Nursing has a history of acknowledging the spiritual as a taken-for-granted dimension in health and illness. However, nurses and other health professionals have struggled to find meaningful ways to attend to the spiritual in practice. This article explores the notion that to inquire about spirituality is not neutral and not inquiring is also not neutral. In addition, four clinical vignettes are presented that illustrate ways of opening space to the spiritual in family systems nursing, within the framework of the Illness Beliefs Model. These include opening space for the following: the gift of listening, curiosity and surprise, inviting reflections, and the invocation of metaphor. This article also addresses how some constraining beliefs of the clinician can actually inhibit or close the door to possible exploration of spiritual experience.
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