Revised Common Lectionary. Year B Easter 4. Psalm 23. John 10:1-10.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” This unassuming yet elegant metaphor, introduces what must be one of the better-known passages in the First Biblical Testament. Its imagery brings to mind also the shepherding metaphor found in John 10. Jesus has received much attention through words and images which cast him in the role of the Good Shepherd. Adherents to Christianity have little difficulty associating him, erroneously, with the Psalmic shepherd. Psalm 23:1-2’s pastoral sentimentality gives way in succeeding verses to images of a dark valley, traversed amid anguish, fear, hostility and alienation. These categories of suffering explain why the psalm provides comfort and encouragement for many negotiating the terrors of conflict, heartbreak, loss and grief.
The writer recalls an episode when summoned to a local hospital as part of the clean-up crew in the aftermath of a high-speed car crash. Five teenagers emerged from the vehicle shaken and bruised while the sixth died. Police brought the family to view their deceased child. If ever a situation demanded a pastoral heart this was the one. The mother requested that ‘those shepherd words’ be read. Psalm 23’s stanzas entered softly into ears aching for a comforting word. Tears flowed and voices cracked as heart-breaking anguish filled the cold room. This was a time for good shepherding. This was a time for nursing wounded souls. The day ended badly for that family with a future destroyed as a child lay lifeless on a hospital bed.
Hospital beds and deathbeds are places where people suffer fear and anguish. Meagre words about a good shepherd, in such circumstances, do not, in themselves, offer comfort enough. Confronting life-changing or life-limiting injury and illness, demands more than mere words. Within a modern hospital setting, mostly it is the nurse who bears the public face of the good shepherd. Doctors have a prominent part to play. Emotional and spiritual support may appear also in the guise of the tea trolley person.
Nursing the sick and injured is one of the most vaunted occupations. Many have voiced unbridled admiration for the nurse. Pressure mounts on health authorities to dig deeper into the public purse that the nurse may receive just reward for care proffered to suffering and rightly grateful patients and families. There is no legitimate counter-argument. Nurses deserve fair and reasonable remuneration. However, the nurse, considered in isolation from the less conspicuous faces of health-care, would be of no great public service. Better by far to substitute the nurse, which is a noun, with the verb, nursing.
Nursing is an activity which cannot function in isolation from other activities. Unimaginable is the prospect of a well-functioning medical facility without the activities of administrator, plumber, electrician or cleaner. Middlemore Hospital’s recently reported rot, mould and sewage leaking into walls, offers clear illustration of the awkward fact that governance, administration, trades people and management are as vital to the organisation’s success as nurses.
The nurse has attracted public sympathy, yet, as important as it may be, nursing is but one part of the whole. Argument for additional payment to the nurse must take place under the umbrella of equitability. Justice must take precedence over sentimental public attitude. Nurses, generally, are excellent human beings. However, impartial delivery of health-care services requires that distribution of resources is not influenced by the cute puppy syndrome. Valuing nursing is entirely reasonable, but not its elevation over and above other equally vital and worthy occupations.
The recent signing of a pay deal for low-income care-workers, mainly women, marked an historic change in the value placed on particular workforces. Kristine Bartlett, a long-serving aged care worker, argued that her employer violates equal pay legislation by paying low wages in an industry dominated by female staff. Ms Bartlett, praised as a hero for championing the cause of women underpaid on the basis of gender, took a stance against an unfair practice for which there is no moral justification. Underpayment should be of great concern to this society because the low wage economy is a root cause of poverty which breeds resentment, underachievement and discontent.
Unfortunately the prevailing socioeconomic model measures the value of occupations based on a surprisingly random standard. Amongst the most highly rewarded are the celebrity and the speculative investor. Arguably, the celebrity may affect some narrow, positive, economic outcomes but, along with the speculator, adds nothing of real value to the character of the community. Occupations most often underpaid and undervalued, alongside the unemployed, are the poet, the painter, the dancer, the musician and the theologian – who provide society with media through which it may voice its anxieties, celebrate its delights and express the better elements of its character.
Nursing is a worthy occupation exercised daily by thousands of unregistered nurses. Each friend or family member offering care to another is nursing and, by definition, a nurse. Thinking broadly, the nurse, interpreted as a metaphor, set alongside that of the good shepherd, offers comfort, encouragement and care during times of affliction, to those negotiating the terrors of illness, heartbreak, loss and grief. Let not any who are nursing, feel underpaid or undervalued!
© Roger James Gillies