Symbolic Bridge Research Articles

Metaphorical language in couple's therapy: A conceptual exploration of its impact on conflict resolution

Metaphorical language, though often overlooked, plays a pivotal role in couple's therapy, shaping the dynamics of communication and influencing conflict resolution processes. This conceptual exploration delves into the multifaceted impact of metaphorical language on the therapeutic discourse within couples. Through a synthesis of existing literature and theoretical frameworks, this paper elucidates the intricate interplay between metaphorical expressions and the resolution of relational conflicts. The use of metaphorical language in couple's therapy serves as a symbolic bridge, facilitating the articulation of deeply rooted emotions and experiences that may otherwise remain inaccessible. Metaphors act as linguistic vehicles, enabling individuals to convey complex thoughts and feelings in a manner that transcends literal expression. Within the therapeutic context, metaphors offer a creative space for couples to explore their relationship dynamics, perceptions, and narratives. Furthermore, metaphorical language not only elucidates individual experiences but also shapes the shared reality constructed by couples. Metaphors can reveal underlying relational patterns, power dynamics, and unspoken assumptions, thereby fostering insight and empathy between partners. By reframing conflicts through metaphorical lenses, couples can gain a fresh perspective on their challenges, promoting collaborative problem-solving and mutual understanding. However, the impact of metaphorical language in couple's therapy is not unidimensional. Misinterpretations or divergent interpretations of metaphors may inadvertently exacerbate misunderstandings or conflicts within the therapeutic process. Therapists must navigate the nuances of metaphorical communication sensitively, balancing interpretation with validation of individual experiences and perspectives. This conceptual exploration highlights the significance of metaphorical language in shaping the therapeutic discourse and its potential implications for conflict resolution in couple's therapy. By embracing and exploring metaphorical expressions, therapists can harness the transformative power of language to facilitate insight, empathy, and ultimately, relational healing within couples. Further empirical research is warranted to elucidate the nuanced mechanisms through which metaphorical language influences therapeutic outcomes in couple's therapy.

Strategic Integration and Geopolitical Repositioning: Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Path Towards the European Union

Bosnia and Herzegovina, rich in cultural diversity, is challenged by religious, national, and ethnic divides, leading to societal deadlock. Despite making strides towards internal peace and security, ongoing economic struggles continue to hamper its development. As the country advances towards European integration, prioritizing its own interests and goals is crucial, rather than merely aligning with those of the European Union. The country needs to meet fourteen key conditions to open negotiations for joining the EU. These conditions can serve as a guiding framework to transform the state from its current negative geopolitical position into one where it can become an engaged player in international relations. Its diverse constituent peoples already have established influences with peoples from diverse backgrounds such as Arab and Muslim countries, the European Union’s member states, Russia, and the Eastern European states. These influences have never been utilized in a coordinated and constructive way, but were rather always seen through the prism of conflict. The state can leverage these relationships and position itself as a symbolic bridge between the Western, Eastern, and Muslim Arab worlds. This strategic geopolitical repositioning will not only enhance Bosnia and Herzegovina’s prospects for a brighter future for its citizens but also enable it to play a significant role in regional dynamics. Focused on its unique interests and values, Bosnia and Herzegovina must ensure its voice and values are reflected in the European integration process, shaping a beneficial future, lasting stability, and long-term prosperity for its citizens and the region.

Día de Muertos in Alaska

Abstract The celebration of Día de Muertos (Spanish for Day of the Dead) has been hosted by the Latino community in Anchorage, Alaska, every second of November since 2004, where the ritual to honor ancestors is shared, and a symbolic bridge between the communities that converge within the territory is built. During the 2021 celebration, the Indigenous women Christina Edwin (Denaa and Chicana) and Itzel Zagal (Mexica Xochimilca) collaborated on an altar that was culturally appropriate for Olga Ezi (Ahtna Dene, South Central Dena'ina matriarch). It was a tribute the Alaska Native women (Chedas or grandmothers) and brought together Indigenous perspectives with a common respect for ancestries. This collaboration found that Día de Muertos is a spiritual practice and an act of cultural resistance and solidarity.

