Mary, My Mother
Elena Feick writes a very personal account of how Mary has touched her life and Francis Edwards, a retired lead Palliative Care Nurse, talks about the threat of the Assisted Dying Bill.
God has touched my life through the Blessed Virgin Mary in tangible ways and I grow every day in my devotion to she who is my Mother. I write to share with you how she can touch lives, help through hardships, and be a Mother to us — because I know she wants to be a Mother to you, too.
Many of you may already know from my previous pieces in the Coracle that I pursue chastity as a person with same-sex attractions. For much of my spiritual life, I felt a deep sense of shame over my attractions, temptations, and past choices. This bled over into my relationship with Our Lady and the Rosary. I suspected Mary wouldn't really want me to pray the Rosary or turn to her - I thought she would be disgusted and couldn't want me as her daughter.
In January of 2018, I went on a personal retreat at a Madonna House in England. My spiritual director there was able to guide me through some deep personal healing. On the last morning of what had already been a very intense and beautiful retreat, I was praying in Eucharistic Adoration. Then a powerful image overtook my prayers.
I saw a beautiful woman cradling and rocking a baby girl wrapped in pink. The woman was singing softly, and then she looked up into my eyes and I felt her arms as if they were cradling me. I suddenly knew, the woman was Mary and the baby girl in her arms was me. She said, "I do want you. I choose you for my daughter." I felt so close to and treasured by Mary in that moment. I then spent the rest of that morning and the entire trip home turning that experience over in my mind, and from that I decided to begin praying my rosary regularly.
In September of that same year, providence dropped a great opportunity into my lap. A friend of mine helping to organise a bus pilgrimage to Lourdes invited me to take an already fully funded spot. Being in a less than secure socioeconomic status, the idea of taking a trip or pilgrimage outside of the U.K. had never crossed my mind. But the organizers needed a certain number of care assistants and volunteers to make the trip happen, and because another care assistant had pulled out of his spot I was able to go in his place.
The whole pilgrimage was a very intense experience but one part particularly stood out: the baths at Lourdes. In those ice-cold waters I unexpectedly felt like I was really in Mary's womb. As I came out from the water, I felt like I was being born from her womb. I thought this surely must be an heretical or blasphemous idea and pushed the thought away.
Later I learned through an online Theology of the Body course that Christians are called to be born of Mary's womb in a mystical sense. In the words of St. Augustine:
‘All of us who are united to Christ and who, as the Apostle Paul says, are members of his body, of his flesh, of his bones, came out of the womb of Mary as a body United to its head’.
After learning this, I gave myself permission to revisit that memory and re-experience being in Mary's womb. I’m still unpacking what this means but it makes me feel even closer to Mary. Her motherhood for us is real, true, and intimate. Far from being disgusted by my concupiscence and sins, like a good Mother she wants to help me with my burdens and bring me to the one who can heal me.
The lockdowns of these past years' have been exceedingly hard on everyone. For me, the hardest part has been the churches here in Scotland being closed. I've ordinarily attended Mass every day since my conversion in 2007. I wouldn't plan a holiday or family visit without first identifying where I will get daily Mass. To go just two days without the Eucharist would be uncomfortable for me. Daily Mass has been the bedrock of my *life*. So when they first announced the closures of places of worship last year, after the last Mass on the feast of St. Joseph, I came home and suffered the worst anxiety in my life.
Watching Mass online was a comfort to many, but not to me. As soon as the priest began the Liturgy of the Eucharist with the Offertory, I would start crying from the sheer longing to be there and the sense of wrongness of not being in the presence of the Eucharist. I have never experienced a sorrow or an ache as painful as that longing. Most days of our two lockdowns, I cried until I was sick. During our second lockdown, I took to kneeling outside the church while the Mass was being live-streamed, watching the Mass on my phone and taking some small comfort in being as close to Him as I could possibly get - close to the building I knew He was in.
One day, I was crying watching the Offertory, feeling too far away... I wanted to put my sorrow, my pain - my whole self, really - into the hands of the priest, onto the altar, like I always do – but the wall of the Church felt too solid, the distance too far, like I couldn't reach through it to the altar. Then, I felt her presence beside me – Our Lady of Sorrows, I knew it was her. She was kneeling next to me and received into her hands all that I wanted to give to her Son's altar. She promised to personally bring it to Him for me. I then knew that He would for sure receive my own tiny offering, as it would be given Him through the hands of His mother. And I knew my Mother was there with me to sit with me in my own sufferings, even though my pain could never compare to what she had had to suffer alongside her Son. I'd never felt so comforted in sorrow before as I did in that moment from Our Lady of Sorrow's comforting presence .
So these are three times Our Lady has touched me personally and directly. All three times, she was letting me know that she is my mother and I am her child. She wants me as her child, she is not disgusted by my concupiscence, she loves me despite my sins. And she’ll be there to comfort me when I am in true need of her consolations. I’ve shared these three encounters that were given me because I believe that Our Lady wants to give you – dear reader – gifts and reassurances too. After all, she is your mother as well.
