. This revised book, The Philosophy
and Science of Caring, goes beyond models of health-illness and dis-
ease. It aligns nursing and its authentic mission of health-healing with
a deeper humanitarian and spiritual cause; that cause is about helping
to sustain humanity itself, contributing to the evolution of human-
kind toward more spirit-filled beings connected with the infinite field

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