Hunger Bonds: Boundaries and Bridges in the Charitable Food Provision Field

Building on a field perspective, this article adopts a relational approach that lets us make sense of food charities’ interconnections, relationships and social positioning. I analyse how food charities working with different models of provision do boundary work and resolve the cognitive dissonance arising from simultaneously competing and collaborating. Making use of several semi-structured interviews, I illustrate how Trussell Trust food banks, independent food banks and pantries’ directors mark symbolic boundaries when illustrating their models of provision vis-a-vis other models (e.g. pantries vs food banks) but build symbolic bridges when discussing the ultimate ends of charitable food provision. This strategy lets them resolve the tension arising from two contradictory stances and is representative of what I call ‘hunger bonds’: relationships of cooperation and mutual help that also permit positional returns to be obtained and strategically advance a specific vision of the field order.

Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context

Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context

The Damage Suffered by Danube Bridges in Yugoslavia During the Twentieth Century

During the “short” twentieth century, the Yugoslav state on several occasions faced wars or conflicts in which it temporarily or permanently disappeared. The Second World War irrevocably destroyed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was occupied, fragmented, and came out of the war with a changed socio-political structure. When the fire of war spread again to Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Danube bridges were also damaged. They were destroyed by the Yugoslav army in an attempt to slow down the advance of German troops. At that time, the symbolic bridges of Belgrade and Novi Sad — the Bridge of King Peter the Second and the Bridge of Prince Tomislav — were destroyed. Temporary or rebuilt bridges were also damaged in the final phase of the war in 1944, either by Allied bombing raids or during the withdrawal of German troops, who demolished them in order to slow the invasion of the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army and the Red Army. Half a century later, the bridges were damaged again. During the NATO aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, the most important roads were also hit. Among others, several Danube bridges were damaged, including all three bridges in Novi Sad — Varadin Bridge, Žeželj’s Bridge, and the Bridge of Freedom. The Danube bridges in Yugoslavia shared the fate of the state that built them. They were demolished and rebuilt, and their story is a metaphor for the history of a country that no longer exists, and which once covered a significant part of the course of the Danube.

Biblioterapia: una propuesta terapéutica en el desgarro del tejido social

From a holistic, integrative and psychoanalytic perspective, I understand that the library intervention belongs to the field of mental, physical, spiritual, ecological, and emotional health. It is offered as a therapeutic discipline focused on the accompaniment of the processes linked to vital crises, grief, demotivation, and very particular states of mind derived from what currently psychology professionals refer to as the binomial «depression-anxiety-covid». In this sense, the subject who is shipwrecked in the pure present of dissatisfaction, anger and threat finds in the dialogue with the librarian the possibility of changing automatic thinking through healthy confrontations. For this, the reading of a literary text can be the trigger for his bionarration, and thus, bibliotherapy operates as a binding power, a symbolic bridge between the sufferer and his circumstance. In the present communication ―focused on the effects of the pandemic and the «break» of the social skin, as a metaphor for isolation― bibliotherapy seeks to promote critical thinking from the interplay of interdisciplinary theoretical models. In addition, a specific experience is shared, developed with the format of a workshop for reading fictional texts about «the plague», and the rewriting of the personal script as a way to recover blocked subjective spaces.

Symbolic Bridges and False Friends: When Symbols Cross Organizational Field Boundaries

To investigate organizational fields’ differences and similarities in meaning frameworks, we conducted a cross-sectional mixed-method study of the symbols used in three organizational fields – health care, software, and organic food – in Germany. Using a web crawler, we reconstructed the three fields and collected the logos of a sample of the fields’ members. We not only show that organizational fields differ, resulting in each field’s unique collective identity and mostly impermeable field boundaries, but also that some symbolic elements can cross field boundaries. Specifically, we observed elements that are used in all three fields, derived from a shared wider institutional environment such as nationality and culture, as well as, interestingly, some symbolic elements that are used in only two fields. Based on these results, we make a distinction between those elements that cross boundaries and have a similar meaning in two fields, fulfilling the function of symbolic bridges, and elements that appear to be similar but have significantly different meanings in both fields, constituting false friends.

