"LEARNING FROM LIVES: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE"

A sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, February 17, 2002

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

The name "Florence Nightingale" conjures up an image in everyone's mind. It is a very vivid image of a selfless nurse helping wounded soldiers in a battlefield hospital. In the image, she may even be carrying a lamp, for in her own time she was called "the lady with the lamp," and the picture people had of her in that army hospital was at night as she carried a lamp from bed to bed to check on the patients.

Her name, and the image that accompanies it, have become part of our language, one of those universal names that everyone knows and even uses as a figure of speech, a synonym for compassion. For example, if I were to tell you about this boss I once had, many years ago, who was quite a slave-driver as a boss, and gave no flexibility for the personal circumstances of her employees, and in telling you about her today I said, "she was sure no Florence Nightingale," you would know exactly what I meant by that. Very few names have become words in the language acquiring meaning by association. The word "Rockefeller" means rich, financially. The word "Scrooge" means cheap, financially. The words "Florence Nightingale" means compassion, humanly.

The image that we associate with her name seems to be true, as far as it goes. But it is also fairly one-dimensional in a life that was complex and multidimensional. There are layers and layers of quality in her life, some of which I have sought to uncover for us this morning. Other associations with her name might include activist reformer, mystic, mathematical innovator, human rights defender, early feminist advocate, and a reclusive crusader.

I am beginning a series of sermons I call "Learning from Lives." I have chosenry some people who were associated with Unitarianism or Universalism - though that association may not have beeen well known - and t looking more deeply into their lives to discover some lessons or meanings for us today. I begin with Florence Nightingale, an English Unitarian, born of wealthy British aristocracy, who eventually became known world-wide as the founder of the nursing profession. As I say, that reputation merely touches the surface of her life.

She was born of Unitarian parents on May 12, 1820 while the family was vacationing in Italy - Florence, which, in fact, is how she got her first name. Her family was among the richest in England, her father having inherited substantial property and businesses.

As a child, she seemed to follow a different drummer than her family or their circle of friends could understand. She showed little interest in matters that young women of her class were expected to pursue, such as household affairs and social gatherings. She dreamed instead of something that was shocking to everyone in her social standing. She wanted a job. She wanted to work in a position of service. This was not, of course, what the noblesse oblige of the time expected or wanted of their young women. In her family's view It was a blasphemous wish on her part.

Still, from a young age she felt destined to a life of service to the needy, though she was unsure of quite what that meant. For a number of years, she somewhat clandestinely went to the homes of poor people in surrounding villages to care for the sick. When she finally announced to her parents that she wanted to be a nurse in a hospital, they were shocked, and discouraged her as strongly as they could. Hospitals were for poor people; the wealthy were treated at home. Furthermore, there was of course no such thing as a "nursing" profession, and women who worked at hospitals were disreputable people who could not work anywhere else.

It took about ten years, but when she was 32, her father finally gave in and consented to her working as a nurse. "Perhaps she would get these foolish ideas out of her system for once and for all!" he thought. He allowed her to enter training in Germany, and she returned to London to begin her first formal job, as Superintendent of a hospital called the Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illnesses.

After about a year, circumstances unfolded that would change her life forever, and insure her place in history and legend. The Crimean War had broken out in 1854, when Britain, France and Turkey declared war on Russia. The battles raged mostly around the area of Constantinople, and the British army was miserably failing. Reports came back from the war that hospital conditions for wounded soldiers were so bad that far more were dying from the medical conditions - contracting fatal illnesses for example - than were dying from battle wounds.

The British War Minister recruited Florence Nightingale to head a team of 38 nurses to serve the wounded soldiers in the war zone. At first the army didn't want the women there, and kept them outside the barracks to do tasks such as cooking the food, but as the number of wounded became overwhelming, Florence was able to convince the officials to allow the women into the hospital. The conditions were appalling beyond belief. Without detailing reports that might make many of us queasy, I'll just say that the sanitation in the hospital was abominable.

Florence served in the Crimean hospital for 20 months. When she arrived, the death rate was 42% - again, most deaths due to disease and illness rather than battle wounds. She worked hard to make the conditions healthier, and it was reported that by the end of her service, the death rate was reduced to 2%. There is some historical question concerning how much of the stunning improvement was due to her or due to an official group of sanitation commissioners sent by the government several months after her arrival. Whatever the case, there is no question at all that back home in England, Florence Nightingale gained a national reputation as a miracle worker.

