Last Friday I attended a study day at St Christopher’s hospice entitled ‘The Case for Contemplative Care’. There was a fascinating variety of speakers from different faith traditions all advocating for palliative care practitioners to pay greater attention to the wisdom of the contemplative tradition. St Christopher’s hospice has a brilliant new learning centre – with vast windows onto their hospice garden teeming with life, a library and open-plan seating area for conversation and encounter. Thoughtfully carved sculptures from a Buddhist hospice chaplain were spread across the foyer for our meditation during the conference. The day was an inspiration. We were told stories about a grandmother who modelled contemplative care, ‘When she was with you, she was with you and absolutely nowhere else’. We were reminded that we can only be intimately attentive to another if we are intimately attentive to ourselves and self-aware. I couldn’t help but leave the day thinking surely contemplative care is vital at any stage in life. So much of the day chimed with our Nazareth rule of life. Many of us are in caring roles – looking after elderly siblings, parents, children and grandchildren. Caring at its best, even when the going gets tough, models this compassionate and contemplative care. Many of us today are grateful for our mothers or people who have mothered us into being. As we gather in church this Mothering Sunday may we feel the gaze of God’s contemplative care for each one of us as we are refreshed and renewed for contemplative service in our world.
The Collect for Mothering Sunday
God of compassion, whose Son Jesus Christ, the child of Mary, shared the life of a home in Nazareth, and on the cross, drew the whole human family to himself: strengthen us in our daily living that in joy and in sorrow we may know the power of your presence to bind together and to heal; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
Revd Catherine Duce
