Encountering Illness

This book, by a senior hospital chaplain, attempts to listen to the voices of illness and in doing so to face the experiences and questions of individuals and groups. It is a voyage of discovery, which does not result in a textbook that describes and controls the experiences around illness but invites readers to encounter the wide range of voices that can be heard at a deeper level. At the same time it is a work of pastoral and practical theology. It seeks to hold together experience and tradition, practice and theory as interdependent realities that need to engage and connect with one another within the living tradition of the Christian faith. Here are chapters on pain, loss and anxiety; waiting, watching and hoping; myths, prejudices and re-evaluations; alienation and powerlessness; dilemmas and choices; caring, curing and learning; divine action, prayer and belief; beginnings and endings. And in them a whole host of men and women appear, themselves encountering illness and attempting to come to terms with it.