She returned home to great acclaim from everyone, but in her mind her work was just beginning. She threw herself into efforts to pass laws to reform the army's medical policies. She succeeded. And she then moved on to work tirelessly for reforms in civilian hospitals. She succeeded.

Her efforts spiraled out into many other areas. Some years ago, the government had passed something called the "New Poor Law," that created workhouses, that more resembled slave labor prisons, for those who could find no other work. Unemployed people were coerced to live in the squalor of workhouses, and many died from diseases contracted by the cruel conditions. Florence Nightingale worked to repeal the law.

She wrote widely about the causes of poverty and crime. She turned her attention to India and joined an effort to improve the conditions of the poor there, and worked toward self-rule of that British colony.

On and on her efforts went toward causes of bettering the social order. She was a major advisor to the drafting of the Geneva Convention which governed the treatment of prisoners. She eventually founded her own Nursing School called "The Nightingale Training School" for nurses. It was the first successful school to treat nursing as a profession.

It was a lot of work for one person, any person. But it is even more striking to discover that nearly all of these efforts were accomplished while she was bedridden, invalid, and reclusive. The year after she returned home from the Crimean war, she fell desperately ill. It seemed apparent she fell ill from a disease called brucellosis, contracted from the time she spent in the Crimean area. She was thereafter confined to her own home for much of the rest of her life. It was from her home that she was able to work successfully for all these reforms, to influence policies toward the poor, toward India, toward public health, and to create and run her own nursing school. During this period she wrote about one dozen books, and thousands of published letters and reports and articles. Her public acclaim and reputation continued to grow, even though she was never seen in public.

It has also been speculated that various forms of depression may have contributed to her reclusiveness. There is no question that her experience in the war had a profound affect on her. Some suggest that she suffered from what today we might call "post-traumatic stress disorder." Others wonder whether she was suffering from depression brought on by intense feelings of guilt over not being able to save many thousands of lives that she saw wasted away in the war.

Whatever the reasons for her being home-bound, she remained close to a number of friends, and even her family, which had previously been so resistant to her life goals, but now celebrated the popular fame she acquired.

One of the causes dear to her heart was women's rights. Perhaps top on the list of reforms was one that dominated her own life - the right of women to have jobs, and even pursue professions. In one book she identified her concern this way:

"Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, ... and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not such value to the world as others."

It is reported that in her youth she was a very attractive woman, and in fact there were quite a number of suitors, and at least four proposals of marriage, each of which she turned down. It is clear that in her mind, a marriage would distract and divert her from what was most important to her life - her work. At the time of rejecting a prooposal from one man, she wrote this in her diary:

"I could be satisfied to spend a life with him in combining our different powers toward some great object (or cause). I could not satisfy (my) nature by spending a life with him in making society or arranging domestic things."

It also seems to be the case that her commitment to women's causes was interwoven with her attitude toward marriage. She wrote, "till a married woman can be in possession of her own property, there can be no love or justice."

Earlier in this sermon, I made a passing reference to her mathematical genius. This piece of her life is little known, but in some ways quite revealing. Florence's father did believe strongly in education for women, and employed tutors for his daughters. Florence showed impressive ability in mathematics.

Her use of statistical analysis played a significant role in her reports from the Crimean War. She developed quite a number of statistical charts and graphs and diagrams to show the incidence of preventable deaths in the military. She was among the first to use objective statistical analysis to study social phenomena. Her use of data records and analysis continued in her study of civilian hospital practices. Her work did not go unnoticed. In 1858 she became the first woman to become a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Florence always had a strong religious, even deeply mystical, soul. Throughout her life, she spoke of her work as following a religious calling. Her religion was in no sense the traditional religion of England, certainly not a dogmatic or creedal understanding of faith, but rather a deeply personal sense of reverence that comes from within.

Among the several books she published was one called Suggestions for Thoughts to Searchers after Religious Truths. It might well be misleading to say that her ideas were representative of Unitarianism in England at the time, or Unitarianism in America, but her idea of God was consistent with the Unitarian Transcendentalism that was growing at that time in the United States.

Unitarian Transcendentalism held to a view that theology might call radical imminence. That is, God - or any notion of the divine - is not outside of us, but rather part of the human soul. It is a mistake to think of some God separated from our own world looking down on us as some benevolent ruler. Rather, divinity is to be found within our own souls, and is expressed through the activities of personal character and virtue. If we want to find God, we don't look at scripture, or at church traditions or look to religious rituals, or to theological treatises. We look inside ourselves.

