Spiritual Advisor Research Articles

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Introduction: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that a pediatric palliative care (PC) team consist of "a physician, nurse, social worker, spiritual advisor, and child life therapist". It is unknown how many PC teams include these members or whether the design of a PC team affects the numbers of PC referrals. Methods: We designed and tested a survey tool to capture PC team composition. The survey was sent electronically using Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), hosted at the University of Utah, to PC team directors at 44 pediatric hospitals that contribute to the Pediatric Health Information Systems (PHIS) database. The survey was sent to a hospital administrator if the hospital did not have a PC team. Survey results were analyzed using descriptive statistics. In order to index PC referrals to hospital capacity, we calculated PC referrals by number of referrals per hospital bed in the year 2012 and compared this index to reported team composition. Results: Survey response rate was 86% (38/44). The majority of responders were from hospitals with PC teams (35/38, 92%). The mean estimated PC referrals in 2012, were 135 (range 12-337). The mean referrals per hospital bed for 2012, was 0.46 (range 0.05-2.13). The mean number of PC team members was 4.1 with a range from ≤ 1 full time team member to over 9. Neither PC team member types nor the total number of PC team members (pearson correlation=0.184) were significantly associated with indexed referrals. However, having certain types of team members, specifically acute pain service (APS), chronic pain service (CPS), and advanced nurse practitioners (ANP), tended to increase the mean indexed referrals, [APS: 0.65 vs. 0.43 (p=0.36), CPS: 0.67 vs. 0.43 (p=0.45), and APN: 0.53 vs. 0.32 (p=.07)]. Interestingly, the presence of a physician who identified themselves as Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM) also tended to increase the mean number of indexed referrals [0.52 vs. 0.39 (p=0.34)], however, this was not significant. Conclusions: Overall, neither the type of team member nor the number of members on a PC team significantly affected indexed referral numbers. However, certain members like ANPs may increase referrals.

Bernard de Clairvaux: Lettres. Tome 3: (92-163). Introduction, translation, and notes by MONIQUE and GASTON DUCHET-SUCHAUX.

This third volume of the Latin–French version of the letters of Bernard of Clairvaux takes us from letter 92 to letter 163, through much of the 1130s. The apparatus and indexes follow the pattern of the earlier volumes in the series and the French version is elegant and accessible. This volume has its own short introduction to the letters it contains. Leclercq’s grouping is respected. This offers an ‘English’ sequence (nos. 92–6) relating to Fountains Abbey; a ‘German’ pair (nos. 97–8); a group (nos. 99–112) which deal with various monastic questions, including a subset on problems with vocations; and a group relating to nuns and laywomen seeking spiritual advice (nos. 113–21). Most important perhaps are three further sequences. Letters 122–40 deal with the papal schism which followed the death of Honorius II. The introduction enlarges on this, giving a description of events and a chronology. Letters 141–9 form another ‘monastic’ sequence and include correspondence with Peter the Venerable of Cluny. Letters 150–63 are letters of papal correspondence. So in this volume Bernard the letter-writer is seen at his most involved in the affairs of Europe, political and secular as well as ecclesiastical and spiritual.

Roles of Religious and Spiritual Advisors Among Adults in Singapore With Mental Illnesses

OBJECTIVE Information is limited concerning the role of religious and spiritual advisors in providing help to people with mental illnesses in Singapore. This study examined that role, as well as the satisfaction with and the perceived effectiveness of the services provided, among people with mental health problems. METHODS Data were collected as part of a nationally representative household survey of residents 18 years and older in Singapore. The Composite International Diagnostic Interview, version 3.0, was used to diagnose mental illness as well as to collect information about the mental health services respondents had sought. RESULTS A total of 6,616 respondents completed the survey; in the overall sample, 1.5% reported seeking help from religious or spiritual advisors. This rate increased to 6.6% among those with at least one mental illness, with the prevalence being higher among respondents with lifetime dysthymia, generalized anxiety disorder, or bipolar disorder. Sociodemographic correlates associated with a lower likelihood of consultation with a religious or spiritual advisor included reporting "other" race-ethnicity as well as faith in Buddhism, Hinduism, or Islam. Most respondents who sought help from a religious or spiritual advisor in the last 12 months were satisfied with the help they received, and about half reported it to be very useful. CONCLUSIONS Religious and spiritual advisors are an important source of help for people with mental illness, and a majority of respondents with a mental illness were satisfied with the support they received from these sources.

