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Sarah Masters reviews the CD series

Christian Meditation: Entering the Mind of Christ

Consider this 6-CD set a meditative retreat. James Finley, a former Trappist monk, guides the listener through some of the fundamental practices at the heart of Christian meditative tradition.

Finley was for many years a brother at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, and he shared a cloistered existence there with Thomas Merton. In 1967, Merton traveled to Thailand to engage in Christian-Buddhist dialogues, and during that journey he passed away unexpectedly. Before he died, Merton wrote a letter to his fellow Trappist monks at Abbey of Gethsemani, and in it Merton acknowledged that the world within the abbey walls contained all the knowledge of Christian tradition that he had been seeking throughout his life.

In that spirit, James Finley has created Christian Meditation, an exploration of Christianity’s contemplative tradition.

Finley calls his narration “a personal retreat experience,” and in twelve sessions he provides step-by-step instructions on how to achieve a state of awakened consciousness. Woven into the narrative are historical anecdotes about the original Christian mystics and instruction on how to “move beyond the tyranny of the past.”

The text for this audio series targets novitiates in Christian meditative thought and may prove particularly instructive to those Chaplains who practice other faiths.

Completed: 2003
Running Time: 7½ Hours
Distributor: Sounds True

If you are interested in purchasing this 6-CD series, you can do so at www.hartleyfoundation.org. Just click on “Sacred Sounds” on the homepage for more information. The cost of the set is $69.95.

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 Joan Paddock Maxwell reviews

The Rebirth of the Clinic: An Introduction to Spirituality in Health Care

This book – by Daniel P. Sulmasy, a distinguished, erudite, and thoughtful Franciscan Friar, physician, and ethicist – makes a diagnosis with which every hospital chaplain will agree, and then offers a prescription which some will find troubling. The diagnosis is that spiritual issues frequently arise in connection with physical illness, and that at times these issues can be gravely disturbing for the patient. Hence “Attention to the spiritual needs of patients is a moral obligation.” (p. 169) Dr. Sulmasy makes and remakes this diagnosis powerfully and well throughout the book. If your hospital’s administration or medical staff is not supportive of chaplain services, you may find some useful assistance here.

The potentially troubling prescription is that “health care professionals [should] explore spiritual issues with patients.” (p. 178) By health care professionals, the author means physicians. He makes a strong case for this point of view, arguing that because physicians see patients at various stages of their illnesses they are well placed to monitor whether or not the patient is experiencing any spiritual difficulties. Dr. Sulmasy offers a list of possible objections to physicians engaging in this activity and counters them one by one. You will need to read these arguments yourself to evaluate their effectiveness. He says that he believes physicians should not try to engage in explicit spiritual healing themselves, but that they should refer patients in spiritual need to chaplains or their own clergy, if available. Unfortunately, while he consistently calls for physicians to assess patients’ spiritual condition, in some chapters he does not always explicitly call for referral.

One objection Dr. Sulmasy does not raise is the problem of available time. In today’s managed care environment, the time pressure physicians endure often gets in the way of good medical practice. Patients are sometimes interrupted before they have been able to fully articulate their presenting complaint.[1] One wonders how physicians will find the time to do a careful spiritual assessment. Perhaps he did not address this issue because he is presenting a “moral obligation” and hence morality trumps time (would that it did).

According to the author, most patients “...want soul medicine and scientific medicine at the same time.” In The Rebirth of the Clinic Dr. Sulmasy makes a strong case for the importance of meeting this desire.[2] In the first part of his tripartite book, the author looks at the historical relationship between spirituality and medicine, arguing that the loss of the spiritual component in health care does a grave disservice to the patient. In Part II, he takes a careful look at scientific investigation of the effect of spirituality on patients’ health. I found his brief chapter on “What the Data Cannot Mean” a helpful checklist in considering such publications as Benson et al.’s recent study on heart patients and intercessory prayer (STEP).[3] And the final part focuses on spirituality at the end of life.

As a non-physician chaplain, I found the book’s window into physicians’ thinking enlightening. On the whole, it is not overloaded with in-group discussion. I found his understanding of patients’ key spiritual issues during grave illnesses and at the end of life – meaning, value, and relationship – in keeping with my own experience. I found his ethical and philosophical analyses generally impressive and compelling.

The Rebirth of the Clinic is derived in great part from various lectures and essays Sulmasy has delivered over the years to a variety of audiences. While the author has worked hard to make his vocabulary understandable to non-professionals, carefully defining both medical and philosophical terms, an intrinsic unevenness to the writing remains. Sulmasy is open about the confessional nature of his Roman Catholic faith. For me as a Protestant, this is generally not a barrier, but in one chapter (11: “On Praying for a Cure”) the author draws much of his authority from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a work not generally known among non-Roman Catholics.

[1] Speaking and interruptions during primary care office visits. Rhoads, D.R. et al. Fam Med 2001 Jul-Aug;33(7):528-32.

[2] The book’s title refers to Michel Foucault’s understanding of the modern medical clinic as a place where medical care “was liberated from the trappings of religion and based on science and reason.” Yet, Sulmasy observes, “...the power of science, untethered from religion’s moral constraints, became the source of [the clinic’s] corruption and death.”

[3] "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer." Benson, Herbert MD, et al., American Heart Journal. 151(4):934-942, April 2006.

Sulmasy, Daniel P. The Rebirth of the Clinic: An Introduction to Spirituality in Health Care, Georgetown University Press (2006) pp 246.

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