Boundaries, bridges, analogies and bubbles: Structuring the past in Israeli mnemonic culture

ABSTRACT This article examines mnemonic practices and discursive strategies that structure the past and its relation to the present, drawing on examples from Israeli Jewish culture. The discussion explores the discursive construction of an “event” as a singular development and underscores the significance of its beginning and ending. It analyzes the impact of introducing symbolic bridges connecting separated historical periods, proposing historical analogies that highlight recurrent historical patterns, creating mnemonic bubbles governed by commemorative time, and conflating historical events into multilayered commemorations. These temporal structures, often anchored in mnemonic traditions, continue to influence the understanding of the past.

Beloved as a Symbolic Bridge: An Examination of the Symbolism of Connected Spaces in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Beloved as a Symbolic Bridge: An Examination of the Symbolism of Connected Spaces in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

<i>Nuovomondo</i>, Ellis Island, and Italian Immigrants: A New Appraisal by Emanuele Crialese

Ellis Island remains in the American collective consciousness a centre of immigration where thousands of Europeans who expected to enter the United States between 1892 and 1954, went through. As such, Ellis Island was a symbolic bridge between the Old World and the New. It is the vision of this bridge, or rather a no man’s land between the two worlds that Emanuele Crialese wants to give of Ellis Island in his movie Nuovomondo (Golden Door in the international version). It deals with the journey to America of a Sicilian family at the beginning of the 20th century. It is divided into three parts, one in Sicily dealing with the departure; the second one is the journey on the ship; the third one extensively deals with the arrival on Ellis Island. The film is rather realistic in the sense that it is widely based upon archival material, which becomes apparent when comparing photographs taken at the turn of the century and the scenes from the movie taking place in Ellis Island. By being realistic Crialese first associates Ellis Island to an alienating island, a devilish place where immigrants experienced trauma and humiliation, even possible deportation. The study of the staging reveals that the place is often seen as a prison and that it is linked to confusion and misunderstanding between the immigrants, their dreams and the requirements of the American immigration officers. Nevertheless, the movie is optimistic and displays a hopeful image of Ellis Island. The main characters manage to be admitted in America then seen as a Promised Land. But, the United States is never presented in the film, which provides a feeling of unreachability, as if Emanuele Crialese had wanted to challenge the myth of “il Nuovomondo” as a Promised Land.

РОЗВИТОК ЛІКАРСЬКОЇ КОМІСІЇ НАУКОВОГО ТОВАРИСТВА ІМ. ШЕВЧЕНКА КРІЗЬ ПРИЗМУ СТОЛІТЬ (ДО 120-РІЧЧЯ ЗАСНУВАННЯ)

Introduction. February 7th, 2018 marks 120 years since the foundation of the first Ukrainian medical scientific society “The Medical Commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.” Its original periodical journal “Medical Collection” was initiated in1898 and continues in the modernera (since 2015) as “Proceedings of the Shevchenko ScientificSociety. Medical Sciences.” Aim: To defind historical circumstances of organization of “The Medical Commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society” and introduce future directions of its development. Materials and Methods: Systematic analysis of the 120 years activity of The Medical Commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Google Scholar, PubMed, and archives data. Results: In 1898 Doctor Yevhen Osarkevych organized “The Medical Commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society” and placed before its membership the goal of publishing a medical scientific journal where Ukrainian doctors of that time would have the opportunity to publish the results of their own research and communicate in this way their experience. Moreover, it was an important goal for the members of the commission to establish Ukrainian medical terminology. The organization’s enthusiasm and persistent everyday work resulted in the publication of six issues of “The Medical Collection” to appear between 1898-1902. For the purpose of faster integration into European medical science, the medical journal was published in both Ukrainian and German (the international medical language of that era). Some of the topics published were: influence of temperature on osmotic erythrocyte resistance, diagnostics of hemolytic jaundice, establishment of retinoscopy etc. The journals distribution was not only in Galicia, but also in Eastern Ukraine and the neighboring border countries. Since 1903, however, medical articles were published only as a part of “The Collection of mathematic-biologicalmedical section” (“Sitzungsberichte der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlicharztlichen Sektion”). During World Wars I and II, the interwar and post-war periods, all Ukrainian organizations and like activities were forbidden. Nevertheless, Ukrainian doctors-emigrants in the United States of America and Canada founded their own center of Ukrainian medical science when Doctor Roman Osinchuk in 1948 organized in New York City The Medical Commission of The Shevchenko Scientific Society and in 1950 initiated the creation of the “Ukrainian Medical Association of North America” (UMANA) that started to publish “Medical Journal of The Ukrainian Medical Association of North America” in 1954.This achievement of the Ukrainian Diaspora became the symbolic bridge that connected the monumental initiative of Doctor Yevhen Osarkevych with the modern epoch of an independent Ukraine. In 1993 Lviv’s medical scientists and physicians revived the Medical Commission of The Shevchenko Scientific Society as well as the journal “Medical Collection. New edition”. Since 2010 the journal has been distributed according to the list of obligatory dispatch of periodicals to all the libraries of Ukrainian Medical Universities as well as to the regional medical libraries and leading institutions of The National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine. Since 2017, the journal “Proceedings of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Medical Sciences,” is indexed by Digital Objective Identifier (DOI) in the international system CrossRef. Conclusions. The existence and development of the Ukrainian medical scientific society and its journal “Medical Collection” – “Proceedings of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Medical Sciences” through the last 120 years is a legacy to the service, patriotism and great sacrifice of Ukrainian physicians. This long-standing existence of the medical society and its publications deserves historical recognition and continuation into the future. It will serve as an inspiration for the integration of discoveries in Ukrainian medical sciences into the world scientific arena.