The Mystery of Totality in Mircea Eliade`s A Spiritual Adventure

four-act play A Spiritual mentioned several times by Mircea Eliade in his autobiographical texts, has recently been offered to all those fascinated by mysterious imaginary world of literature written by Romanian scholar. Professor Mac Linscott Ricketts, devoted to introducing readers around world to Eliade's work, has managed to discover text of this play, written in 1946, in Eliade Special Collection of University of Chicago Library. A Spiritual Adventure was published for first time in January 2012, in English translation, in journal Theory in Action. Professor Ricketts also discusses making of this mythical text. For interpretative endeavour that we propose to undertake in following lines, Ricketts' paper, The Writing of A Spiritual Adventure, is an important starting point.Initially entitled Euridice, this play extends scheme of Hellenic myth, as it is structured by idea of experiencing via unitiva, beyond human will, through divine grace. Folded around mystery of being, story reveals ''the absolute reality of which teaches a human being ''techniques of partcipating in Divine Nature. As Eliade explains in his Soliloquies, ''noncontradiction is acceptable only in one kind of madness: love. Love is beyond fragmentation and contrast because it is autonomous, absolute, sui-generis revelation2.In realm of potentiality, first steps are taken through mirror of a magic space in Danube Delta. Here we witness dialogue conducted between Tudor Manciu, a young playwright who is afraid of spiritual sterility, and Alexiu, his down-to-earth friend. Thus we leam about Tudor's fascination with a genius composer, Mihai Barbura, who decided to withdraw from world and understand otherness in seclusion of Delta. mystery of famous musician is revealed due to Ctefania's presence, to whom artist confesses about his decision to wait for his dead wife's return from other world. This is beginning of a fascinating inner dialogue that gradually extends towards others, showing infinite possibilities of human consciousness as a bridge between heaven and earth. After engagement and marriage to Ctefania, Mihai Barbura's identity reveals contradictory complementarity between mythos and world of fragmentation. Barbura renounces his fame, which places his existence under sign of an external myth, in order to be only Petru Baranda, an ordinary man who wishes to fulfill marriage in heaven and on earth as well. Ctefania does not recognize her husband in simple man who apparently does not know anything about miracle of creation. She loses herself in despair and sin only to remodel her spiritual structure in harmony with rhythms of a cosmos that reveals its splendour. In final act of play, game of potentialities unfolds on a theatre stage. Tudor Manciu critically examines dress-rehearsal of A Spiritual whose message touches actor's hearts within limits of their level of perception. young playwright meets Ctefania again, as if by magic, to receive another invitation to noncontradiction, to madness of love, only one that offers certainty of immortality.Mircea Eliade's play seems to suggest that spiritual adventure of man requires existence of multiple levels of reality, harmonized in that structure of human consciousness through which Eliade defined sacred. Consequently, deciphering meanings of this mythical story entails relating to initiatory experience of search for centre, as it is reflected by religious traditions of mankind, so mysteriously enshrouded in Eliadean writings which are seen, inspired, and which seem to stem from high realms of soul. Professor Ricketts selects from journal excerpts that illustrate state of grace which overwhelmed writer when the mental film of a literary work attempted to make its way into his consciousness so that it could then be transferred, through work of art, into collective memory:For some time now, before falling asleep, I've been tempted again by obsession of a play I first saw one evening in December 1944, walking along deserted terraces of Estoril, when I was staying with Costes. …

Businessmen, Priests and Parishes

Beginning in the late socialist years, the religious situation in Soviet Union changed massively and local authors from Vladimir region describe this phenomenon as religious rebirth (vozrozhdenie). The believersoften have long-term relationships with individual priests to whom they turn for various blessings, confessions, and forms of spiritual advice, including the interpretation of dreams. The advice and interpretations given by priests differ considerably, but they generally emphasize religious action and right ritual performance. Russian orthodoxy sustains highly individualizedforms of religiosity and becomes more flexible than even its practitioners and priests like to acknowledge.

