Radical Loving Care - The Journal of Sacred Work

Days 167-169 - "Round" Energy

   One of the things people have always loved about my mother (left) is that they feel better when she walks in the room. This seems to be true whether they know her or not. She personifies Grace.

   What happens to your energy when another person enters your presence? Your answer will help describe not only your feelings about that person but the impact you and I make on each others lives merely by our presence.

   A friend of mine recently described a new acquaintance of hers as having "round" energy - not sharp or square, but round. I immediately pictured a soft and friendly presence - someone who makes you feel better the moment you experience them.

   This energy response is important whether you know the individual or not. The first time a nurse enters a room, the patient will have an immediate physical reaction. The reaction is easily plotted if the patient is being monitored.

   If the nurse projects "sharp" energy it will be reflected in heart rate and blood pressure readings. A professional presence that is round and reassuring has a healing influence on the patient not to mention any family and friends who are present.

   When does sharp energy work? Maybe in combat when the objective is killing. Perhaps, in an emergency when abrupt action is required.

   Energy whose edges are rounded is the kind that nurtures loving relationships. It is the kind where competence marries compassion. It is the kind we want to experience most especially when our bodies are ill and in need of a healing presence.

   Next time you enter a room consider your presence to others. What can you do to round your energy in ways that reflect Love's grace?

-Erie Chapman

 

Days 165-166 When Everything Else is Gone . . . Love Just Is

Note: Special thanks to guest contributor Cheri Cancelliere

    C. S. Lewis observed that if you ask 20 good people to name the highest virtue, 19 of them will say “unselfishness.” Yet, he felt quite certain that if the same question were asked of the great saints of ages past, they would have overwhelmingly responded “love.” He wondered how this happened in our time, the substitution of a negative term for a positive (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 1949, HarperOne). Which do we count highest in our service to others?

   Unselfishness implies sacrifice and self-denial. We give up something that we think we own, our time, ourselves, our resources, for the benefit of someone else. Certainly, this is a noble aim, yet it falls far short of the virtue of love. Unselfishness involves effort, works, and in our case, the care of those in need. In reality, we can do all of these things quite effectively without the slightest hint of love, and we do not own anything at all! Our lives, our talent, our every moment is a gift from God – a gift of love.

    Unselfishness does, but love just is. Unselfishness is an act of our will, but love is an attitude of the heart, and the most wonderful gift we can give. An unselfish act will be fondly remembered, but love changes hearts and lives forever. Love brings hope and chases away fear. Love tells the lonely that they are no longer alone. Love encourages those who are suffering that someone really does care. Love costs us nothing, but brings eternal rewards when we give it away and give it away we must, for we cannot own love. It is a free gift.

   St. Paul tells us that we can do many things including dramatic acts of sacrifice, but without love we are nothing (1 Cor 13:3). Love is the greatest gift we can give those whom we care for, not simply our doing, but our being, in an attitude of the heart that we can choose anew – every moment of every day. When there is nothing more to do and we have given all we have and think we are completely empty, our most priceless gift waits to be given. It is always there, for love just is. “Let us love one another, because love is from God” (1 John 4:7).

 -Cheri Cancelliere

Days 160-164 Finding Yourself?

    "You can't find yourself in time," Eckhardt Tolle says. "You can only find yourself in the moment."

   But, if your goal is to "find" yourself, where did you go? Did your "self" somehow get lost in the forest of life? Where do you start looking for it?

   Watch images of yourself as a small child and ask if you know that person. Can you remember feeling your truest self when you were small and gradually sensing that self retreating further into the trees as your life-walk continued?

   I was a wildly enthusiastic child (photo - from a childhood birthday) - so ebullient that my father said to me one day when I was about eight, "Chip, I hope you never lose that enthusiasm." "Lose" my enthusiasm? How could I lose something like that, I wondered.

   He understood the risk. By definition, adulthood frowns on colleagues who behave "childishly." Sensing this, your child self probably went into hiding. Now, you sit around meeting tables wearing the solemn mask someone else made for you. 

   There's nothing wrong, of course, with maturity. The problem comes when you crush the truth, freshness and awe with which your child eyes saw the world.

   These are the sacred eyes that once saw with the earnest clarity that is life's finest gift. When you behold that light with the seasoned vision of your adulthood you see Love's energy. 

   True maturity keeps counsel with both the adult and child self. Ignore either one and you will feel the loss-of-self anxiety that plagues our shared journey on this earth. 

 -Erie Chapman

Days 158-159 The Conversation Project

“Everyone has got to die, but I always thought an exception would be made in my case." Author, William Saroyan, on his deathbed.