Rap, racism, and visibility: black music as a mediator of young Israeli-Ethiopians’ experience of being ‘Black’ in a ‘White’ society

ABSTRACTIn the mid-1990s, descriptions of a new topic began to appear in Israeli media as well as in academic writing, of Israeli-Ethiopian youngsters who identified with black music in general and rap/hip-hop in particular. In this paper, I challenge previous interpretations for this phenomenon, arguing that they were insufficiently based on meanings that the youngsters themselves attach to their musical preferences. The study is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 40 young Israeli-Ethiopian men. The interviews were focused on meanings young Israeli-Ethiopians attach to rap music, which is their favorite musical style. The study shows that the pivotal experience which associates them with black music and is central to their identity in general is their constant visibility through the white-Israeli people’s gaze. This visibility, reflected in constant reminders by the ‘white’ Israeli society of the Ethiopian adolescents being ‘black’, makes the adolescents fascinated by black music and rap music in particular, which they perceive to be offering them a resonance of their experiences, comfort, and empowerment.Black music in general, and rap music in particular, resonates with the lived experiences of Black Ethiopian Israelis and it serves as a symbolic bridge through which the youngsters connect to the historical narratives of the African trans-Atlantic diaspora, and draw inspiration from them.

Laumė’s broom or the Image of the Mistletoe in Traditional Lithuanian Culture

Mistletoe (Lith. amalas) is a widespread parasitic plant that is mentioned in various beliefs, myths and other traditional narratives, and is used in rituals, different magic practices and folk medicine. In Lithuania, only one of its species, Viscum album, is known. Even though the mistletoe played an important role in other European cultures, for instance, Druidic and Norse mythologies, the data about its place in the archaic Lithuanian worldview is quite fragmentary. Most probably it is caused by the climatic conditions with relatively frosty winters that limited the spread of the plant in the country.The aim of this article is to collect and systemise the data regarding the mistletoe, and taking into consideration folklore, linguistic and ethnographic material, reveal its image in the traditional Lithuanian culture. While analysing the data, it was noticed that the Lithuanian word amalas and the other names defining the mistletoe, as for instance laumės šluota, i.e. the broom of laumė (a fairy in Lithuanian folklore) are polysemantic and can be used to name not only the evergreen scrub growing on the trees but also certain dense mases of shoots growing from a single point on birch trees, that are caused by the parasitic fungus Taphrina betulina and resemble a broom or a bird’s nest (in English, the latter are called witch’s brooms). For this reason, the research field was expanded to include not only the mistletoe but also the witch’s broom. It is also important to mention that in the ancient Lithuanian worldview both plants quite often were treated in similar ways. The article first discusses the names of the plants, then etiological narratives about the occurrence of the mistletoe and the witch’s broom are analysed, and last their image in folklore, folk beliefs and customs is revealed. The methodology of the research presented in this article consists of analytical descriptive and comparative analysis, Lithuanian data is compared with analogous examples from other nations’ folklore, customs, beliefs, lexical and phraseological facts.The research revealed that even though data regarding the image of the mistletoe is not very rich, it shows that Lithuanians knew this plant and attributed to it magical powers. In the literary Lithuanian language and its dialects, the mistletoe, Lith. amalas is also called amuolas, tirkšlys, tiršlys, prilypas, laumšluotė, laumės / raganos / raganės / velnio šluota (fairy’s / witch’s / devil’s broom), but the idiomatic expression laumė’s or witch’s broom refers not only to the mistletoe but also to the ball-shaped bundle of twigs that resembles a mistletoe (called witch’s broom in English). Based on the results obtained, it can be claimed that both the image of the mistletoe and that of the witch’s broom from the mythical symbolic perspective in certain cases are identical; both plants are related to mythical beings, mythical space between the earth and the sky, and are attributed analogous protective powers. In the ancient Lithuanian worldview, as an evergreen the mistletoe was also given the symbolic meaning of vegetation, vitality and fertility. In the Advent-Christmas period song accompanying the game Grįskime mergos ievaro tiltą (“Girls, Let’s Make a Ievaras Bridge”) the mistletoe mentioned as a material for the construction of the symbolic bridge represents vitality and together with the mythologeme of the other mythical plant ievaras transmits the symbolic meaning of the bridge that must be crossed by young matured people during the sacred period.

