Online

Lever, Theresa

College of Education and Social Services

2011

MEd

The world of cancer care is a strange land to a person newly diagnosed with cancer. Like someone who leaves the familiarity of home and arrives in a foreign place, the person with cancer loses equilibrium and feels lost, experiences an assault on self-identity, and encounters an alien language and culture. It is this person who knocks as a stranger on the door of cancerland. Many philosophic and religious traditions obligate those receiving the stranger to provide a deep hospitality. One model of the practice of deep hospitality is summarized as door, table, space. When applied to the relationship between the cancer care provider and the patient/stranger, this hospitality can humanize the experience for both parties and is education in its elemental sense of drawing out and leading forth into healing and wisdom.