Medicine and Poetry as Spiritual Callings

A growing number of reports suggest that clinicians are often unaware of the importance of spirituality to patients; in many cases, these reports also show that physicians may conceal their own beliefs for fear of imposing them on patients. Poetry, with its ties to incantation and prayer, can provide a needed bridge for spiritual engagement between patients and physicians. In “House Call,” the speaker of the poem visits a patient at home, experiencing firsthand how spirituality informs her life as she contends with pulmonary disease, anxiety, and dementia. His keen clinical eye first notes clues to her corporeal illnesses: an empty beer can filled with stubbed-out cigarettes, the clutter of papers and pill bottles obscuring a piano’s surface. Closer, poetic observation soon reveals that she is a gospel pianist who can no longer attend services, and that she fears her absence will be perceived by both God and her church as “a lapse of faith.” As he teaches her more effective inhaler use, the act of ministering to another awakens in him the realization that he had never attended to her spiritual needs, which in their neglect likely contributed to her worsening unease and, in turn, worsening of her pulmonary symptoms. The richness of this epiphany in their newly discovered shared sense of spirituality becomes manifest, ironically, in what the speaker can now appreciate ever more clearly: that he is like Bartimaeus, the blind man whose sight was restored by Jesus in the familiar biblical story, “finally seeing after so many years.”