This is the long awaited publication from the Centre for the Study of Theology and Health, based at Holy Rood House in Yorkshire, and first mooted around the time that the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the inaugural Hildegard Lecture there, a few weeks before his enthronement in 2003. I was present to hear that lecture, and it certainly whetted my appetite for more to come.

His lecture is reproduced as Chapter 1 in the book, and the two subsequent lectures in 2004 and 2005 are also contained in it. I found Elaine Graham’s 2005 lecture particularly fascinating. In it she asks the question: ‘What are we becoming with our technology?’ and explores the ways in which taken for granted boundaries between humans, machines and what we call ‘nature’ are becoming less and less clear in this digital and biotechnological age.

Some of the other chapters are equally fascinating. Elizabeth Stuart’s chapter on The Sacrament of Unction is a real surprise packet with its unfashionable focus on the importance of this sacrament as a final preparation for death (Extreme Unction) as well as being a healing sacrament. Death is fearful, she says, and this sacrament acknowledges this in a way which many of our modern liturgies do not. At the same time it gives help to the person who is dying and makes it a corporate, rather than an individual, act.

Another fascinating chapter is June Boyce-Tillman’s on the healing power of music. ‘Words divide but sounds unite’, and she goes on to show how music can bring together in a holistic way the many ‘splits’ in our Western society, as between public and private, individualism and community, intuitive and rational, nurture and challenge. Another important chapter is Elizabeth Baxter’s, in which she introduces the reader to the ethos of The Centre for Health and Pastoral Care at Holy Rood House. ‘Come and journey with me to this community where we tread boldly with anticipation towards our own harmonia, our own wholeness, our healing within community.’ And the comments from guests who have spent time there, show that this is no empty invitation: ‘I came desolate and bereft. I found safety and peace. A place where I could be me.’

Different chapters will appeal to different people—inevitably in a book with so many different (and distinguished) contributors. Of more importance is the overall impression that this is a publication in which academic excellence and intellectual rigour are taken very seriously. My feeling is that with this book we have moved up several notches intellectually in the vast literature that now exists on the Christian healing ministry. This means of course that some of the chapters are pretty demanding. But the effort is certainly worth it, and there are nuggets of wisdom hidden in even the most exacting contributions.

 Other Reviews

[Note:  All books are reviewed by the Editor of Chrism, the Rt Revd George Hacker, unless otherwise stated].

I'm Still Standing

Parenting a child with a life-threatening illness

Jan Burn

BRF £5.99, ISBN 1 84101 349 8

Ideally the review of this book should have waited until the next edition of Chrism, which is on Children and Healing, but it is far too helpful a book to wait until then, and hopefully will encourage readers to take a fresh interest in an aspect of healing which has very little written about it.

Jan Burn is co-pastor with her husband James of Kingfisher Church, an inner-city congregation in Gloucester.  In 1993 David, then aged seven, her youngest child, was diagnosed with cancer with a growth on his kidney, requiring an operation and chemotherapy.  Two and a half years later the cancer returned with a tumour on his lung, with further operations and chemotherapy following.  As can be imagined, David endured a great deal of suffering during those years—years which were also a testing time for his parents and two older sisters.  Fortunately he has had no further relapses, though as always with cancer there is no moment when an individual can be pronounced ‘cured’,  and though the possibility of a relapse decreases with the years, it remains an ever-present threat which the family has to live with.

This is the background to this deeply moving and courageous book.  As might be expected the family’s personal story sets the scene throughout, and is often told with an honesty that is at times breathtaking.  So, when David is going through a period of withdrawal, Jan is pleased when Sue, the play specialist in the hospital, is able to get a response from him, but admits also to a twinge of jealousy as well.  And while she is delighted when Sue, lying on the floor and listening to David, dismisses a consultant who wants to speak to her with a wave of her hand, she is not so pleased when Sue does the same to her!  The book abounds with insights of this kind, some of them quite extraordinary in their penetration and depth.

