12/11/2025
The photo is of Truro cathedral, which we recently visited. I was struck by the grace of the arches. My engineer wife tells me that the arch design is not simply an aesthetic choice, but a practical one. Straightforward vertical columns don’t work with this kind of structure - for reasons way beyond my poor comprehension. My mind saw these arches as a kind of grace. One definition of Grace is “smoothness of thought or of movement’ or of “courteous and elegant good will”. I like the idea of courteous good will in a cathedral. A building dedicated, we hope, to speaking of God’s grace.
Thinking of Grace took my mind back to an incident in my early years as a psychiatric nurse. It was a busy acute admission ward with regular admissions and discharges - often with people whom we didn’t know. This meant we had to rely on someone else’s assessment to plan our nursing care. One day we admitted a young woman in her early 30’s who was, we were told, both a su***de risk and sexually disinhibited. To this end she was placed on Close Observations, which meant she was never to be more than arm’s length from her nurse at any time. One shift and it was my hour of Close Obs on Clare. I followed her around the ward like a faithful spaniel. Tedious and intrusive but not too dreadful. Then she went into the female dormitory. “What to do??” I leant against the dormitory wall, hands deep in my pockets. (Protecting my crown jewels?) As she came back Clare gave me a kiss on the cheek, stepped back and smiled at me.
“That’s to teach you not to be afraid of me, Terry”, she said as she left the dormitory.
I think I learned more from that encounter than from many a lecture given during my training. I experienced it as a moment of Grace in which I was given a free gift.
What was that gift? It was several things. Firstly, it taught me not always to listen to the judgement of others but to make up my own mind. I have found this to be particularly true when working with patients with a diagnosis of Personality disorder or Borderline Personality disorder. A group all too often pilloried or feared, and rarely understood. A lesson that has stood me in good stead over nearly forty years in clinical work.
Another lesson that Clare gave me was that good clinical work is a two way process. Our patients give to us as much as we give to them. I can think of several examples where the work has been long and difficult. For both of us. My patient and myself. Yet at the end healing and change have occurred for my patient and valuable lessons learned by me. Not necessarily a kiss on the cheek, but moments of meeting nonetheless.
And finally, I think I learned something about openness. I have worked with nurses who seemed to despise their patients and resent them. (Perhaps forgetting that this work pays their mortgage, at its most basic value.) My own experience as a counsellor as well as a nurse is that as I am experienced as open and available, so my patient responds in kind. I have in mind a patient who, after seeing me for several years, was able to share her thoughts on spirituality. A topic that mattered to her a great deal. But she waited until she could be confident that I would also value her thoughts and hopes.
So, these are my reflections on the Truro arches. I hope you too find your moments of Grace.