Du coq à l’âme: L’art populaire au Québec by Jean-François Blanchette

Reviewed by: Du coq à l’âme: L’art populaire au Québec by Jean-François Blanchette Philippe Halbert Blanchette, Jean-François– Du coq à l’âme: L’art populaire au Québec. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2014. Pp. 338. The whimsical charm of “folk” or “popular” art has long captivated collectors and laypeople alike as an authentic reflection of a given society or geographic region. Nuancing the work of professional craftsmen and academic artists, pieces made by the self-taught have held audiences’ attention and delight using geometric shapes, vivid colours, symbolic iconography, and experimental materials and techniques. The formation of collections at the Shelburne Museum, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Winterthur Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts by the 1960s attests to the longstanding interest in these highly original and varied artistic traditions in the United States. Following an exhibition sharing the same title and also organised by Jean-François Blanchette at the Canadian Museum of History (then the Canadian Museum of Civilisation in Gatineau, Québec) in 2008-2009, this iteration of Du coq à l’âme: L’art populaire au Québec is a welcome scholarly addition and cultural counterpoint to the often Anglo-centric narrative of North American folk art. Blanchette’s title, a play on the French expression “du coq à l’âne” (literally “from the rooster to the donkey” but denoting that which passes from one thing to another), recalls the diverse variety and quality of Québec-made pieces held in public and private Canadian collections. The volume’s catalogue covers an astoundingly large range of artistic media including devotional objects, furniture, metalwork, painting, sculpture including models and miniatures, textiles, and toys. These and other pieces provide an aesthetic meeting point for the proud Gallic rooster, the Canadian beaver, the maple leaf, and even the Québec-born celebrity strongman Louis Cyr and prime minister of Québec Maurice Duplessis. Blanchette never truly defines folk art in any specific way, relying on a more abstract, interdisciplinary approach that explores various material objects and more impermanent media such as graffiti in relation to themes such as family, religion, and rebellion. His consideration of “popular art” within a trajectory of contemporary expression and developing notions of self-identity in Québec is especially notable. The volume introduces seven prominent living Québec folk artists, all interviewed by Blanchette, including Léon Bouchard, Michel Fedak, [End Page 199] Clémence Lessard, Raymond Massicotte, Fleurette Solomon, Jacqueline Tremblay, and Michel Villeneuve. Biographical, connoisseurial, and historiographic in his analysis of archival materials and the production of Québec folk art past and present, Blanchette casts the art objects themselves as a symbolic bridge between tradition and modernity. Noteworthy works include a number of Tremblay’s eggshell and vegetable paint works on canvas, such as the 1979 Les bûcherons (collection of the Canadian Museum of History), a scene that depicts traditional hand axes and horse-drawn sledges used alongside chainsaws. Among the volume’s greatest contributions is its comprehensive treatment of the visionary Canadian folk art connoisseur Nettie Covey Sharpe. Born in Saint-Augustin-de-Woburn near Lake Mégantic in 1907, the bilingual Covey Sharpe focused her scholarly and collecting efforts on the traditional arts of Francophone Québec beginning in the 1930s. Following on the heels of Marius Barbeau and a contemporary of Jean Palardy, she sought out antique objects of the sort often relegated to attics, tossed in the street, or even destroyed by their owners. Eager to preserve, share, and valorise the artistic heritage of Québec, she regularly loaned parts of her collection to institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum. Covey Sharpe’s biography is made all the more endearing through excerpts of a 1983 interview conducted by Blanchette in her eighteenth-century home at Saint-Lambert, a staging ground for the formation of her collection. Covey Sharpe’s foresight ultimately led to the Canadian Museum of History’s acquisition of part of her extensive collection of historic and contemporary Québec art in the 1970s. The rest, along with her house, was acquired by...

