Approaching the Sacred Through Ourselves: Stories from Practics
Anne Hudson Jones, Ph.D., Professor and Kempner Chair in the Humanities in Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch
In the famous preface addressed to the Divine Emperor Charles V, seeking imperial support for his extraordinary new book on human anatomy, De fabrica corporis humani (1543), Andreas Vesalius argues for the importance of human dissection by claiming that we learn about God by learning about our physical selves—by seeing the beauty and complex construction of the human body, “the lodging place and instrument of the immortal soul—a domicile which, because it admirably resembles the universe in many of its names, was fitly called a microcosm by the ancients.” Vesalius uses this argument to elevate and legitimate the unsavory practice of human dissection, so necessary to early anatomical science. Analogously, I will argue in this paper that we approach the sacred when we glimpse in others, however fleetingly, small acts of holiness or godliness. Surgeon-writer Richard Selzer, physician-writer Kate Scannell, nurse-ethicist Amy Haddad, and Unitarian Universalist chaplain to the Maine Warden Service Kate Braestrup, offer examples in stories from their respective practices. They describe the small miracles enacted not only by those who dedicate themselves to lives of service and transcend their specifics job responsibilities but also by family members and friends of medical patients or others in need of physical, emotional, and spiritual care. The epiphanic moments these writers capture so well in their stories of practice can help sustain us all emotionally and spiritually by letting us share those glimpses of the sacred in the lives and work of imperfect human beings.
In the famous preface addressed to the Divine Emperor Charles V, seeking imperial support for his extraordinary new book on human anatomy, De fabrica corporis humani (1543), Andreas Vesalius argues for the importance of human dissection by claiming that we learn about God by learning about our physical selves—by seeing the beauty and complex construction of the human body, “the lodging place and instrument of the immortal soul—a domicile which, because it admirably resembles the universe in many of its names, was fitly called a microcosm by the ancients.” Vesalius uses this argument to elevate and legitimate the unsavory practice of human dissection, so necessary to early anatomical science. Analogously, I will argue in this paper that we approach the sacred when we glimpse in others, however fleetingly, small acts of holiness or godliness. Surgeon-writer Richard Selzer, physician-writer Kate Scannell, nurse-ethicist Amy Haddad, and Unitarian Universalist chaplain to the Maine Warden Service Kate Braestrup, offer examples in stories from their respective practices. They describe the small miracles enacted not only by those who dedicate themselves to lives of service and transcend their specifics job responsibilities but also by family members and friends of medical patients or others in need of physical, emotional, and spiritual care. The epiphanic moments these writers capture so well in their stories of practice can help sustain us all emotionally and spiritually by letting us share those glimpses of the sacred in the lives and work of imperfect human beings.