Abstract
In the process of engaging in spiritual care of the terminally ill it occasionally happens that deeply religious patients use picturesque, sometimes discordant language to describe some matter of concern to them. These images on close scrutiny appear to be archetypal in nature, vehicles for the expression of some deeper, personal truth at work within them. Such matters may escape the listener who is not willing to consider the unusual, nor to search out the possible symbolic nature of such utterances. A common thrust of such language among the deeply religious appears to be the suggestion of a final transformation in their inner life from conflicted and qualified hope in a spiritual reality to unconflicted and unqualified trust in this.
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