Serious illness often feels like winter, a season when patients hesitate to say what they truly need, families fear asking the harder questions, and clinicians, without continuity to anchor the relationship, are unsure when to go deeper. The hymn Lo, How a Rose Eer Blooming offers another image: a fragile stem rising through cold ground, much like the quiet truths patients often offer in small hints or subtle cues. Research shows these cues appear long before people voice their real preferences, yet many go unanswered until someone creates enough warmth and presence for honesty to bloom. When fragility is finally met with attentive presence, the real conversation begins, and care can return to what matters most.

Burnout, compassion fatigue, fragmented care—these are not abstract terms. They are the daily reality of modern medicine. Clinicians are stretched thin, patients often feel unseen, and both sides of the stethoscope carry the weight of disconnection.

And yet research keeps showing something striking: when clinicians practice presence—full attention, attunement, and availability—something changes. Patients heal better, and clinicians themselves find resilience. Anxiety can fall in as little as forty seconds of compassion (Fogarty et al., 1999). Pain responses shift under fMRI when care is patient-centered (Sarinopoulos et al., 2013). Even symptoms of post-traumatic stress are lower after medical crises when patients experience care as compassionate (Moss et al., 2019).

The medical literature calls this therapeutic presence—a way of being that goes beyond proximity to embrace mindful awareness, relational depth, and attentive listening. Theological language goes even further. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14, ESV). The Incarnation reveals God’s healing nearness. What clinical science describes in terms of lowered anxiety and improved adherence, theology frames as the very grammar of divine love: God heals by drawing near.

Presence, then, is not an optional extra. It is constitutive of healing itself. When clinicians show up with compassion, they echo the deepest pattern of healing in the universe—and they often find that what they give is also what sustains them.

Can we measure compassion without losing it? In part two of our series, we explore how value-based care tries to reward better outcomes—but sometimes leaves behind the patients and providers who need support most. With help from Pooh, Piglet, and Tigger, we consider what care really means in a world of dashboards, double documentation, and quiet moments that still matter.