Mental health service use from a religious or spiritual advisor among Asian Americans

BackgroundAsian Americans experience significant underuse of mental health treatment. Religious clergy and spiritual advisors play a critical role in delivering mental health care in the United States. Limited knowledge exists about their use among Asian Americans. ObjectiveWe describe mental health service use from a religious/spiritual advisor among Asian Americans. MethodsWe analyzed data from 2095 respondents in the 2002–2003 National Latino and Asian American Study. ResultsLifetime and 12-month prevalence of mental health service use from a religious/spiritual advisor (5.5% and 1% overall, respectively) was generally higher among U.S.-born Asians and those with a 12-month mental disorder (23.6% and 7.5%, respectively). Religious/spiritual advisors were seen by 35% of treatment-seeking Asian Americans with a lifetime mental disorder. They were seen as commonly as psychiatrists but less commonly than a mental health specialist or general medical provider. Approximately 70% of those seeking treatment had a mental disorder, significant proportions of whom sought treatment in the absence of a psychiatrist, a mental health specialist or even a healthcare provider. A significant majority with 12-month use perceived the care as helpful, felt accepted/understood and satisfied (71–86%). However, only 31% rated the care as excellent, 28% quit completing care, and referral rates for specialty mental health treatment were low, even among those with a mental disorder (9.5%). ConclusionsReligious/spiritual advisors are a key source of treatment-seeking for Asian Americans with a mental disorder. Quality of care and low referral rates for specialty mental health treatment warrant further attention and need for increased collaboration with the mental health system.

Elizabeth I’s Former Tutor Reports on the Parliament of 1559: Johannes Spithovius to the Chancellor of Denmark, 27 February 1559

Abstract The fragmentary nature of the evidence for the proceedings of the Parliament of 1559 is one of the more obvious reasons for the continuing debate over the Elizabethan religious settlement. Philip II’s representative, the count of Feria, whose reports have been in print for more than a century, has been the primary diplomatic source.1 As a consequence of the war with France, there was no French diplomatic representation at the English court. However, in February 1559 three further envoys arrived on relatively brief missions. George, count of Helfenstein, the Emperor Ferdinand I’s ambassador in Brussels, was commissioned to greet Elizabeth I on her accession, but also to assess her intentions over religion and marriage. He has left a reasonably well-known series of reports.2 The other two envoys are more or less unknown, but both were Lutherans. One was Ludovico Vergerio, nephew of Pier Paulo Vergerio, spiritual advisor to Christopher, duke of Württemberg.3 The last envoy was sent by Dorothea, the recently widowed queen of Denmark.4 His sole surviving report is the only known commentary on the situation in England in February 1559 by a foreign Protestant observer. But he was not a stranger; he had previously been one of Elizabeth’s tutors.

Development of a Spiritual Self-Care Practice Scale

Development of a valid, reliable instrument to measure spiritual self-care practices of patients with heart failure. African American patients (N = 142) with heart failure participated in the study. Spiritual advisors from several religious groups reviewed the Spiritual Self-Care Practices Scale (SSCPS) for content validity. Construct validity was determined using a principal components factor analysis. Reliability was established using Cronbach's alpha coefficients. Religious advisors provided suggestions to improve content validity. Four factors consistent with spiritual practices (personal spiritual practices, spiritual practices, physical spiritual practices, and interpersonal spiritual practices) emerged from the factor analysis. The alpha coefficient was moderate at 0.64. Results indicated the SSCPS was reliable and valid for measuring spiritual self-care practices among African Americans with heart failure. Additional testing is needed to confirm results in other patient groups with chronic illnesses.

Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya by Elliot Fratkin

Reviewed by: Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya by Elliot Fratkin Peter D. Little Elliot Fratkin. Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya. Lanham, Md.: Altamira Press. xiv + 179. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $26.99. Paper. Elliot Fratkin has written an insightful, enjoyable, and very readable book about his fieldwork and life-long friendship with a family of diviners (laibon) in northern Kenya. The work is strongly autobiographical, recounting how a young, rebellious American anthropologist in the 1970s found himself conducting dissertation research among Ariaal, a Samburu-related nomadic community of northern Kenya. His original goal was to study Turkana pastoralists of northwestern Kenya, but he abandoned that idea after finding them not particularly hospitable to the notion of being studied by an anthropologist. As the author makes clear, Turkana are not known to be a “warm and fuzzy” people or to welcome outsiders. Fratkin’s alternative was to study another Nilotic group just north of Turkana in southwestern Ethiopia. However, he only made it as far as Marsabit town, a dusty Kenyan outpost about 150 kilometers south of the Ethiopian border, when he learned of a military coup in the country that forced him to abandon this option. Fortuitously, in Marsabit he almost immediately met up with a young man who introduced him to the nearby Ariaal pastoralists and their laibon (diviner). Unmarried and youthful, Fratkin was adopted by the laibon’s family and quickly struck up a series of friendships with young men around his same age who made up the so-called warrior (il murran) age set of the community. What emerges from these relationships is an anthropological story of the trials and tribulations of fieldwork, the creativeness and practices of a people coping with a difficult physical environment, and the humanity of a community characterized by similar emotions of love, anger, and compassion that define human nature. In order to study a mobile group, Fratkin himself adopted a nomadic existence. He often went on foot to herding camps for days at a time, living among young herders and consuming plenty of fresh milk and meat. His narrations of these encounters, including his first experiences with raw cow blood and an angry lion, are both humorous and informative. In his fieldwork he also followed around the laibon as he performed rituals and aided individuals seeking either medical or spiritual advice, and we learn much about local belief systems among Ariaal and Samburu. With an old Land Rover, Fratkin also assisted the laibon and other community [End Page 179] members with their transportation needs, including visits to health clinics and relatives both within and outside the district. These are normal requests for an anthropologist in the field, but in Fratkin’s case they often entailed long journeys over sandy camel tracks. It is through these daily routines that Fratkin shows the real value of the participant-observation method. By participating in community life and witnessing and questioning the laibon about his different divination techniques, medicines, and knowledge, the author strikes a deep and meaningful friendship with the laibon and his family. Fratkin truly liked these people, although the diviner’s occasional encounters with excessive liquor consumption and bouts of anger tested both his friendship and patience. And what is equally clear is that the laibon and his son, who remains a good friend of the author’s, also liked him. More than an autobiography, the book is loaded with seasoned insights into a range of topics, such as the role of missionaries and development agencies in the region, local social organization and age set structures, and the disastrous effects of drought (and development programs!) especially since the 1970s. By following the same family and community over thirty-plus years of study, the author shows with considerable detail and personal concern the social and environmental changes that have occurred over this period, many of which, as the book makes clear, have not been very positive for Ariaal. The book will be a great teaching asset for undergraduate courses in cultural anthropology, African studies, research methods, and environmental studies. On a personal note, I currently am using Laibon as a required text in an...

"The Truth about the Mistake": Perpetrator Witness and the Intergenerational Transmission of Guilt

Based on the archived correspondence between Artur Wilke, a convicted member of Sonderkommando 1005, and Hermann Schlingensiepen, a former professor of theology who acted as spiritual advisor to imprisoned Nazi perpetrators, this article examines the moral and political lessons that Nazi perpetrators communicated to their children. In a seventy-seven-page letter written to his son in 1966, Artur Wilke tried to preserve his paternal authority and moral integrity by denying personal wrongdoing. Instead, he portrayed himself as a victim of his teachers, of politicians, and of religious and legal authorities. He counseled his son to distrust the state and the law, and to submit only to divine authority. His political lessons and deep disillusionment with the German state resonated with the radical politics of the student rebellion of 1968.

Muslim faith healers' views on substance misuse and psychosis

It has been found that the Muslim population in the UK seek spiritual advice from traditional faith healers for psychiatric and related problems. The important role that religious beliefs may have on perceptions of mental illness and substance misuse warrants further investigation. The aims were to examine the views of Muslims faith healers on symptoms and changes in behaviour commonly described as “psychosis” and “substance misuse”. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with Muslim faith healers from various backgrounds. Data were analysed according to the conventions of qualitative research using grounded theory methods. Religious conceptualisations played a key role in the understanding of both the disorders and consequently the guidance given. There were similarities and differences in the narratives given for psychosis and substance misuse. Healers expressed doubt towards other faith healers and the methods utilised by scientific means. The findings suggest a need for close collaboration between faith healers and mental health workers in order to achieve a culturally sensitive health care system.

Cultivating emotions: the Gita Press and its agenda of social and spiritual reform

In the mid-1920s, the Gita Press in Gorakhpur started to publish high-quality translations of sacred Hindu scriptures, as well as religious tracts, advice books and magazine articles that emphasized devotion to God through the control and cultivation of emotions. Feeling the proper way became an important asset for spiritual salvation, as well as a prerequisite for social reforms. This article focuses on the founders of the Gita Press, and how they promoted a reformatory and religious agenda that defined the moral framework of being and feeling Hindu. The Gita Press gained popularity through its Hindi translation of the Bhagavadgita, which was styled as the central scripture for all Hindus. I argue that the advice books and normative writings published by the press not only popularized the Bhagavadgita, but also provided interpretations and adaptations in the process of a larger social reform project. These writings enunciated the ways of reaching salvation and combined this with social guidance in all aspects of human life. The analysis of writings by Jaydayal Goyandka and Hanuman Prasad Poddar indicates a social reform agenda that was geared towards current social issues of the Marwari trading community. At the same time, these texts also engaged in the larger project of reforming society, thereby constructing and strengthening the traditions of orthodoxy or ‘Sanatan Dharma’. Till today, the popularity of the Gita Press' print products remains intact and their advice books continue to provide spiritual advice enmeshed with moral guidelines.

