Top

Published in:

01-12-2010 | Original Paper

My Ishvara is Dead: Spiritual Care on the Fringes

Author: Titus George

Published in: Journal of Religion and Health | Issue 4/2010

Abstract

Human suffering speaks differently to different lived contexts. In this paper, I have taken a metaphoric representation of suffering, Ishvara, from the lived context of a Hindu immigrant woman to show that suffering is experienced and expressed within one’s lived context. Further, a dominant narrative from her world is presented to show that the same lived context can be a resource for spiritual care that could reconstruct her world that has fallen apart with a suffering experience. Having argued that suffering is experienced and expressed within one’s lived context, and that lived context could be a resource, in this paper I present that spiritual care is an intervention into the predicaments of human suffering and its mandate is to facilitate certain direction and a meaningful order through which experiences and expectations are rejoined. Finally, I observe that spiritual care is an engagement between the lived context where suffering is experienced and the spiritual experience and orientation of the caregiver.

Ahmed-Ghosh, H. (2009). Widows in India: Issues of masculinity and women’s sexuality. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 15(1), 26–29. Retrieved, May 13, 2009 from Prohost.

Arora, K. (2006). The mythology of female sexuality: Alternative narratives of belonging. Women: A Cultural Review, 17(2), 220–250.CrossRef

Becker, G. (1997). Disrupted lives: How people create meaning in a chaotic world. Berkeley: University of California press.

Buhler, G. (1886). The laws of Manu: Translated, with extracts from seven commentaries (trans.). Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Chari, S. S. M. (1988). Fundamentals of Visitadvaita: A study based on Vedanta Desika’s Tattva-Mukta-Kalpa. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Davis, C. G., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2001). Loss and meaning: How do people make sense of loss? The American Behavioral Scientist, 44(5), 726–741.

Dohman, C. (2003). The suffering servant and the passion of Jesus. Communio: International Catholic Review, 30(3), 452–462.

Fernandez, J. (1974). The mission of metaphor in expressive culture. Current Anthropology, 15(2), 119–146.CrossRef

Firth, S. (1997). Dying, death and bereavement in a British Hindu community. Leuven: Peeters.

Framarin, C. G. (2006). The desire you are required to get rid of: A functionalist analysis of desire in the Bhagavadgita. Philosophy East & West, 56(4), 604–617. Retrieved, November 12, 2008 from Ebscohost.CrossRef

Gall, T. (2005). Understanding the nature and role of spirituality in relation to coping and health: A conceptual framework. Canadian Psychology, 26(2), 88–91.

Good, B. J. (1990). Medicine, rationality and experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gupta, B. (2006). Bhagavad Gita as duty and virtue ethics, some reflections. Journal of Religious Ethics, 34(3), 373–395.CrossRef

Hyden, L.-C. (1997). Illness and narrative. Sociology of Health & Illness, 19(1), 48–69.

Janoff-Bulman, R., & Berg, M. (1998). Disillusionment and the creation of values: From traumatic loss to existential gains. In J. H. Harvey (Ed.), Perspectives on loss: A sourcebook. Philadelphia: Brunner Mazel.

Kirmayer, L. J. (1992). The body’s insistence on meaning: Metaphor as presentation and representation in illness experience. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 6(4), 323–346.CrossRef

Kleinman, A. (1997). Everything that really matters: Social suffering, subjectivity, and the remaking of human experience in a disordering world. Harvard Theological Review, 90(3), 315–335.

Lagerspetz, O. (2002). Experience and consciousness in the shadow of descartes. Philosophical Psychology, 15(1), 5–18. Retrieved, January 18, 2009 from Psycarticles.CrossRef

Lakshmi, A. (2003). The liminal body: The language of pain and symbolism around sati. Feminist Review, 74, 81–97. Retrieved, June 30, 2009 from Proquest.CrossRef

McLean, K. C. (2008). Stories of the young and the old: Personal continuity and narrative identity. Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 254–264.CrossRefPubMed

Monks, J. A. (2000). Talk as social suffering: Narratives of talk in medical settings. Anthropology & Medicine, 7(1), 15–38.CrossRef

Mukherjee, T. (2008). Deepa Mehta’s film water: The power of the dialectical image. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 17(2), 35–46. Retrieved, February.27, 2009 from Proquest.

Nisson, U. S. (2003). Mira Bai. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.

Panoli, V. V. (2009). http://www.scribd.com/doc/9940601/108-Upanishad. Retrieved, May 10, 2009 (Trans).

Sankari, K., & Vaid, D. (1996). Institutions, belief, ideologies. Widow immolation in contemporary Rajasthan. In K. Jayawardena & M. de Alwis (Eds.), Embodied violence: Communalising women’s sexuality in South Asia. New Jersey: Zed Books.

Sharma, A. (1999). The Purusarthas: An axiological exploration of Hinduism. Journal of Religious Ethics, 27(2), 223–256.CrossRef

Sharma, A. (2008). Karma and Dharma: New links in an old chain. Tikkun, 23(3), 14–15. Retrieved, December 28, 2008 from Ebscohost.

Somers, M. R., & Gibson, G. D. (1994). Reclaiming the epistemological “other”: Narrative and the social construction of identity. In C. J. Calhoun (Ed.), Social theory and the politics of identity. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Turner, V. W., & Bruner, E. M. (1986). The anthropology of experience. Urbana: University of Illinois press.

Wadley, S. S. (1995). No longer a wife: Widows in rural India. In L. Harlan & P. B. Courtright (Eds.), From the margins of Hindu marriage; Essays on gender, religion and culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weinberger-Thomas, C. (1999). Ashes of immortality: Widow burning in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Title: My Ishvara is Dead: Spiritual Care on the Fringes
Author: Titus George
Publication date: 01-12-2010
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Religion and Health / Issue 4/2010
Print ISSN: 0022-4197
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6571
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-009-9285-3

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

Springer Medicine

My Ishvara is Dead: Spiritual Care on the Fringes

Abstract

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

Springer Medicine

Abstract

Please log in to get access to this content

Other articles of this Issue 4/2010

Twelve-Year-Old Face, Holy Heart

Spirituality, Anger, and Stress in Early Adolescents

MEDICINE AND HEALTH CARE IN EARLY CHIRSTIANITY. By Gary B. Ferngren. 246 pp. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. $35.00

THE SPIRITUAL ANATOMY OF EMOTION: HOW FEELINGS LINK THE BRAIN, THE BODY, AND THE SIXTH SENSE. By Michael A. Jawer, Marc S. Micozzi. 576 pp. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-59477-288-7

Reflections on Breughel’s “Icarus” from a Kohutian Perspective

Editorial