Page 180 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 7

The Work and Thinking of David Benner

Mike Sheldon (Great Britain)
Comment to Mike Sheldon
(Great Britain)
David G. Benner`s is an ex-Gene-

“Understanding our ral Practitio-
ner. For several
Humanity: in Soulful years, he and
his family wor-
Spirituality, 2011 pp ked in the mis-

27-37”. sion field and
in
Christian
counseling.
Introductory comments by Mike Sheldon Much of his life he has been spent in the
These extracts from the book by Benner at- academic world, teaching medical stu-
tempt to answer one of the fundamental que- dents about the art and science of Gene-
stions which most of us ask at some point ral Practice. He is now working mainly
-“What makes me a human being?”
The first obvious answer is that I am a physi- in developing a Christian whole-person
cal creature with a well developed mind. Ben- approach to health care.
ner starts by telling the story of Henri Nouwen www.wphtrust.com
who was a gifted professor at several univer-
sities, but later went to live with developmen- their otherness too uncomfortable for us.
tally disabled people at the L’Arche communi- Or think of the way in which we so easily slip
ty. He noted that most anthropologists would
list the aspects of humanity as self-awareness, into a kind of oblivion and live like sub-human
speech, conscience, symbolic cognition, ima- automatons – devoid of awareness and failing
gination and a contemplation of our origins, to fully exercise our fundamental human capa-
but all of these were the products of the mind, city for choice and action.
and living with mentally disabled people had
forced him to change his view to understand Being fully alive, fully awake and fully human
that the heart was the central part of a hu- are far from normal or automatic occurrences.
man and not the mind. But before we examine more closely why this is
and what we can do about it we should first con-
“As a human, I am unable to know life as a rock, sider the more basic question of what it means
or as a flower, a bird or a god. I can, however, to be human. Our answer to this will lay the
know life as a human being. Being human is the foundation for our discussion of what it means
only way I can truly engage with life. It is, there- to live in a manner that is both deeply spiritual
fore, profoundly important if I want to be fully and deeply human.
alive.

But you may wonder if I am making too much What Makes Us Human?
of something we can safely take for granted. Shortly before his death, Henri Nouwen was in-
Perhaps, you might suggest, being human is na- vited to deliver a special lecture at a university
tural – the default option for beings who are ca- where I was teaching. His years as a professor
pable of being nothing else. However, while the- at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard universities
re is truth in the fact that we are not capable of made his scholarly credentials impeccable. Ho-
being anything other than human, we are alar- wever, his life since leaving the academy sugge-
mingly capable of being less than fully human. sted that this might be no ordinary academic
Witness the atrocities we have perpetrated on lecture. He had spent those years in Toronto in
others whose humanity we have denied because the L’Arche community of Daybreak – a com-
they held beliefs that were different from ours – munity made up of developmentally disabled
or because their skins were darker than ours, or persons and a few helpers. He came onto the

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