Nursing Your Calling

September 2020

Fittingly, in this year of Global Pandemic, The World Health Organisation declared 2020 as 'The Year of the Nurse and the Midwife', in honour of Florence Nightingale's Bicentenary year.

Born into a prominent and wealthy Unitarian family, Florence Nightingale wrote in her dairy of her calling from God on 7th February 1837, at the tender age of 16:  'God spoke to me and called me to his service'. Poignantly, on her Bicentenary this year on 12th May 2020, at 12 Noon, nurses around the world were invited to pause to reflect on their own calling into nursing in what is now known as 'The Nightingale Moment'...and the moment of Florence's calling is being beautifully commemorated with a large stained glass window for Romsey Abbey, called 'The Calling Window', designed by the artist Sophie Hacker, whom I heard speak at Sarum Theological College. (www.sophiehacker.com).

Interestingly, it was another epidemic of influenza which swept London, Florence's family home at Embley Park and surrounding villages, which occurred during the winter months that preceded Florence Nightingale's call to serve God. Florence writes in her diary that 'our whole family had it. I had to nurse fifteen servants in bed, my mother and two children'. Florence wrote that 'the first idea I can recollect when I was a child was a desire to nurse the sick' and, as a child, Florence was often involved with helping villagers who were ill - the formation of her unconventional calling into nursing...

Florence was born into a wealthy and longstanding Unitarian Family and it was Florence's Grandfather, William Smith MP, the Member of Parliament for Norwich, who was finally successful in helping to secure the passing of the 1813 Doctrine of the Trinity Act with a 'Private Members Bill', which finally lifted longstanding penalties on Unitarians to hold public office or attend University for their dissenting religious views which rejected the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Although Florence's achievements in Nursing during the Crimean War are well known, and even immortalised as 'The Lady with the Lamp' in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Santa Filomena, Florence's calling and journey was not so easily supported by her family. Although, Florence's father did eventually support Florence to live in London, both he and her mother were decidedly against and actively prevented it for years. So, her calling from God almost never came to be...but for the grace of God....

Florence described her call from God as 'the most resolute and iron thing I ever knew' and so it was an immense blow to her that her parents refused to allow her to train as a nurse throughout her twenties. Florence plummeted into a deep depression, even writing to a male friend, Sidney Howe, 'Dr Howe, do you think it would be unsuitable and unbecoming for a young Englishwoman to devote herself to works of charity in hospitals and elsewhere as Catholic sisters do? Do you think it would be a dreadful thing?' Howe's reply proved pivotal to Florence as he said to her, 'But I say to you, Go forward if you have a vocation for that way of life; act up to your inspiration, and you will find that there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others. Choose, go on with it wherever it may lead you, and God be with you.' Words of encouragement that were never to leave Florence.

Florence refused two suiters and offers of marriage as she said that she could not spend a life 'making society and arranging domestic things'. Her life become 'loathsome' to her and she saw no advantage of her living on. In perhaps her darkest suicidal moments, I was deeply touched to read of the soul-anguish of so great a lady. As Florence writes, 'Forgive me, O God, and let me die, this day let me die.....all my hopes for this winter are gone and all my plans destroyed...I can understand now how a soul can die.' Florence's soul was dying inside with her parents' refusal to allow her to follow her calling from God into nursing....Florence simply longed 'To be Happy in my own way'. 

Moved to tears at times, I wish that Florence might have heard some modern words of wisdom of Jason Shulman, 'God is in the middle of darkness, Just as darkness is in the middle of the Divine....Don't be afraid, my friend, Be just who you are. Then the lamp that makes both night and day, Is yours through an infinite time.'

As Florence's life journey shows, 'Nursing your calling' can feel more like the experience of being in the shattered darkness and annihilating existential aloneness of being 'in the belly of the whale'. As Julia Mourant says, 'we are helpless, like a babe similarly in a womb-like place of darkness and constriction as we come  to terms with our deepest desires, motivations and purpose, before we are 'spat out' at God's own appointment time, whether you feel fully ready, simmering or completely cooked! The Belly of the Whale is the archetypal place of symbolic depth transformation, where our familiar sense of ourselves comes to an end and there is nowhere left to hide and...nothing....to do except be birthed anew'.