However this personal story is only the starting point for a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the emotional, practical and spiritual aspects of what it means to be a parent of a child with a life-threatening illness.  The chapter headings tell their own story:  Yearning for the past;  Living with loneliness;  Learning to be flexible;  Finding freedom from guilt;  Boundaries and battles;  Building for tomorrow—to name only some.  I found something fresh and helpful in almost every chapter.  Consider this in response to the well-meaning advice to ‘make the most of every moment’:  ‘This may be an acceptable way to live for several weeks, but to live this way month after month . . . is not conducive to developing a relaxed or “real” family environment. . . In my experience, one of the most courageous things that we can do is to live as if there will be a tomorrow, because, whatever shape it takes, that day will come.  In other words we need to choose life again.  In the midst of uncertainty we need to live lives that build for the future.’ 

The book is packed with insights like this—all pure gold, and all in the space of some ninety pages!  Above all there shines through it a strong, but by no means unquestioning faith, which has sustained its author and her family throughout their time of trial.

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SPCK 2004 £12.99 ISBN 0 281 05639 0

Certain subjects are too painful to think about, and abuse of any kind, particularly the abuse of children, can be one of these. Yet it happens, and as such needs to be faced and if possible understood and remedied. That is part of our responsibility as a caring society - both to the victims and to the abusers. It is also part of our responsibility as individual Christians, who influence the way society works along with its values, and the way the Church works and its values.

Jane Chevoux’s book goes a very long way towards helping us to do this. It is comprehensive, in that in it she covers all the different varieties of abuse - abuse of adults as much as children; abuse of power in all its forms, in the home, the workplace, school, doctor’s surgery, church; abuse that society legislates against and abuse that is covered by no legislation. In particular she has a lot to say about ‘spiritual abuse’ (abuse that is backed up by the abuser’s spiritual authority as a minister or church leader), and about which there is a dearth of material. This is a book too that treats the subject in depth. So she analyses the dynamics of abuse - the way, for instance, that a victim of sexual abuse is first identified and then ‘groomed’ and how the level of abuse can then progress. She also has much to say about the effects of abuse on victims - fear, shame, isolation (‘no one will believe you‘), and guilt (‘I asked for it, deserved it’). Then, most usefully, this is a very practical book, with a number of chapters devoted to detailed preventative and rehabilitative strategies for churches and other organisations, and a very full list of resources. Finally there is a theological chapter, which looks at the way traditional Christian theology appears to a survivor of abuse. Here she is at her most challenging, especially in what she has to say about traditional doctrines of the Atonement. But it is a challenge to be taken with the utmost seriousness, in that it is born of the painful reality of actually knowing from the inside what it is like to be abused, with all that that involves.

Jane Chevous is the project director of Just 42, a Christian charity working with children and young people in rural Suffolk. She has had over 25 years’ experience in local authority and church youth officer posts, and until recently was the Assistant Course Director for the Centre for Youth Ministry at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. So she writes with authority. But her book is authoritative in another way too. She is herself a survivor of sexual, physical and pastoral abuse as a young person and an adult, and has also fostered abused teenagers. Reading her book, one is aware of the pain that is there all the time just below the surface. But there is also a strong sense of hope - all the stronger for being thoroughly realistic - that the ‘healing journey’ (as she calls it) is possible, even if it is a ‘long haul’. ‘Here is the place of the triune God; the Christ-Accompanist who enters the messiness and suffering; the Parent-Creator who mourns and rages, heals and tenderly holds us; the Spirit of the long haul, who brings strength and endurance, hope and transformation’.

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4M Publications 2004   £14.95   ISBN 0 9530494 6 9

Only one issue of Chrism has been a complete sell-out. And that was the Autumn 2002 number on Dementia. That, if nothing else, shows how important the subject has become to people—understandably when one in five of those over eighty are said to suffer from it.

It was also no coincidence that this issue contained an article by Malcolm Goldsmith. For many years now Malcolm has had a special interest in dementia, especially in its relation to spirituality, and for a while was a Research Fellow at Stirling University, working within the Dementia Services Development Centre. So this present book comes out of a long period of sustained thought combined with practical experience. As such it speaks with real authority, which even the diffident and at times hesitant and undogmatic approach of the author, cannot disguise. All in all it is an important as well as a timely book.

The author states at the beginning that the book is designed for church leaders, but also with an eye to carers. But typically he adds: ‘If it can offer any words of hope to people with dementia themselves, then I shall be profoundly moved’. Indeed one of the remarkable things about this book is the insight it gives into what the onset of dementia actually means and feels like to the individuals concerned, and for that alone it is of untold value.