The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (review)

The Trials of Margaret Clitberow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England. By Peter Lake and Michael Questier. (New York: Continuum. 2011. Pp. xix, 244. $120.00 clothbound, ISBN 9781-441-15134-6; $34.95 paperback, ISBN 978-1-441-10436-6.) Margaret Clitherow was executed in York on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1586, by the ancient, barbaric method of peine fort et dure because she had refused to plead to the indictment brought her of harboring a seminary priest- an act that, under the statute of 1585, was deemed to be a felony. Such an outcome to her trial was entirely expected, and for the Protestant regime in the persons of the earl of Huntingdon and the Council of the North, it was highly embarrassing. The execution of a young, pregnant woman- the wife of a respected tradesman, mother of a young family, and stepdaughter of the mayor- by stripping her and then crushing her to death under a heavy door, weighed down by rocks, was an act, irrespective of its legality, which could never be construed in a favorable light. They were so embarrassed by this outcome that they had her executed early in the morning with only the minimum number of necessary witnesses and executioners present. Nor did the Catholics come out of it well; to have allowed the case to get so out of hand was utterly irresponsible. Their first reaction was to construct Clitherow as a martyr. Her spiritual adviser, the seminary priest John Mush, immediately began to write an account of her life, trial, and death in the form of her Vita for circulation within the community. Titled A True Report of the Life and Martyrdom of Mrs Margaret it is the only source (other than a brief, illustrated account by Richard Verstegan) that we have of the woman and the events that culminated in her execution. In it, she emerges as a symbolic figure; a shining example of Catholic womanhood whose virtuous life ended in a martyr's death at the hands of the antichrist of the Protestant Church. Margaret Clitherow, the flesh-and-blood woman, was thus transfigured into an iconic figure of Mush's making. Peter Lake and Michael Questier take Mush's manuscript account and, drawing upon the analysis and commentaries of scholars, in particular the meticulous work of Katherine Longley, use it as the starting point of their investigation- hence the title of the book.They argue that, by reading Mush's narrative against the grain, it is possible to uncover and identify in it the arguments about conformity that had, at the time of the trial, split the Catholic community into two bitterly opposing factions as they attempted to reconcile the demands of conscience with their sovereign's demand for obethence in the matter of church attendance. …

