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SACH
Soundings Contents
More than just one toe!By the time you read this you will be very aware that there is something happening in Germany this month. There are thirty two nations competing for the honour of becoming world champions at football. However certain sections of the press would have you believe that the tournament is only about one player, or rather one portion of one player. His toe. Now I will freely admit that I was hopeless at football when I was at school and I was always last to be picked when choosing sides. But I do remember being told that football was a team game. Individual flair can certainly change the dynamic of a game but it can't make up for a team that doesn't know how or doesn't want to work as a unit. Teamwork is at its best when it is sustaining and encouraging of all the members and where everyone has a firm grasp of what is being aimed for. Working together can help smooth the differences of personality and ability that you will find in any group of people. Someone I talked to recently helped me understand this better by comparing the two loves of his life: golf and music. If you play badly at golf and those around you are playing well it can make you very cross and perhaps a wee bit jealous. If you find yourself playing badly in an orchestra, however, you are very glad that there are others playing well! I think most of you will agree that chaplaincy teams are, on the whole, a pretty good example of working together. It's a real joy to work with people from many different denominations and people of different faiths with a common goal of bringing support and comfort to folk at a time of great need. It's a great example of how we can pool our considerable resources to achieve an outcome that we simply couldn't do if we all stayed in our own little corners. At the present time chaplains are working together on many different issues. Our recent spring meeting, about which you can read an account elsewhere in this edition of Soundings, was aimed at helping us to come to a consensus about the future direction of chaplaincy, how we define the task that we undertake and what resources we have to achieve it. Another example of working together comes in the shape of the European Network of Healthcare Chaplains. You can get a flavour of that in this issue too . It's exciting because as a collective body of chaplains from Russia to Portugal, Iceland to Malta, we may be beginning to be able to influence the policy makers in the continent in the spiritually rich field of palliative care. Working in such an environment is a constant reminder to me that we are all one body and certainly more than just one toe.
Derek Brown President of SACH |
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European Network of Health Care Chaplaincy
Four members of SACH at the 9th Consultation of ENHCC in Lisbon. David Mitchell (far right) talks to Derek Brown, Chris Levison and Margery Collin. Having dipped in to the European Network of Health Care Chaplaincy (ENHCC) website from time to time I thought I had an understanding of the organisation and its work however, having ‘been and seen' I realise there is far more scope to this group than I had understood and it is not only unique but in many ways ahead of its time with a huge potential to influence the future of healthcare chaplaincy in Europe and beyond.
I was invited to speak to the conference on the development of palliative care chaplaincy in Scotland and with Chris Levison and Fred Coutts draft a statement for consideration and discussion at the consultation. The presentation was very well received but nothing could have prepared me for the discussion and debate, not even my years of experience refereeing the readjustment debates in Glasgow Presbytery as convenor of the reappraisal committee. The content of the debate was straight forward with general agreement, the challenge however, was conducting the debate in a setting with just about every Christian denomination imaginable, and where the vast majority of delegates were communicating in a second language (English). It was humbling to hear the delegate from Transylvania in Romania, translate for the Hungarian delegate and then put that into English. My commiserations went to two of the French delegates who had no English, maybe next time they will follow the example of the delegate from St. Petersburg and bring an interpreter. I had introduced the revised Association of Hospice and Palliative Care Chaplains Standards for Hospice and Palliative Care Chaplaincy and offered them as an example of good practice that could be adapted for use across the many different countries and health systems in Europe. There was general agreement that Palliative Care is topical and on the agenda of all European countries and by focusing attention on what is current we can use palliative care chaplaincy as a springboard for the future development in healthcare chaplaincy in general. It is stunning to think that you can get so many different countries, denominations and traditions to agree a joint statement and that's where this group is ahead of its time. If this had been an Ecumenical gathering we would still be debating theology and differences, but this was a gathering of chaplains focused on practical pastoral care, focused on caring for the real people who are our patients, families and colleagues. What a difference that makes. Aside form the new friendships made, the fascinating differences and similarities in healthcare chaplaincy across Europe, my lasting impression was one of pride. We don't realise in Scotland just how far advanced we are in healthcare chaplaincy. Not only in the UK or Europe but I sense the world. We are well served by 3 professional organisations, we have a Healthcare Chaplaincy Training and Development Unit with a permanent and committed staff, and thanks to NHS HDL 76 (2002) we have a structure of Spiritual care committees and in practice are recognised as a health care profession by NHSScotland. The consultation has made a lasting impression. It was great to be there and to present Scotland as an example of good practice for others to follow. Now I'm working out how I can wangle the 10 th Consultation in 2008, though knowing my luck it will be in Glasgow rather than somewhere much more exotic. Prague sounds nice - hint hint! David Mitchell Lecturer in Palliative care and Reports, photographs and the text of the statement on Palliative Care can be found on the ENHCC website: www.eurochaplains.org |
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SACH Spring Conference
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Scratchings
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For your bookshelf:The Hospital Chaplain's Handbook by Mark Cobb (Canterbury Press 2005)
This important and impressive book ...offers vital tools, perspectives and provides critical insights into spiritual care at both an interpersonal and an institutional level. Professor John Swinton. |
