Chaplain David Fries: Art in Spiritual Care.

Art in Spiritual Care?

Art in spiritual care can partially satisfy the expectation, which patients understandably have, for miracles in their time of need. How is art a substitution for a miraculous healing? It can be a way of seeing wonder, working through a simple and inspired change of perspective, here and now.

The recognition of some beauty existing, either in patients’ hospital environments or emotional environments, helps them to understand that help from The Holy might be at hand. It is recognition of what G-d has already provided — before your eyes, now. To be one of those “who have eyes to see and ears to hear” is to be holy too.

So, what is “art”? The question persistently bedevils the best and the brightest. In the hospital setting, the principle of “I know what I like” should be the decider.

Art has the power to be transforming, metaphorical, transcendent, transfiguring, and surprising. Through mutual seeking, what may seem invisible and ordinary can be made perceptible.

Chaplaincy is a patient-centered vocation. But, the chaplain is a co-creator in the time spent together. When I am present with a patient, “what I like” counts too.

I’ll give an example. Seeing a flower arrangement of a most unusual composition off on the corner table in an elderly female patient’s room, I said, “I like it”. Her longtime companion had rearranged the original gift because it was dying. “I couldn’t let them die”, she explained. This arrangement caught my eye because it was visually suspended between the rim of the vase and the bottom of the vase. It was connected to neither earth nor heaven. It was suspended, for the time being. As far as I was concerned the rearrangement spoke to the situation in ways that the original composition could never have. For one thing, this one was arranged through love, not F.T.D.

Then I asked if I could go over and get it and have us all “look at it” again. They agreed. I went around, to the other side of the bed, picked it up, returned via the same route, and placed it on the tray table that was positioned over her legs. I had “processed” around the room. Now, there it was, in the midst of us — two kinds of Christians and a Muslim. Each had an inspired contribution to offer that reflected self-understanding. It is not necessary to list here all of our thoughts and ideas. The point is that I, as a chaplain artist, recognized the transcendent possibilities that made an ordinary thing extraordinary. The latent spiritual gift became art by re-contextualizing.

The miracle is that, through creative patient-chaplain interactions, the hidden can be uncovered, known, and made relevant to the situation at hand.

That is art. All art, after all, is spiritual care, both to the one who makes it and the one who appreciates it. Our studio is the space around a patient’s bed.