- A student the other day said, "It's not so much creating health care systems, "but creating caring systems of health." I really like that. I think we're moving, hopefully, to that, and if that's really true, which many of us hope is true, then to create caring systems of health care, you have to have clinicians that care for themselves and are aware of their own spirit, their calling, and their capacity to care, and build on that capacity to care, but also have tools, practical tools, that enable them to address the spiritual issues of patients, to attend to spiritual existential religious distress, as well as other distress. Say someone in extreme pain, someone who's maybe facing their end of life, a lot of spiritual and existential questions come up. Knowing that it's not just giving someone morphine or opiates, or other medication to handle their distress, but that we train clinicians to be a listening presence. Henri Nouwen says that, "Deep listening is really spiritual hospitality," where you invite someone, people who are strangers, to be friends where you dare to be silent with them. A lot of what we teach is that you don't have to fill the interview with a lot of questions, that you can stop, you recognize that "You known, maybe I need to stop asking questions right now. "Maybe I need to just listen to what's of concern to you," my patient, and give them that space and earn their trust so they're willing to share what is of most concern to you. I think of it as moving continuously between the head and the heart, or the head and heart and soul, however you wanna look at it. It's using my scientific training to help that person with their illness, with their diagnosis, but it's also using my... I think it's about love. It's using a love of the patient, the heart to open up to their story and let them know I'm there for them, and let them know that if I can't help them with something, that there are other people on the team that can, that we all work together for that patient. That's what I think we're bringing. That would be a spiritually-centered health care system. Ultimate meaning is really when we're ultimately facing a mortality, however we do that, whether actively we're dying, or a loved one has died, or something has touched us that make us aware that we're not gonna live forever, aging. All the things that might have been meaningful to us, our work, you know, other things, we can no longer do that. What is it that then sustains us towards the end? What is that really deep meaning? Spiritual issues are not just an add-on. "Oh, by the way, I should do a spiritual history." Routine part of care. Every patient should get a spiritual screening as part of a regular screening coming in to the... and so, it's integrated, it's not separate. So, when they're screened for depression, they're also screened for a spiritual distress. Then when they meet those of us that develop treatment or care plans, usually the physician or nurse practitioner, or nurses, they get a spiritual history. Spirituality has the potential to transform hatred into love, war into peace, it really does if people can recognize that, and more and more people are moving into this. The Fetzer Institute has that now as their main mission. How can we create spiritual communities in different sectors? And we happen to be their example of health through the global network, 'cause they're partners in that. How can we create these communities that are spiritual? I think it's a ripple effect. Dorothy Day had that with her centers. "If I can do well here, it'll eventually ripple out." Relationship is what matters. That my relationship with my patient, that's where healing occurs. I don't heal that person, that person can find healing themselves, and maybe there's some outside force that does the healing, but it's within that relationship, and that's what needs to be supported.