Light and air are circulated in and through a house almost exclusively by windows. As a nurse, and mother of a frequent patient, I have been dismayed by the unimaginative impersonal spaces that hospitals provide. While I appreciate the clean, practical and non-threatening aspects of modern medical architecture, there's something missing. There's little conscious acknowledgment of the sacred, of the profound mystery of birth, healing, illness, death, predation, wonder and faith. Often they are denied.
Hospitals are full of light, light, light.
This may be a spiritually infantile response to the darkness that we fear to examine, the dragons of disease we, St. Georges all, draw swords against daily. Light, practically and metaphorically, is necessary and proper in the hospital. Yet, there should also be pockets of deliberate shadow for contemplation, for critical privacy, for healing sleep. There should be art materials on every floor, in every patient room. And in the nurses conference rooms and the chapel and the resident's rooms too.