Florence was sent abroad for her health and, finally, away from her parents, with the Grace of God, she met a spiritual mentor, Madre Santa Colomba who was perhaps the first person who took her calling seriously, which in the words of Thomas Merton is 'a call from Him who has no voice, and yet speaks in everything that is, and who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being'.

Florence had wanted to train at a German hospital called Kaiserworth and, it just so happened that her travels took her close by the hospital! Florence dutifully wrote to her parents saying that she would finally be able to visit, if they had no objections of course! However, with the postal delays of the time, the letter arrived too late and she did not receive a response. Florence was finally at home in her training hospital at Kaiserworth and her journey of learning a model of nursing to bring back to England began. Finally, at the age of 30, Florence was 'home' - and the rest, as they say, is History! Florence's battles with patriarchal authority to improve nursing in the British Army and generally in Britain is well known, as is the establishment of the first ever training hospital for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in London, which Florence helped to design!

However, Florence was not without her critics. One art critic of the day referred to Florence as a 'St Joan of Sanitation' and other historians have criticised Florence for not admitting Mary Seacole to be one of her nurses in the Crimea. Mary was half Scottish/British and half Jamaican who was given a hero's welcome in London after her own efforts on the front line of the Crimean War - and there is no doubt that Mary far surpassed Florence's experience of hands-on practical nursing. So there have been some suggestions that Mary's race was a reason for her exclusion, although her Biographer Mark Bostridge suggests that, because the hotel that Mary had bought nearer the frontline had attracted a reputation for being a 'bad house', Florence Nightingale  would be naturally anxious in the Victorian Age that the good name and reputation of her own Nursing establishment with the British Army should not suffer by any association with it. Both were pioneering women in the formation of modern nursing.

It is said that to 'Be who you are' is the great secret of spiritual work and so I wonder how many of us have had tender feelings of the soul urging us to go in unconventional directions in life and how difficult it is to discern a sense of calling in our own lives....As Julia Mourant writes, ' It is quite possible to be deeply rooted in your faith, be a person of prayer, belong to a worshipping community, faithfully serve and give of yourself and yet, and yet...still be wondering: 'What on earth am I here for? You may... feel sure that there is something you should be doing, if only you could discover what it is.'  This reminds me of a saying by Rumi which encourages us all to find the 'one thing' which is ours to do...

As David Spangler says, 'A true spiritual calling is not task-oriented (though there may be many tasks involved); it is being-oriented. It's something we must do, because if we don't, we won't be ourselves. We won't find our wholeness and fulfilment...We all have a spiritual call.' As  Jason Shulman says, 'When we are consciously, personally aware of who we are - flaws and all, greatness and all - we hear God calling..' So, vocation is not about 'what I want to be when I grow up' or 'finding a better job', but about the fullness of becoming all that is already God-given within us.

As Mohatma Gandhi said, Florence Nightingale 'did good work worthy of an angel descended from heaven'. So, perhaps, in the end, we can all simply follow Florence Nightingale's example of following our own calling to be 'happy in your own way'...and, with inspiration from The Nightingale School Fellowship Prayer: 'May we have the blessings of Grace that we may never be false to the obligations of our calling'...

– Rev. Jenny Miller

First published (as edited by the Editor) in The Inquirer, Issue 7994, 5 September 2020 – www.inquirer.org.uk

References:

Florence Nightingale - Mystic, Visionary, Healer, 2010 Commemorative Edition, Barbara Montgomery Dossey, PhD. F.A. Davies Company, Philadelphia.

Florence Nightingale on Mysticism and Eastern Religions, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Vol. 4., Gérard Vallée (Editor), Wilfred Laurier University Press.

The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis, Createspace, USA.

Suggestions for thought by Florence Nightingale - Selections and Commentaries, Edited by Michael Calabria and Janet Macrae, University of Pennsylvania Press,

On Liberty and the Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill, Penguin Books,

Cassandra - Florence Nightingale's angry outcry against the forced idleness of Victorian Women, Myra Stark and Cynthia MacDonald,

Freethinking Mystics with Hands - Exploring the Heart of Unitarian Universalism, Tom Owen-Towle, Skinner House Books,

Florence Nightingale's Biography by Mark Bostridge

Beloved - Henri Nouwen - In conversation, Philip Roderick, Canterbury Press.