Almost half the book is taken up with factual matters, and this also is very valuable as there are many misconceptions about dementia. So there is a section on communicating with people with dementia, with many practical tips and ideas. There is another on some of the more distressing conditions which can result from it and how to cope with these—memory loss, wandering, disruptive and violent behaviour. And of course there is a whole section for family and other carers. Then in the second part of the book the author goes on to outline some of the ways in which the local church can help those with dementia and their carers. Again there is the same combination of deep insight and practical suggestions, including some very helpful suggestions about worship—both the problems and the possibilities. Finally the book concludes with some theological reflections—too short a section to my mind, and I hope very much that the author will develop his thought here in some future publication.

This is a very readable book, full of practical help, but one which also touches the depths. Above all it has a gospel to proclaim: that whatever may be happening within their brains, people with dementia are still people, because they ‘are unconditionally held within the love of God’. You will find that re-iterated in one way or another on almost every page, and it is something which has enormous consequences for all of us.

For more about this book visit the website: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dementia

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BRF 2004   £7.99   ISBN 1 84101 269 6

Until recently Michael Mitton was Deputy Director of the Acorn Christian Foundation, heading up Acorn’s Christian Listeners. As such he is more than qualified to write a book on ‘Listening’, and has done so with his usual warmth and perceptiveness.

But don’t get me wrong. This is not a book on how to listen. For that he directs us early on to Anne Long’s Listening (DLT 1990) and the Acorn Christian Listener courses. It is something much rarer—a book which identifies ‘listening’ as something which is right at the heart of Christian spirituality and indeed theology and the Gospel. That is not to say that the reader won’t find plenty of practical help in his book. In particular the chapter To Unlock the Door contains a number of valuable pieces of advice: e.g. on what he calls ‘your ivory towers’, by which he means your inner fears—that you will be expected to offer solutions; that the person you are listening to will be upset in a way you can’t handle etc., etc. But even in that chapter he goes on to make the theological point that we are called to listen well (with the ‘ears if Christ’) because of Jesus’ own example; and he quotes Dr Frank Lake: ‘God has not only spoken through His Son; what is perhaps more important, He has listened through His Son’.

In another place he quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called God ‘the great listener’ and who said that we need to listen with the ears of God, before we speak the word of God. And again, ‘The one who can no longer listen to his brother or sister will soon be no longer listening to God either’. This is enough to illustrate the spiritual and theological depth of this book—and to whet one’s appetite! And it is a book which covers a lot of ground as well—listening to one another within church communities, to the marginalised and people on the fringes, and to our earth!

Readers of Michael’s earlier book on the ministry of healing Wild Beasts and Angels will be delighted that he has followed a similar pattern here and included a continuing narrative at the end of each chapter which is also a parable. I found this intensely moving and something which touched both mind and heart.

Now Michael, along with his congregation, is trying to put into practice his dream of a ‘listening church’ in his new post in Derby Diocese.

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[Fourth Estate £16.99 ISBN 1 84115 291 9]

How do you ask a group of seventy-five to ninety-five year old nuns to donate their brains? David Snowdon in this very readable and human book admits that he made a hash of it. He was saved by an elderly sister who said matter-of-factly: ‘Of course he can have my brain. What good is it going to do me when I’m six feet under?’

David Snowdon began his ‘Nun Study’ into the causes of Alzheimer’s Disease in 1986, and at the time of publication in 2001 had involved 678 nuns in the project with an age range from 75 to 106. All belonged to the same order, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and were based in various houses in the United States. The attraction of using a large order of nuns for a study lay in the fact that they all had a common life-style, had a common diet and for the most part had similar social and educational backgrounds. Early in the study he also made a most valuable and unexpected discovery. Each of the sisters, on admission to the order, had been required to write a short biography. These, written by young women in their early twenties, had all been kept in the order’s records and were available for study even though their authors were now in their seventies and eighties. They proved to be a mine of information, not only in the details they gave about the writer’s background etc, but in judging such things as their facility with words and ideas. This was to lead to some of the most exciting discoveries associated with the study.

