The Northern Conference was held on the 16th March 2020. This is an event from The Guild of Health and St Raphael, run in partnership with Holy Rood House Centre for Health & Pastoral Care with The Centre for the Study of Theology and Health, Thirsk, North Yorkshire. This year we welcomed Veronica Whitty who spoke on the life, faith and healing work of Florence Nightingale. The following is an edited version of her talk.
‘God helps those who help themselves’, it is said. Florence Nightingale`s efforts to have the sanitary conditions of both soldiers and civilians improved were backed by the irrefutable statistics she compiled.
She was well placed in society to approach anyone who could further the cause. Her passionate nature would enlist help, but it was as a brilliant assimilator, who could state a case with clarity and unrelenting force, that she succeeded in ensuring reforms were carried out. But she had to work behind the scenes, of course, because she was a woman.
This is how she began each day:
“I never pray for anything temporal…but when each morning comes I kneel down before the Rising Sun, and only say, Behold the handmaid of the Lord- give me this day my work to do- no, not my work, but thine.”
From the age of six, she had an inexplicable attraction to nursing. She had 13 dolls and, it was said, they were all sick. As she grew up, she heard God calling her. On 7th February, 1837, shortly before her seventeenth birthday, she wrote: “God spoke to me and called me to His service.”
She heard the call again when she did a retreat in Rome. She felt frustrated as her family would not hear of her becoming a nurse. But in Rome, she sought the advice of Madre Santa Colomba of the French order of Sacre Coeur.
“It is no good separating yourself from people to try and do the will of God,” advised Madre. “That is not the way to gain His blessing. What does it matter even if we are with people who make us desperate. So long as we are doing God`s will it doesn`t matter at all.”
After the retreat she told Madre God had asked her to surrender her will.
“And to whom,” asked Madre
“To all that is upon the earth,” she answered.
“He calls you to a very high degree of perfection,” responded Madre.
Although at one stage, Nightingale had been drawn to the Catholic Church her background was a Dissenting and Unitarian one. Her maternal grandfather was an ardent abolitionist, i.e. anti-slavery and a defender of religious freedom. He became a Unitarian in the late 1780s but would attend any church if there was no chapel of his persuasion nearby.
She was raised an Anglican and in her first (unpaid) position at an Anglican nursing home in London insisted that the home should be non-sectarian and patients receive visits from “their respective priests and Muftis”.
As she grew older she broadened her spiritual reading to include St.Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross and even branches of Eastern religions. St Teresa of Avila famously said: “God is also in the pots and pans.” That practical approach to everyday spirituality appealed to Nightingale but even more so St. Teresa`s writing on prayer, where the soul is seen as a garden and the Four Waters the four ways in which the soul is purified, nourished and brought to fruition.
The passionate side of her nature found a poetic outlet in St. John`s writing. For example, here is the last stanza of one of his rapturous songs:
“Lost to myself I stayed
My face upon my lover having laid
From all endeavour ceasing:
And all my cares releasing
Threw them amongst the lilies there to fade.”
Nightingale knew what it was to be a patient both as a child and adult. In the Crimea, she was nursed through a dangerous illness by Mrs Eliza Roberts, the most skilled of the nurses who went out with her. She visited hospitals and studied nursing. So her book “Notes on Nursing”, published in 1959 is still pertinent (and available) today.She was advised to keep the language simple so that anyone could read it.
Here is some of her advice:
“How to nurse patients in hospital, at home and maintain the health of healthy people:
- To leave the patient`s untasted food by his side from meal to meal in hopes that he will eat it in the interval is simply to prevent him from taking any food at all;
- Being in charge: so that things are done when you are not there or not undone. This is what being in charge means.
- Sudden noises are injurious. Sit where a patient can be seen and can see you with ease – tell a patient a story rather than read to him because the voice remains even;
- When a patient craves fancies they are a clue to what is necessary for their recovery;
- Allow air to circulate especially at night when air is cleanest by opening top window a little;
- Always sit down when a patient is talking business to you, show no signs of hurry, give complete attention and full consideration if your advice is wanted and go away the moment the subject is ended
- Visitors should come with stories that will give the patient pleasure. Bring a baby and lay it down beside the patient.”
She anticipates some criticism of her remarks and follows one piece of advice with: “The doctor who looks after the Queen`s children says so.”
Nightingale appreciated the companionship of animals . She kept pets throughout her life, including three owls at different times and, in her final years, cats. Indeed, she regarded pets as having a civilizing effect on people.
Veronica Whitty is a writer, Enneagram facilitator and dreamgroup facilitator. She wrote about Florence Nightingale and the Sisters of Mercy in the Crimea for The Tablet in 2010 on the 100th anniversary of the death of Florence Nightingale. Veronica went to South India as a British volunteer when she was 18. She later went into journalism and returned to India overland after four years and was a volunteer in Kolkata with Mother Teresa`s order. She has continued to volunteer with the order as a teacher and driver in UK. She now lives in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.www.veronicawhitty.co.uk
Sources:
- Mark Bostridge, 2008: “ Florence Nightingale”
- Cecil Woodham-Smith, 1951: “Florence Nightingale”
- Robert Ellsberg, 2006: “Blessed Among All Women
- Woman saints, prophets and witnesses for our time.”
- Elizabeth Jennings, 1961: “Every Changing Shape, Mystical Experience and the Making of Poets”.