Plenary, 11 Dec 2002

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Official Report 356KB pdf

---

Time for Reflection

The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Sandy Young, who is the lead chaplain at the Lothian University Hospitals NHS Trust, Edinburgh.

There is an old film called "The Hasty Heart", which is set in a far eastern military hospital and in which Richard Todd plays a soldier who is more seriously ill than he realises or is later willing to discuss. His friends, a nurse and another soldier—who is played by Ronald Reagan—try to reach out to him, only to be met by a frustrated rebuff, which the scriptwriter no doubt designed to typify the too-tightly-laced stoic: "I need nae help." Although that was more than enough to get the point across, the script was further punctuated by several variations on the theme of "I telt ye"—"I told you so: I need no help."

There is a heartbreakingly wonderful, lonely bravery in stoic coping strategies, into which we instinctively shrink sometimes when really up against it. The same staying-in-my-shell stoicism also has an everyday, more dour dimension and expression. It is the hermit crab—or crabby hermit—defensive spirituality that helps too many of us to get by from day to day.

For those of us who are, in different ways, in the business of making best use of our communication skills, the spirit of "I telt ye" and "I need nae help" adds an extra challenge and a subtle complexity to the business of building bridges of meaning and understanding. If we take the injudicious and audacious step of trying

"To see oursels as others see us",

we might realise, as I did, that our own inoculation with that same stoic spirit has taken rather too well. No matter how I follow the instructions on my bridge-builders' kit, I end up too often with a whacking great bollarded barrier in place of the intended carefully crafted channel of communication.

In my work as a hospital chaplain, I am relearning seeing and listening, for my work teaches me that even the most stoic soul sometimes stretches out to speak with an utter self-revelatory honesty. However, that is not often straightforwardly said—it is in the bloodshot, rheumy eye that shows more than words can tell, or in the gruff, "Here son—do you want to read my paper?" of an old man who cannot tell the young lad in the next bed how much he feels for him.

There is a glorious inarticulate articulation in the subtle signs and stumbling euphemisms in which truth is often told. It is worth learning and relearning the subtleties of sight and sound, which can help us to go beyond "I telt ye" and "I need nae help."