Alzheimer’s is a degenerative disease marked by plaques and tangles—protein clots and twisted filaments—that gradually kill brain cells. That is one reason why it was so necessary to persuade the sisters to donate their brains after death—only an autopsy can establish the true extent of the damage. Yet David Snowdon found some surprising contradictions—sisters who scored high in the regular mental testing until the day they died, and yet were discovered as having advanced physical signs of Alzheimer’s when their brains were examined after their death. Somehow their brains had compensated for the damage. An even more surprising discovery was that those whose early autobiographies were rich in words and ideas stood a markedly greater chance of not succumbing to Alzheimer’s in later life. So his advice to parents is quite simple: ‘Read to your children’—quite a thought in this age of television and computer games!

When David Snowdon originally asked permission to carry out his ‘Nun Study’ the sister in charge was insistent on one condition: ‘No matter what you do, I want you to remember who these women are. They are real people. Very dear to us.’ He admits to being stunned by this—previously he had only known the participants in his studies through their questionnaires, and all researchers are taught that scientific objectivity depends on keeping one’s distance from the people one studies. That he was able to fulfil this condition is what makes this book so special. Somehow he succeeds in combining the cutting edge of scientific research with all the warmth and appreciation he so clearly feels for those whom he is studying. There are the characters—Sister Clarissa, who at the age of 90 drives around the convent in a motorised car she calls her ‘Chevy’—and the book abounds with such stories. There are the human, common sense touches—‘Healthy nutrition [requires] warm conversation as well as hot meals’—and there are many similar gems. And there are the deeper insights and awareness of the pain that is never far away in a study of this kind. ‘Do you know what my worst fear was? That I was going to forget Jesus. I finally realized that I may not remember Him, but He will remember me.’ So Sister Laura on being diagnosed (mistakenly as it turned out) as having Alzheimer’s. What a book!

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[DLT £9.95 ISBN 0 232 52387 6]

This is a ground breaking book. There are of course hundreds of books on prayer and quite a few on counselling. A certain amount has also been written about ‘Christian counselling’, by which is meant counselling within the framework of an agreed set of beliefs and moral parameters. But this book is different. It is written by a counsellor for her professional colleagues whatever their personal beliefs may be, and it seeks to address the question of where prayer fits in (for counsellor or client) while taking full account of the disciplines and restraints required by the counselling relationship.

It has often been said that it is where two disciplines meet that the most exciting new insights are to be found. And this is certainly true here. Listen to this: ‘A client who begins by asking a counsellor to pray, may in effect be saying: “I find these sessions uncomfortable and would rather we ask God to put it right than put ourselves through the pain of talking about it”.’ Prayer, says Jessica Rose, is not a ‘quick-fix’. It does not take away the pain of any particular situation, or the necessity of working through it. What it does is surround the whole situation with love, and of course bring in Another who is able to create opportunities for reconciliation and healing. She is aware too of how manipulative prayer can sometimes be—so a bishop whom she quotes: ‘I immediately become extremely nervous if I think someone might be praying for something specific for me’!

Those are some of the pitfalls, but she has much to say on the positive side. Many counsellors find great support through prayer. One for example described himself as having an ‘internal divine supervisor’. ‘God served the function of supervisor for me, being able to help me contain the awfulness of what I was feeling.’ Another said: ‘Daring to hope is extremely hard, and I think that is something I associate with prayer; a sort of epiphany of goodness combating cynicism.’ ‘Hope in this sense becomes more than optimism, or the expectation that things will come right. It is a deep trust that whatever is going on that we can experience or see, the reality of the situation lies in an ultimate, final goodness.’

As someone who lectures to both counsellors in training and to theological students, she has some wise words to say on the relationship between the two disciplines. Many theological students ‘are acutely aware of the importance of being able to listen to and understand ways in which people talk about their lives; the difficulty is how to become good pastors, not second-rate counsellors.’ And there is a similar interest in religion among many trainee counsellors. The secret of good relationships lies in recognising the difference between the two disciplines. ’The psychological task is to achieve greater insight . . . The religious task is to “hold on to love”.’ ‘The counselling relationship works within certain boundaries, whereas prayer seeks to overcome those boundaries at ever greater depth.’

These are just a few gems from this wonderfully realistic and yet visionary book. Jessica herself is a member of the Orthodox Church, and characteristically begins her book with a quotation from Maximos the Confessor. She has been in practice as a counsellor for the last ten years, and is also a teacher of pastoral care.

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