This was the mystical theology of transcendentalism, and it was very much like the religious orientation of Florence Nightingale. She was familiar with the movement of transcendentalist Unitarians in New England, and made friend and acquaintance with a number of them. (When she was in her early twenties, for example, Julia Ward Howe, a transcendentalist best known as the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and wife of a Unitarian minister, was visiting the Nightingale home when Florence confided to her that she wanted to devote her life to works of charity in hospitals).

In her biography of Florence Nightingale, Barbara Dossey wrote:

"Her God was not a white male who spoke only English, but a Universal Truth permeating all religions.... Spirituality was the unifying force in her life. It infused every thing she thought and did in her long life of 90 years."

She did not shy away from the label "religious mystic," yet knew that name was controversial. In one passage, for example, she speaks directly of the mystical religion she practiced:

"For what is mysticism? Is it not an attempt to draw near to God, not by rites ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for 'The Kingdom of God is within'? ... Heaven is neither a place nor a time .... Where shall I find God? In myself. That is the true mystical doctrine."

She looked within to find God, and several times throughout her life she felt she heard the voice of the divine speak to her. It happened when she was a teenager, when she first determined that she was destined to shape a life of service to others, probably to serve the sick and offer healing. It was a calling from which she never wavered, even when her parents strongly discouraged her from the path of service, which was so utterly different from any expectations people had of women of her means.

I began these comments by acknowledging the common and popular image we have of Florence Nightingale. It appears that image has some truth, but it is far too simple to be accurate. The truth of Florence Nightingale's life is much more complex.

This may be, in fact, one of the first important lessons we can glean from looking at her life.

Every single person, every one of us, is far more complex than anyone else can see on the surface. Perhaps the more active the person is, the more multi-dimensional their life story is.

To summarize anyone as being "this" kind of person or "that" kind of person, is always insufficient. There is more to anyone than meets the eye.

This is true, I would say, of each of us. Each person in this room holds complex stories that no single phrase or sentence or description can adequately describe. Florence Nightingale was a famous nurse who symbolized the compassion and professionalism of nursing. True enough. But summary leaves out much more than it includes. She came from a family of privilege and felt called to a life of service to the poor. Her life story does not always communicate the smells and sights of suffering and death at an army hospital far from home. It leaves out the incredible efforts toward reform made by a bed-ridden invalid. The simple biography does not communicate the profound spiritual, and even mystical, commitments that drove her throughout her life.

Every life is more complex than any of us can know.

We can also learn from her life the interplay of science and religion and social activism. She seems to have woven these elements into a meaningful tapestry. On one hand, she exhibited strong confidence in science, and used scientific study to guide her approaches to social reform. Yet the motivation to do so arose deep within, following her own form of spiritual discipline. In a recent article on Florence Nightingale, Helen Epstein said it this way:

"When Nightingale returned from the Crimea, or soon after, she felt she had to confront the fact that God's inspiration was not to be found in the noble lords and gentlemen in government who, however well-intentioned, made so many mistakes in the war. God would be found in the truths that science would discover."

What can we learn from her life? That is up to each one of us, in the same way that our lives are unique. Each of us may grasp some lesson from another's life. Each of us has a lesson to share from our own life. Probably each of us would like to be Rockefellers at times - and have been thought of as Scrooges at times - hopefully we all strive at times to be remembered as Nightingales.

READING from Barbara Dossey, "Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer"

There has been much speculation about the source of Nightingale's motivation and inspiration. Many authors have rightly examined her religious and spiritual life because for Nightingale, the spiritual life was a daily reality. But there is a further step - a giant step - that she took in her life that separated her from most mortals, which brings the lights up full on the scene.

That is the fact, as plain as the nose on one's face: Florence Nightingale was a modern mystic in the Western religious tradition. Understanding her mysticism in its full context is the key to understanding the fabled "Nightingale power" and how this legendary healer brilliantly illuminated and forever changed human consciousness, the role of women, and public health in the middle of the 19^th century.

Many people today are aware of Nightingale's secular contributions to the nursing profession, but that is only a part of her legacy. Her spiritual journey can also be of immense help to all individuals traversing their personal and spiritual paths. Nightingale exemplifies a degree of courage and fearlessness that is rare in any era. She shows that it is possible to honor our spiritual vision and integrate it with the highest (practical) standards.