The Holding Place

An address by the Rev. Nicholas Rundle - recorded on Sunday, 23rd June, 2019 in the Unitarian Meeting House in Adelaide. Nicholas is the Uniting Church Chaplain in the high tech, robotised Royal Adelaide Hospital. In the context of the Winter Solstice as marking a turning point in the seasonal calendar, Nicholas uses an unpublished poem, "Breathing Underwater" and the analogy of the sea and its ambivalence as a place of solace and of storms to describe the hospital as a "holding place" where the human hand - despite all the technology - is still paramount in healing. Hands are used to "hold" and to heal - in surgery and in nursing - and also in providing spiritual support to patients and their families, and where - in the adversity which comes to us all, we are helped to "breath underwater".