Sōka Gakkai in Cuba

Sōka Gakkai began to develop in Cuba as a religious organization after the visit of Ikeda Daisaku in 1996. Starting with a small group in the capital city, it received juridical recognition by the State in 2007 and has spread to most of the provinces in the country. Despite its modest growth, the Cuban case provides insights into the ways in which this religion develops in new sociocultural environments and thereby participates in the dynamics of globalization beyond Japanese enclaves. Based on the analysis of data collected in Havana, the article identifies, describes and explains four modes by which Sōka Gakkai negotiates its message and identity in Cuba: the hybridization of Sōka Gakkai themes with the life and thought of National Hero José Martí; the universalization of Sōka Gakkai’s particularistic Japanese elements to create a new identity connected to the movement’s global following; the hybridization of Sōka Gakkai with ‘Oriental’ spiritualities; and the combination of pluralism, inclusivism and exclusivism as a threefold attitude toward other religions. These modes involve multiple interactions in the global field, through which Sōka Gakkai strives to build a symbolic bridge to local particularism, the ‘mystic East,’ and the world.

Building a Bridge between Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature

Abstract The modern life of the 21st century world not only postulates a multicultural, global world that is devoid of strict borders, but also a global world in which the individuals experience similar forms of lives. In relation, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman(1949) and Edward Albee's. The comparative analysis of the two texts enables students to build knowledge on cultural studies, ‘The American Dream,’ historical and psychological analysis, therefore creating awareness among the students via comparative activities that build a symbolic bridge between cultural studies and the classroom.

Tejiendo vínculos: tres mecanismos socioadaptativos desplegados por el movimiento Sai Baba en Argentina

Luego de presentar los caracteres fundamentales del armazón institucional de la Organización Sri Sathya Sai Baba (osssb), surgida en la India, y de bosquejar la historia del movimiento Sai Baba en Argentina, en este artículo presento las que denomino tres estrategias socioadaptativas puestas en juego por el movimiento para favorecer la acomodación de sus creencias al campo sociorreligioso argentino, es decir, examino cómo se tejen puentes simbólicos con el trasfondo cultural local a fin de lograr una identificación con los valores de la sociedad receptora.

Love's Universal Impetus: Luce Irigaray and Alain Badiou

Texts by Luce Irigaray and Alain Badiou illuminate love as the bodily comportment of wisdom. Love is a material and symbolic bridge across worlds of difference. Building upon the Socratic notion of Eros as mediator, this article suggests translations across thresholds of difference as the way of love.

You Have Not Forgotten Us: Towards a Disability-Accessible Church and Society

A vision is unfolded of the integration of people with dementia and their relatives. The argument is for the respect of the particular and thereby overcomes concepts of integration that either mean total inclusion or total separation. The article explores both the challenge and chance for the church that answer Jesus’ call for inclusion. Of particular importance is the sacramental dimension of faith; as in the Christian tradition, sacraments serve as symbolic bridges between the spiritual and the material that is conceivable by people with dementia.