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Sarah Masters reviews the 2-CD Gift Book Set

Graceful Passages

This audio collection offers anticipatory guidance to individuals facing a period of transition, the death of a loved one or death themselves.

The first CD blends the spoken word with music and the second CD includes meditative music without the verbal messages. My preference was for the second CD, a wonderful collection of short pieces ranging from chorales and a Benedictus to a meditation with gongs.

On the first CD, leaders from different faith traditions including Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ram Dass, as well as experts on loss and transition such as Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, speak to themes of letting go, closure, giving and receiving love, forgiveness, appreciation of life and continuity of spirit. These themes, so familiar to chaplains, resonate throughout Graceful Passages.

Completed: 2000
Running Time: 147 Minutes for 2-CD set
Co-Producers: Michael Stillwater and Gary Malkin

If you are interested in purchasing this 2-CD set, you can do so at www.hartleyfoundation.org. Just click on “Masterworks” on the homepage for more information. The cost of the audio series is $27.95 for the book and 2-CD set.

Sarah Masters is the Managing Director of the Hartley Film Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to cultivation, support, production and distribution of the best documentaries and audio meditations on world religions, spirituality, ethics and well-being.

Book Review

Chaplain Mark LaRocca-Pitts reviews

Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals

Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals is a wonderful resource for healthcare chaplains. In order to understand the who and the where of professional chaplains in healthcare today and where we could be tomorrow, we need a clear picture of our historic positions within healthcare in the past. Risse’s book provides such a picture.

Beginning with the pre-Christian healing shrines dedicated to the Greek god Asclepius and ending with a patient-centered, interdisciplinary AIDS ward in San Francisco, Risse traces the historical developments of hospitals from “charitable guest houses to biomedical showcases.” (p. 4) Within this framework, Risse discusses the infirmaries in Benedictine Monasteries, the Crusader hospitals of St. John’s Hospitallers, the Medieval “lazarettos” (i.e., leper and plague houses), the rapid medicalization during the European Enlightenment, the surgical theaters of American hospitals, and the hospitals of today as houses of science and high technology. Beyond the wealth of historical information Risse provides is his use of first-hand narratives of hospitalized patients. Their testimonies, letters, and journal entries paint a human face on Risse’s history.

As a chaplain, I found Risse’s book most helpful in providing an historical overview of the various motivations behind the provision of healthcare, as hinted at by the book’s title. These motivations varied from one historical period to another, but for the most part involved the interplay of three major motivations: religious (i.e., God’s will is to care for the sick), social (i.e., sick people need to be isolated and cared for), and medical (i.e., we can cure sick people). In the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Middle Ages, the religious and social motivations were intertwined, but almost always defined in religious terms. During this period, conflict occasionally arose between what was considered religious/spiritual healing versus medical/secular healing. Toward the end of this period and into the Enlightenment period, the religious motivation was pushed out of the picture where possible and the medical motivation, supported by the social motivation, became primary. In the Modern and Post-Modern periods, all three motivations are generally present, but separated hierarchically into the medical or scientific, then the social, and finally the religious. In today’s world, a similar hierarchy exists, but social motivations and religious motivations (now defined as spiritual) are increasing in importance because such motivations have an impact on financial motivations, which, in today’s market, subsumes all other motivations, including medical/scientific ones.

I strongly recommend this book for personal study and also think it would make a great study for a hospital-based book club.

Risse, Guenter B. Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), pp 716.

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