Sublime

In 1906, George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma first appeared on the London stage. The play concerns a physician, Sir Colenso Ridgeon, who’s discovered a cure for tuberculosis. Ridgeon’s dilemma is that he has a limited supply of the medication and a small staff to administer it. He can treat only ten patients at a time and so must decide whos

In the past few decades, many patients and physicians have come to the conclusion that evidence-based treatments by specialists (and sub- and sub-subspecialists) don’t necessarily supply what people need to heal. Physicians and nurses now routinely team up with mental-health professionals, alternative practitioners, social workers, and chaplains to

It is an incredible privilege to be with someone who is making this journey into the eternal world. When you are present at the sacrament of someone’s death, you should be very mindful of their situation. In other words, you should not concentrate so much on your own grief. You should rather strive to be fully present to, with and for the person wh

To connect Taylor with Ehrenberg, what modernity considers to be a mental ailment is always connected to its ethic, to its assertion of what is good.

Watchfulness is a contemplative practice that awakens and refines the silent witness within each of us. It is free of all ego strategies that hold onto what we like or push away what we don’t like. It is a grounding, vigilant receptivity. This witness, that which is aware of the afflictive emotion, that which is aware of clinging to it or fleeing f

by the subjects. In his excellent book The Compassionate Mind, psychologist Paul Gilbert,