Page 268 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

Hu ma n ExPE ri En cEs: HE a l t H , HE a l in g , a n d C ar i t a s N ur s iN g
in which we are called to ask about the living dead we sometimes feel
in our hearts and/or in our midst. In preparing for our death, we learn
from those who are our teachers along the way. Those who are under-
going the life-death transition can be a gift for our learning and prepa-
ration. They can teach us if we listen and are able to be present to their
experience and be there with and for them as we are able.
When working with others during times of despair, vulnerability
and unknowns, we are challenged to learn again, to re-examine our own
meaning of life and death. As we do so, we engage in more authentic
processes and practices to cultivate and sustain caring-healing for self
and others. Such care and practices elicit and call upon profound wis-
dom and understanding, beyond knowledge, that touch and draw upon
the human heart and soul. However, this learning can be informed by
our science, a science that honors the whole. A Science of Caring that
opens to the infinity of our learning and evolving. Death is thus not a
medical anomaly or the most horrible of all events as our culture has
us believe, but as Tolle reminds us, the most natural thing in the world.
“There is not anything that is not subject to birth and death; there is
not anything on the earth plane that is eternal” (Tolle 2003:109).
In this reminder of heart-centered knowing and wisdom beyond
words and conventional knowledge, our basic humanness transcends
circumstances, time, and place. Our being and becoming more humane
and evolved allows us to engage once again in compassionate human
service and science, motivated by love, both human and Cosmic. From
this place of deepening our humanity, we offer to our self, and those
whom we meet on our path, our compassionate response for fulfilling
our chosen life’s work and calling. In encountering and facing death
of self and others, we are in sacred space, touching the mystery of life
itself, dwelling in the space of Infinity.
Just as it is in our personal lives during crises or illness, tragedy,
loss, or impending death we ponder spiritual questions that go beyond
the physical material world, it is here in our evolving professional-
scientific life that we may need to ponder new meaning. In our con-
ventional dispirited, physical-technical life form, deathbed of sorts,
Caring Science offers new freedom, new space to reconsider a deeper
meaning of caring-healing work and phenomena.

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