Humanistic nursing is not a matter solely of doing but also of being. The humanistic nurse is open to the reality of the situation in the existential sense. She is available with her total being in the nurse-patient situation. This involves a living out of the nurturing, intersubjective transaction with all of one's human capacities which include a response to the experienced reality. Man is able to set his world at a distance as an independent opposite and enter into relation with it. In fact, according to Buber, this is what distinguishes existence as human. It is man's special way of being.[4] For nursing to be humanistic in this full sense of the term requires being and doing in the situation and subsequently setting the experienced reality at a distance (that is, objectifying it) and entering into relation with it. The nurse's reflective response to her lived world may take the shape of any form of human dialogue with reality, such as, science, art, or philosophy. Viewed existentially, every nursing event is unique, a live intersubjective transaction colored and formed by the individual participants. Although the event is ephemeral, the resultant experiential knowledge is lasting and cumulative. So {18} from the nurse's daily commonplace grows a body of clinical wisdom. The need for describing nursing phenomena, for expressing and conceptualizing lived nursing worlds, is basic to the theoretical and actual development of humanistic nursing. In summary, we contend that humanistic nursing practice necessarily involves the conceptualization of that practice and an examination of its inherent values and that humanistic nursing theory must be derived from nurses' lived experience. The interwoven theory and practice are reciprocally enlightening. Framework--The Human Situation It is easy to recognize the intrinsic interrelatedness of humanistic nursing theory and practice and the consequent necessity for their concurrent development. It is even quite easy to take the next steps of valuing such development and committing oneself to the task. But then the question arises: Where to begin? Humanistic nursing is concerned with what is basically nursing, that is, with the phenomenon of nursing wherever it occurs regardless of its specialized clinical, functional, or sociocultural form. So its domain includes any or all nursing situations. And within this domain, since humanistic nursing is an intersubjective transaction aimed at nurturing well-being and more-being, its "stuff" includes all possible human and interhuman responses. To conceive of so limitless a universe for study is at once exhilarating and overwhelming. How can one get a handle on the nursing universe? Is it possible to envision an inclusive frame that would allow an orderly, systematic, and hopefully productive approach to the development of humanistic nursing?