Powerful Eurydice: The Female Voice in Eliade’s A Spiritual Adventure

In his novella Nineteen Roses, Mircea Eliade alluded to play about and Eurydice. He did indeed write this play in 1946. Mac L. Ricketts discovered it in the Eliade Special Collection of the University of Chicago library. In his introduction to the English translation (published here for the first time and before the Romanian original), Ricketts discusses the conception and writing of this play as it is described in Eliade's Journal. It seems that Eliade enjoyed the experience of writing it but at the same time was tormented by the inspiration for this serious drama as he calls it. Although Eliade had not found name for the female protagonist, she evidently personifies Eurydice. Eliade wrote of in his diary: Y, the woman, fascinates me. She is just as I saw her (qtd. in Ricketts).In 2005, the ambiguity around the existence of the play A Spiritual Adventure led the neo-fascist critic Claudio Mutti to interpret this then unknown play built as mise-en-abime of Eliade' s novella Nineteen Roses. In chapters from his book Mircea Eliade and the Iron Guard, Claudio Mutti surmises that the play Eliade mentions in Nineteen Roses (which turns out to be A Spiritual Adventure) is a marvellous book on the Captain (Corneliu Zelea Codreanu1). Mutti sees the play as tragedy about the Iron Guard and its leader (43). The author bases his argument on affirmations made by Eliade' s acquaintances and on the fact that 1938 was for Eliade traumatic year, due to his imprisonment in legionnaire camp in Miercurea-Ciuc, where he might have written the play Orpheus and and read it to his prison mates (Mutti 4445). Comparing Eliade' s novels The Forbidden Forest and Nineteen Roses, Mutti discovers change of attitude in the author's rendition of his historical experience:Pour reprendre la terminologie d'Eliade, Foret interdite est le roman de l'amnesie, tandis que Les Dix-neuf roses est le roman de l'anamnese. Avec le premier, l'auteur efface de sa memoire l'experience legionnaire et reporte sur Partenie-Ionesco ce qui lui appartenait lui, Eliade. Dans Les Dix-neuf roses, ecrit par Eliade quelques annees avant sa mort, le recouvrement definitif de la memoire est annonce : fut-ce dans les termes cryptiques d'un roman chiffre, Eliade revendique la periode de sa vie liee l'epopee legionnaire. (Mutti 47)To Mutti, the character Ieronim Thanase, who directs experimental theatre performances, evokes Julius Evola2 (48). Mutti can elaborate on play he has not read because of the ambiguity surrounding it and of Eliade' s long fascination with the Iron Guard movement. This capti vation with the fascist movement in Romania informs Eliade' s recurrent themes of the persecution of memory and of history. In Mircea Eliade: Le Prisonnier de l'histoire (2003), Florin Jurcanu analysed Eliade 's complicity in the fascist movement in Romania in the thirties and its consequences for his career. Eliade' s political affinities had tragic impact on his life - as can be discerned, however obliquely, in this newly discovered play.Nineteen Roses, the novella in which Eliade mentions the play A Spiritual Adventure, was inspired by the and Eurydice myth. A female character from fantastic world, Niculina, plays Eurydice in strange performances directed by an experimental theatre guru. She carries mysterious suitcase in which she hides book among two layers of veils. Anghel D. Pandele, the main protagonist, is writer who is helped by theatre performances to recover his lost memory. A young man, Laurian Serdaru, Niculina's fiance, knows lot about the play and claims to be the son of the actress and of the playwright Pandele. We learn that the actress meant to play Eurydice never managed to perform in front of audiences since the play had been cancelled. Laurian Serdaru and Niculina try to help Pandele recover his memory of events before Christmas night of 1938 through the magic performance of different play, directed by Ieronim Thanase (the name, inspired by Thanatos, bears connotation of death). …

The Writing of A Spiritual Adventure

It been known ever since Eliade published the first volume of his excerpts1 that he had written a play in October-November 1946, called Aventura spirituala2 A Spiritual Adventure), which had never been published. His Romanian biographer, Mircea Handoca, visited him in Paris in September 1985 and, among other inquired concerning the existence of the play. The Professor told him he possessed a copy of it in Chicago and would mail it to him when he returned. Unfortunately, Eliade died a few months later without having sent it. However, in 2008 when the University of Chicago Library issued a Finding Aid for the Eliade papers contained among its Special Collections, was able to locate the play and obtain a copy of the original typescript.3There are about a dozen references to the play in the journal fragments Eliade selected for publication. However, the unabridged journal, also found in the Eliade Special Collection (a manuscript nearly five times the length of the published one),4 contains more than twice the amount of material about the writing of the play. The complete Journal reveals a fascinating account of the trials through which the author passed as he was writing it and his evaluation of it when it was finished.The first entry in which the play is mentioned is dated 3 October 1946, when Eliade had been a refugee in Paris for about a year. Quoted only partially in Fragments, it deserves to be reproduced in full:For some time now, before falling asleep, I've been again by the obsession of a play first saw one evening in December 1944, walking along the deserted terraces of the Estoni, when was staying with the Costes.5 remember announced the play upon returning home, and told them I'd start writing it as soon as moved to rue Suadade 13, at Cascais. It was a way - coded for others - of meeting again with Nina. Act would have taken place on an island with a lighthouse. hoped that the waves breaking on my terrace at out new residence would help me recover the inspiration. But once settled at nr. 13 rua Suadade, was caught up in other things: moods of sadness and melancholy, scientific6 and philosophical interests, etc. Only in the summer of 1945, for a moment, was tempted to begin this Eurydice.1 The move to Paris [in September 1945], however, suspended any literary plan.I see now, however, the first scene. No longer is it an island - but the bank of a canal in the [Danube] Delta. The problem, the characters, the dramatic treatment have remained the same. Sometimes the temptation is so great that sit for more than an hour in the darkness with my eyes open, observing my characters, listening to them, trying to see their faces more clearly. If were to start, believe could write it in a few days. But I've sworn not to do anything else until I've finished the first chapter of Prolegomene? And, as usual, this interdiction from working on anything outside of a text already begun does not gain me any more free time or extra spiritual energy for writing the text. What I'm writing is just as hasty and fragmented as if I'd written Prolegomene concurrently with Eurydice.The next reference is dated 16 October, when, on a book-buying excursion, he finds himself thinking intently about his play. Suddenly he sees the plot changing: an episode flashes before his eyes that he doesn't like. In order to settle things, he goes out for another walk, and when he returns, he has the play written mentally from start to finish. He begins to write on paper the next day, at midnight, and by 1 :30 he three pages written - puzzled by the discoveries he is making.On 18 October, a busy day, he could find only a few afternoon hours free for literary creation. I wrote four pages of the play, he records, interrupting myself frequently to prevent 'inspiration' from leading me down who knows what lost paths. If my interest for the play holds up for at least a week, I'm sure I'll finish it. …

