There are other kinds of healing that take place in Lourdes (see earlier post here), not least the healing of the relationship between those who are sick or disabled and those who are in good health.
I’ve always thought that the greatest miracle in Lourdes is the fact that you can go into a bar in a wheelchair or on a stretcher and order a beer without getting any strange looks from the staff or the other customers.
In one sense, the sick and disabled are given special treatment: special care in the hotels and hospitals, special places in the religious services, etc. But the really impressive aspect of Lourdes is that in the ordinary cultural life of the town – shops, bars, restaurants, cinemas – there is absolutely no distinction made between the sick and the healthy. They are all, equally, part of the same society.
In many ways attitudes to sickness and disability are getting better in Britain. But there are all sorts of contradictions, and I think this needs another post…
wonderful. It sounds like such a self empowering place, I wonder if many people have wishes to move there permanently because of its very hospitality and acceptance?
I am just reading Philip Yanceys “Where is God when it hurts” and it is all about finding a way in suffering. Sounds as if Lourdes has found it!
Father:
I agree that one of the strengths of Lourdes is the way in which sick people who are often marginalised (ie confined to their own homes, or in hospitals) when at home are able to get out and about alongside those who are healthy. It makes a very big statement about how the sick are valued.
The design of some hospitals can help achieve this in reverse. By having cafes and shops in hospital precincts other people come into the hospital environment and help to break down some of the marginalisation of the sick. Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London achieves this a bit with its central atrium; my own local hospital rather less because the wards are in a quite different part of the building than the foyer.
I feel sure hospital design could try to address this more systematically.
Yes, and one of the lovely aspects of design in the new St Frai building in Lourdes is that there is a juice bar in the lobby as you enter – so it encourages you to just hang around. I chatted to two friends who went to Lourdes the same week as me as part of the official ‘hospitality’, which means they offer to serve in whatever way was required. And instead of cooking or cleaning or assisting people in the baths, their assigned role for the week was making fresh orange juice for the visitors!
There may be several hospitals around the UK that have cafes and shops in their entrances. These are operated primarily as businesses and situated where they are to catch the ‘passing trade’. The difference between such conveniences and the places described in Lourdes is that the ‘business’ of Lourdes is people. Those I know who have been support what you have said, Father Stephen about the special atmosphere.
Perhaps if we, as individuals, concentrated much more on the ‘people’ part of life rather than money and possessions, we would have a richer society in a great many ways.