Hope and Grace ― Spiritual Experiences in Distress, Illness and Dying

Conventional coping strategies can be pushed to their limits when people find themselves in situations of suffering, illness, and dying. Moved beyond their everyday consciousness, individuals often have spiritual experiences of grace and encounters with the transcendent or the divine. The author shows how care providers can support patients in their suffering and how they can recognize patients' spiritual experiences. Explaining different types of experiences of transcendence such as seeing angels or feelings of otherness and presence, this book will be of valuable use to professionals working in palliative and spiritual care, such as spiritual caregivers, therapists, nurses, and physicians. The book entails a new approach to spiritual care which opens a space of hope wherein grace may happen even amid pain, suffering, illness and dying.

Monika Renz holds doctorates in psychopathology and theology from the universities of Zurich, Fribourg, and Innsbruck. She is head of the psycho-oncology department at Kantonsspital St. Gallen, where she has been a practicing music therapist, psychotherapist and spiritual counsellor since 1998. She is the author of a number of books drawing on her research into dying, spirituality and spiritual care. Find out more at www.monikarenz.ch.