The Religion of Learning English in English: A Language Educator’s Reading

This essay is my reading of English, a novel based on author Wang Gang’s experiences in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). As a language educator, I was particularly interested in the way that Wang describes learning English in the novel. The essay focuses on three aspects of learning English in the novel: the representation of learning English as a spiritual experience, the appeal of English for Love Liu as an adolescent learner and the portrayal of Second Prize Wang as an English teacher. The novel depicts learning English as a spiritual adventure and a religious experience in which Liu regards English as gospel and Wang, the English teacher, as the Messiah, who will lead him out of the chaotic and dehumanising world. The novel indicates the need to explore how individual learners in particular contexts appropriate the English language to pursue locally meaningful objectives.

Overview on Neonatal Palliative Care

Survival rates for very preterm and critically ill infants are increasing, raising complex ethical issues for health-care providers and parents who face the challenge of making end-of-life decisions for newborns. Palliative care for newborns is holistic and extensive care for an infant who is not going to “get better”. It focuses the baby and the family. It may initially be combined with cure-oriented, disease-modifying care and then intensified when that forms of care is no longer helpful or appropriate. The approach is to relieve physical, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual suffering of the dying baby and family. Opinions and practice regarding end-of-life decisions in neonatal medicine show considerable variations between countries. In Portugal, few studies have examined the circumstances surrounding the last moments of neonates and families in NICUs. The evaluation of care given to neonates and their families in a terminal situation has been improved revealing a more effective pain and distress relief, more spiritual advisor solicitation and free permission of siblings and other relatives to visit. Parental presence during neonatal death was more frequent in the last years. In conclusion, in spite of a neonatal palliative care improvement in last years, we observed that many neonates in end of life still receive curative and aggressive practices. Recommendations and a more consistent and specialized team approach in the care of newborns with a life-limiting disease are suggested to improve the conditions of the infants and their families.

‘I have been bred upon the Theater of death, and have learned that part’: The Execution Ritual during the English Revolution

A state can wield no greater power than to dispense death in the name of justice.1 When a royalist was found guilty of treason and executed during the English Revolution, the events of his final day formed a dramatic ritual intended to demonstrate the purging of evil and triumph of righteousness. While the state administered justice in an unemotional fashion that did not emphasise pain or revenge, the victim's role was to acquiesce and acknowledge the fairness of the proceedings. That acknowledgment, that act of being complicit in his own murder, allowed the crowd - often large and boisterous - to accept its role, not merely as witnesses, but as participants in a communal act that distributed punishment in a fair and equitable manner. This was how the authorised or conventional script ran. When a victim reached the scaffold, however, the execution ritual was not always so orderly, for counterscripts soon appeared, acted out by him, his spiritual adviser, military figures, the executioner, and the many spectators - some accepting the state's authority, some subverting it, and some instituting temporary forms of authority shaped by consensus. To see public executions either as unambiguous displays of a monolithic state power that demonstrated 'ideological control'2 or as chaotic events at which the authorities 'perpetrated the shabbiest of rituals with the minimum of authorial control'3 misses the point of what actually occurred on and around the scaffold during the English Revolution.For the execution ritual was a hybrid event that participated in both of these identities, being carefully scripted and choreographed by precedents and cultural expectations, as well as subject to violent outbursts and spontaneous moments of clownish and boorish behaviour. That public executions were perceived as ritualised dramatic events was made clear by the contemporary definition of a scaffold as 'A platform or stage on which theatrical performance or exhibition takes place'.4 Connecting cultural forms or genres and the exercise of power, Frances E. Dolan makes the following observation in her study of the representation of women's executions in early modern martyrologies, plays, and scaffold speeches:scholars increasingly focus on the ungovernability and 'generic slippage' of executions and the unpredictability of the condemned's behavior, stressing a constantly shifting interplay among the punishers, the punished, and the spectators, rather than the simple imposition of power on/against the condemned. Given this slippage, the scaffold becomes not only a locus of domination and oppression, but also an arena of boundary crossing, negotiation, and possibilities for agency.5Each moment in which the state demonstrated its power by constructing a scaffold and putting the seemingly helpless victim on display was answered by counterscripts presented by that victim, other participants on the scaffold, and the crowd. Accompanied by the significant potential for conflict between perspectives, these opportunities for dialogue indicate that executions were collaborative events carried out by a wide range of characters who demanded to be heard as they acted out their competing scripts. Sarah Covington outlines this assumption about perspective and the results it produces:In examining the shifting roles played by authorities, martyrs, and crowds, it is ... important to take not one side but many, placing oneself in the middle of the action from a confusing perspective that shifts from the stage to the audience and back again.... [A]ccounts of executions ... attest to a central fact of executions, which was not that they were simply displays of state power or set pieces for one individual's embrace of martyrdom, but rather collective affairs, dependent on all the actors involved.6In the following study of the dramatic and ritualised nature of executions in England from 1641 to 1660, I will argue that these events, defined by scripts and counterscripts, were therefore multivocal in nature. …

