Perhaps the most important thing I can do for a patient, as a Christian Science nurse, is to bear witness to the presence of God. A poem by Katherine Collins (no relation to me) has been a model to me for how to do this:
An Aspiration
Others may be art glass
Of rainbow hue;
I choose to be a windowpane
For the sun to shine through.
A clear pane,
A clean pane—
Is what I would be—
Unconcerned with temperament
And personality.
I would have Love shine through me,
So that my friends would say,
Not, “What a lovely pane of glass!”
But “What a lovely day!”
—The Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 1940
