I was first asked to develop a service for the Blessing of Hands about fifteen years ago in preparation for Nurses Week at another hospital. In that preparation I “discovered” the writings of Florence Nightingale. Since that day I have been an unabashed fan of the Nightingale. Both the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America celebrate a feast day dedicated to the Nightingale’s life of faith ad service which was a blend of prayer and mystical union with God, especially in the service of others. Truly a woman of pioneering spirit and vision she prefigured Gandhi, Dr. King, Thomas Merton and many others who would seek to bring about God’s justice and compassion in the lives of God’s suffering children, not only by tending the suffering of individuals but by changing the structures and systems of care by which society sought to care for those most in need and vulnerable in their midst.
The Episcopal Lectionary writes: “In her diary, an entry shortly before her seventeenth birthday Florence Nightingale wrote: ‘On February 7th, 1837, God spoke to me and called me to his service.’ She did not know what the service would be, and therefore decided that she must remain single, so as to have no encumbrances and be ready for anything. With this in mind, she rejected a proposal of marriage from a young man whom she dearly loved. She suffered from "trances" or "dreaming" spells, in which she would lose consciousness for several minutes or longer, and be unaware when she recovered that time had passed. (Could this be a form of petit mal epilepsy? No biographer of hers that I have read uses the word.) She found the knowledge that she was subject to such spells terrifying, and feared that they meant that she was unworthy of her calling, particularly since she did not hear the voice of God again for many years. In the spring of 1844 she came to believe that her calling was to nurse the sick. In 1850 her family sent her on a tour of Egypt for her health. Some extracts from her diary follow:
“March 7. God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for Him, for Him alone without the reputation.
March 9. During half an hour I had by myself in my cabin, settled the question with God.
April 1. Not able to go out but wished God to have it all His own way. I like Him to do exactly as He likes without even telling me the reason.
May 12. Today I am thirty--the age Christ began his mission.
Now no more childish things. No more love. No more marriage. Now Lord let me think only of Thy Will, what Thou willest me to do. Oh Lord Thy Will, Thy Will.
June 10. The Lord spoke to me; he said, Give five minutes every hour to the thought of Me. Coudst thou but love Me as Lizzie loves her husband, how happy wouldst thou be." But Lizzie does not give five minutes every hour to the thought of her husband, she thinks of him every minute, spontaneously.”
Every one of us in health care is her heir. Our patients benefit everyday because of the Nightingale’s deep commitment to not only caring for the sick, the injured the lonely, those in pain and suffering, but also for insisting that the means and methods by which all others render them care upheld highest standards of quality and compassion. May each of us take time during nurses week to reflect on the Nightingale’s heart of compassion, her heart’s commitment to the highest standards of care, courage to lead others along her way and her heart’s longing for union with the One in whose name she sought to heal.
Near the end of her life, “on Christmas Day when she was sixty-five, she wrote: ‘Today, O Lord, let me dedicate this crumbling old woman to thee. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. I was thy handmaid as a girl. Since then, I have backslid.’"
“A few years before her death, she was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit from the British government. She died at ninety, and, by her directions, her tombstone read simply, ‘F.N. 1820-1910’".
Prayer of the Episcopal Church for Nightingale’s Feast Day
Life-giving God, who alone has power over life and death, over health and sickness: Give power, wisdom, and gentleness to those who follow the lead of your servant Florence Nightingale, that they, bearing with them your presence, may not only heal but bless, and shine as lanterns of hope in the darkest hours of pain and fear; through Jesus Christ, the healer of body and soul, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Happy Nurses Week! All
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