End of life in the neonatal intensive care unit

PURPOSE:Death at the beginning of life is tragic but not uncommon in neonatal intensive care units. In Portugal, few studies have examined the circumstances surrounding the final moments of neonates. We evaluated the care given to neonates and their families in terminal situations and the changes that had occurred one decade later.DESIGN AND METHODS:We analyzed 256 charts in a retrospective chart review of neonatal deaths between two periods (1992-1995 and 2002-2005) in a level III neonatal intensive care unit.RESULTS:Our results show differences in the care of dying infants between the two periods. The analysis of the 2002-2005 cohort four years revealed more withholding and withdrawing of therapeutic activities and more effective pain and distress relief; however, on the final day of life, 95.7% of the infants received invasive ventilatory support, 76.3% received antibiotics, 58.1% received inotropics, and 25.8% received no opioid or sedative administration. The 2002-2005 cohort had more spiritual advisor solicitation, a higher number of relatives with permission to freely visit and more clinical meetings with neonatologists. Interventions by parents, healthcare providers and ethics committees during decision-making were not documented in any of the charts. Only eight written orders regarding therapeutic limitations and the adoption of palliative care were documented; seven (87.5%) were from the 2002-2005 cohort. Parental presence during death was more frequent in the latter four years (2002-2005 cohort), but only 21.5% of the parents wanted to be present at that moment.CONCLUSION:Despite an increase in the withholding and withdrawing of therapeutic activities and improvements in pain management and family support, many neonates still receive curative and aggressive practices at the end of life.

S23-03 Empathy in Geriatric Population: Clinical Perspective

Asian Americans experience significant underuse of mental health treatment. Religious clergy and spiritual advisors play a critical role in delivering mental health care in the United States. Limited knowledge exists about their use among Asian Americans.We describe mental health service use from a religious/spiritual advisor among Asian Americans.We analyzed data from 2095 respondents in the 2002–2003 National Latino and Asian American Study.Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of mental health service use from a religious/spiritual advisor (5.5% and 1% overall, respectively) was generally higher among U.S.-born Asians and those with a 12-month mental disorder (23.6% and 7.5%, respectively). Religious/spiritual advisors were seen by 35% of treatment-seeking Asian Americans with a lifetime mental disorder. They were seen as commonly as psychiatrists but less commonly than a mental health specialist or general medical provider. Approximately 70% of those seeking treatment had a mental disorder, significant proportions of whom sought treatment in the absence of a psychiatrist, a mental health specialist or even a healthcare provider. A significant majority with 12-month use perceived the care as helpful, felt accepted/understood and satisfied (71–86%). However, only 31% rated the care as excellent, 28% quit completing care, and referral rates for specialty mental health treatment were low, even among those with a mental disorder (9.5%).Religious/spiritual advisors are a key source of treatment-seeking for Asian Americans with a mental disorder. Quality of care and low referral rates for specialty mental health treatment warrant further attention and need for increased collaboration with the mental health system.