By Elena Feick
Assisted suicide poses a grave threat to everyone living in Scotland..
Background: Yet again the Scottish Parliament is planning on wasting more time on debating the issue of “assisted suicide” (AS) or sometimes euphemistically referred to as “assisted dying” (AD) by those in favour of the Bill. In 2015 Holyrood rejected the Bill by 82 votes to 36 and 19 MSPs abstained. A big part of that debate was the lack of safeguards – we have been promised they will be better in the new Bill. Katherine Sleemann Professor of Palliative Care at Kings College London has said:
“I know no clinician who works with old, frail, vulnerable people who thinks safeguards for assisted dying can be 100% safe. Other jurisdictions simply do not collect the data required to begin to understand this. So, how safe is safe enough?”
We have to ask why is this data not collected – what have they got to hide or what don’t they want us to know? She goes on to say
…we need to scrutinise the safety and safeguards, not gloss over them with appealing words about autonomy and choice? I don't think anyone supporting this Bill has a clear answer about safeguards. Surely there could be no adequate safeguards and a terminal prognosis is fraught with uncertainty. Safeguards still cannot be assured.
I write as someone who has worked in adult and children’s palliative care for 30 years. I have had the privilege of working in the acute sector, in ‘Hospice’ and in the community. In all that time I can only remember once being asked for AS, and that was for an infant. Just think about that for a moment… an infant?
The infant had had an “event” and both parents were clear at that point that they had lost their child. They were very clear in asking the hospital staff that they wanted their child to be “put to sleep with medication”.
I was asked as the ‘palliative care team’ (Palliative and EOLC should be in every professional’s skill set and is everyone’s business) to go and speak with the family. I listened and spoke with the father who was steadfast in his request. I had to tell him that what we needed was some time for their child to recover from the “event” and what he was asking for was illegal; and that we had a responsibility to think about the “best interest of the child” and advocate for the child.
He became very anger with me saying ‘how do you know what is in the best interest of our child?’ ‘He is our child and we know what is in his best interest’.
Six weeks later I passed the father on the main stairs of the hospital and he stopped me and said
“I need to apologise to you for being so angry with you. I now see what you were saying. Now we are taking our child home tomorrow – he is different, but he is still our child and we love him as he is. Thank you”
If this family were living in Belgium and the Netherlands they may have had their request granted and not taken their child home. There is no going back on AS.
If this new ‘Bill’ were to be successful in Holyrood it would make AD legal in Scotland. We have been here before in 2015 and no doubt we will be again unless we can address the real issues. You have to ask what has changed since the last time this was debated – where is the new evidence to justify this use of valuable time in Holyrood?
Individual patient choice and autonomy are important, but involving doctors to decide on assisted dying sacrifices that autonomy and effects the patient / doctor covenant.
As yet we have not had sight of the new ‘Bill’ and will have to wait for the consultation process later this year. Meanwhile, we should be aware of the issues.
We do know the purposed ‘Bill’ is based heavily on Oregon in the United States, which has been in place since 1997. The issue with this is the lack of reliable data from Oregon on the process, the after effects on the family and the professionals involved with the process. What data we do have suggests that most people are motivated by a desire to keep control and not what is suggested in some of the reports put forward of people dying in uncontrollable pain. (https://mercatornet.com/lets-cut-the-crp-about-assisted-dying-its-not-about-pain/72228/) Good palliative and end-of-life-care (EOLC) are able to manage the physical symptoms. What we are not so good as is managing some of the other aspects of “Total Pain” as termed by the great Dame Cicely Saunders who defined the concept of total pain as:
“The suffering that encompasses all of a person's physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical struggles”.
She also said:
“Those of us who have spent time in the company of people with mortal illness have learnt from them that we are always challenged to know more and to help more effectively ,but, above all, to listen. Sometimes there will be no answers to give to those in apparently desperate situations and we find ourselves with nothing to offer but silent attention”
We have to get better at listening; as listening is key to good palliative care. Listening to the story so as to be able to address somebodies “Total Pain”. I started to learn this back in the early 80’s while working in a Hospice. (This was a new service; a new team and we were going to change the world of palliative care…) However, we had patients dying in some kind of pain, which I believe we could not name at the time. They were very unsettled, agitated and clearly not at peace. We started to sit and listen to them as they told their life stories, the things still undone or the things they had to do before they died. So we developed our skills, in helping them find a voice and things started to change. We reduced our drug bill by 2/3’s and patients died more settled and less agitated.
For me then there are two key issues:
1. The lack of joined up palliative and social care for all that need it, regardless of age, diagnosis or location
2. ‘Soul Pain’ – As one aspect of what we call ‘Total Pain’. Total pain equals total care. Soul pain has nothing to do with somebodies faith or their religions background.
In order to make a real difference for the folk who may be requesting AD we have to address these two key issues as a society and I will address these in part two of this article.
By Francis Edwards, Retired Lead Palliative Care Nurse.
