I stand on tiptoe waiting for results of a survey announced by Edwin R. DuBose in this issue. My toes might ache a bit from the strain, since surveys take months. Still, I join those including the funders from the Nathan R. Cummings Foundation, in expressing curiosity about what is a conundrum turned up by the Gallup people in their survey Spiritual Beliefs and the Dying Process.

Here it is: religions and religious institutions of all types are founded, perpetuated, and looked to to provide care and, one hopes, healing of spirit, mind, and—never forget—body insofar as that is in the range of possibility. Further, such institutions rely on trained leaders—ministers, priests, rabbis, chaplains, deacons and deaconesses, servant ministries—to assure personal concern and one-on-one care.

No other institutions come close to being so well poised to perform these functions. They come in all varieties, at least a half million strong, in almost all the communities in the nation. They often compete, at least implicitly, with each other in advertising that they will deliver. Believers are adherents to these institutions both for what they can do through them and for what can be done for them. A perfect match.

Gallup, however, finds that the connection is at best imperfect and is often broken. "Only 36 percent of respondents . . . saw the clergy providing adequate support." Now, we have to remember that only about 70 percent of the citizens consider themselves affiliated with a church or religious organization, 60 percent are members, and 50 regularly attend services. So one could get off all hooks and say that the clergy cannot know about or serve half of everyone. Fifty percent of the people, therefore, do not know to look to clergy for solace when dying.

The Park Ridge Center is not ready to find solace in such speculation, however. From other studies, from overhearing chaplains and clergy, from anecdotal evidence, we know that the connection is often frail or broken. While in many health care institutions there are excellent pastoral care and chaplain corps (for the 90 percent who are to die in such places), where are the clergy and other spiritual care givers who are not on the staff? Why are so many patients disappointed in the care their loved ones receive at the point of death?

We do not know the answer, which is why we are eager for clues from the survey. We are as eager to learn what the 36 percent who do find adequate clergy support will report as what the 74 percent who do not are thinking. Our own experience in parishes that care, our connections with the congregations of others that provide support, our awareness of great numbers of clergy who are faithful, on the spot, and helpful, suggests that there is much to build on. We want to find out how to do that building, and to pass on the word to others. Hence, the tiptoes.

When I spoke of institutions above, I know that it sounded cold, bureaucratic, formal, and remote—as in the phrase "the institutional church" or "organized religion." These phrases get sneered by the many today who turn their backs on such in the interest of touting individualized "spirituality." More power to the Spirit, the spiritual, and spirituality. Several writers in this issue speak well of the human need for expression of the spiritual, and I say 'Bravo!' But spirituality needs a context and a surrounding complex if what it stands for is to "provide adequate support" for the dying.

At a recent talk in appreciation of those who minister spiritually in the hospital nearest to where I live, I was asked about some distinctions between religion—I was using it in the "faith-based community" and not the "self-preservative institutional" sense—it came to me to say "the faith-based community makes calls on those in need. Spirituality doesn't make calls."

Now if the faith-based community, through its lay and professional representatives, comes to the bedside offering what those who seek the spiritual seek, and the spiritual seekers begin to find, encourage, support, judge, and nudge the faith based communities so that they survive, learn how to deliver, and then deliver, we will all be better off.

Especially the 90 percent who are to die in hospital or hospice and the 10 percent who are to die at home and the large percent who wish they could die at home, in company. I guess that's just about everybody, isn't it?