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Disability, Community and Humanness:University hosts unique conference
On the 12th of September 2006, the practical theology section of the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy of Aberdeen University will be hosting a unique conference that will bring together two key thinkers within the area of the theology of disability: Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier. Hauerwas (Named America's best theologian by Time Magazine 2001) is the only mainstream theologian to have written consistently about the significance of disability for theology. Over a forty year period he has produced vital and deeply insightful work reflecting on the lives of people with disability, the political significance of community and the importance of taking the experience of disability as a vital critical principle when addressing the weaknesses and failures of liberal society. Hauerwas' sometimes radical focus on disability, friendship and community as primary dimensions of what it means to be human and to live humanly parallels, if in a quite different way and from a very different angle, another major theologian who has a specific focus on disability: Dr. Jean Vanier. Jean Vanier is the founder of the L'Arche communities, an international network of communities within which people with learning disabilities and people who do not share that life experience live together, not as carer and cared for, but as fellow human beings who share a mutuality of care and need. The L'Arche communities provide a unique model of inclusive community which is underpinned by a profound spirituality and theology about which Vanier has written extensively. His work on the theology of disability and the spirituality of community and friendship is widely recognized as being of profound significance for disability theology and the practice of community. Like Hauerwas, Vanier sees disability not as a problem to be solved, but as a way of being human that requires to be understood and lived out in community. Unlike Hauerwas, Vanier has spent over 40 years working alongside and living with people with learning disabilities. Yet despite their differences, (one coming from a context which is highly academic and distanced from the lives of people with disabilities, and the other also an academic but one who has dedicated his life to living with people with disabilities) taken together they offer unique and vital insights into disability, community and humanness. The intention is to engage them in dialectical conversation which will engage and explore their thinking in new ways with the intention of producing new knowledge which is challenging and transformative. The conference will initiate a unique meeting of minds with the aim of developing challenging perspectives on issues that are vital not only for our understanding of disability, but for the type of society we choose to create for the future. Places are limited and enquiries should be directed to: Professor John Swinton: School of Divinity, History and Philosophy Website: www.abdn.ac.uk/cshad/events/vanier.shtml |
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Personal Stories and Health Topics
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Dark Nights of the SoulThomas Moore [Piatkus 2004] M edicine plays an important role in all suffering, emotional and physical. The problem is that medicine itself has [a tendency to] become materialistic and only recently has been searching for ways to include a spiritual dimension. [To often] It treats the body as only physical and neglects the full range of connection between meaning, emotion and physical state. ……… [p.36] You may be lying in a hospital with a sick person in the next bed, nurses and orderlies visiting you all day long, family and friends stopping by to say hello, and voices and buzzers sounding around you. Still, your illness may make you feel cut off from the human family. Anatole Broyard, a writer and a very articulate patient, spoke of these feelings. “I see no reason or need for my doctor to love me – nor would I expect to suffer with me. I wouldn't demand a lot of my doctor's time: I just wish he would brood on my situation for perhaps five minutes, that he would give me his whole mind just once, be bonded with me for a brief space, survey my soul as well as my flesh, to get at my illness, for each man/[woman] is ill in his/[her] own way.” Broyard wants a real connection, and his plea is an important one in the cool, often remote world of medicine. ………[p. 39] Fergus McLauglan [Bracketed words inserted by contributor] |
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Scottish Journal of Healthcare ChaplaincyThe next year will be a year of substantial change for the editorial board of the journal as the editorial board look forward to celebrating the 10 th Anniversary of the journal, and continuing its development and reputation throughout Scotland, the UK, Europe and the world. At our recent editorial board meeting we received the resignations of Ken Coulter and George Beuken both of whom have served the editorial board for 5 years. Ken and George have been active board members during these years, suggesting authors, writing themselves and of course critiquing and encouraging other authors' submissions. We record out thanks to them both. After 7 years working together the current editors will be standing down at the end of this year and are delighted to announce that Janet Foggie and Iain Macritchie will be our replacements and indeed Janet and Iain are already at work seeking to replace the departing board members and planning for the 10 th anniversary issues. Looking to the rest of this year volume 9(2) 2006 is shaping up nicely though as ever we would welcome your contributions by way of articles, reflections, poetry and letters to the editors. In seven years we have never once had a ‘letter to the editors' for publication, maybe our new editors will be more able to encourage a response. As this will likely be our last update for SACH Soundings we wish Janet and Iain, the editorial board and the journal well for its next decade. We'll have an opportunity later to say more by way of a personal thank you but for now a huge thank you to all members of SACH for your support and encouragement. Thanks too to the executive of SACH who have given us the freedom and support to develop the journal as we saw best. But of course a huge thank you to the authors who have submitted articles for publication over the years, and without whom we wouldn't have a journal at all. Georgina Nelson & David Mitchell |
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The Secretary of SACH is :
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You
can find this (and previous) editions of SACH Soundings in full colour
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The next edition of SACH Soundings will be
published in September 2006.
Tel: 01224
553166 |
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