 The majority of us are not comfortable having conversations about the prospect of end of life. Why is talking about care in the final stage of life so difficult? Perhaps, on an unconscious level we think that if we ignore death, it will go away, or worse, if we do talk about it we might jinx ourselves and bring it on.

In 2011, people living in California were surveyed and the results were astonishing.

 Sixty percent say that making sure their families are not burdened by tough decisions about their care is "extremely important. However, 56% of Californians have not communicated their end-of-life wishes to the loved one they would want making decisions on their behalf.

 While a large majority of Californians (82%) say it is important to have end-of-life wishes in writing, only 23% say they have done so.

 Almost 80% say they definitely or probably would like to talk with a doctor about end-of-life care, but only 7% have had a doctor speak with them about it.  

Read more: http://www.chcf.org/publications/2012/02/final-chapter-death-dying#ixzz2VdVg3Zjf

 How can take the fear out of this and begin to have rich and meaningful conversations with those we care about and those we care for? How can we begin to normalize the experience of approaching difficult subjects? The California Conversation Project’s website has some helpful tools that easily walk you through the process. http://theconversationproject.org/starter-kit/intro/

 It is important to recognize that these conversations need to happen long before we are ill. Whether we are young or old we need to begin the conversation, make our wishes known and write them down. In healthcare we need to develop a comfort level in talking with people about their wishes so that we can honor them.

 I invite you to watch this video of the Jennings multigenerational family who gathered together to begin the conversation. This was the catalyst I needed to complete my own advance directive. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5nMcYFnvgo

 

I hope you will gift your family and begin the conversation with your loved ones.

 

~liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 156-157 - Journal's Seventh Anniversary.

   The Journal of Sacred Work was launched June 7, 2006. Since then, more than fourteen hundred essays have been posted. In seven years about 300,000 visitors have viewed the site. Thousands have posted comments.

   When I looked back to the first edition (click on Archives in right column) I noticed that the third comment ever posted was by our weekend writer Liz Wessel. Thank you to Liz and to each of you who have stayed with us as regular participants or who may have visited here just once. 

   The goal of the Journal has always been to support caregivers in their hard work and to provide a forum for sharing. Most of the Journal's essays have been about communication - with each other and with ourselves.

   Among your deepest needs to be heard. When a friend sent me a link to a ninety-second comedy short on male-female communication I decided to share it with you as part of our anniversary celebration. This little film may say more on this subject in a minute and a half than I have said in seven years. 

Click on the link below. (You can also go to www.jasonheadley.com and click on the video titled "It's Not About the Nail.")

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=it%27s+not+about+the+nail&view=detail&mid=318342F4FD59A77FF3D8318342F4FD59A77FF3D8&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR 

-Erie Chapman

Days 153-155 - "Intimacy that does not annihilate difference..."

   The movie camera is on the ground to find a different point of view (POV in filmmaking.) POV, of course, affects your perception.

   In her biography of scientist Barbara McClintock, Evelyn Fox Keller awakens a profound point of view on Love. She writes of McClintock that she "practiced the highest form of love, which is intimacy that does not annihilate difference."

   In your desire to become one with someone or something you love I wonder if you have ever sought to "annihilate difference." When you found that some impermeable wall remained were you confounded by a sense of deepend isolation?

   Keller suggests you think otherwise. True intimacy between you and another honors both deep sharing and an exquisite appreciation of the membrane that separates you from the other.  

   Only when you understand this experience as sacred can you honor what Parker Palmer calls the "otherness of things." To live this intimacy is the most precious experience you can have. When that holiness has entered your life your heart opens to the expression of Radical Loving Care in all of your relationships.

   What I mean by "all of your relationships" is reflected in the basis for McClintock's genius. The intimacy she lived in this example was not with her lover or her child or a friend.

   It was with a kernel of corn.

   To unlock the genetic secrets of the corn, she said that she somehow had to learn to "lean into the kernel." The kernel yielded its secrets to McClintock's love enabling her to become one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century.

   If she could live such intimacy with a kernel of corn, can you live it with those you care for and care with across your life?

-Erie Chapman

 

Days 151-152 The Greatest Gift

Morning holds a special dignity of her own. Awakening in the quiet sanctity of her arms, listen as life begins to stir. In his book, “Eternal Echoes” John O’Donouhue encourages us to greet each day in the ancient tradition of a prayerful intention by taking a moment to welcome her arrival.

Increasingly, I find myself distracted, multi-tasking, half-heartedly present. When we do this, O’Donohue cautions we are holding back and avoiding the truth of a situation, diminishing the person before us, our friendships and the possibilities of our experiences. John reminds us that the most precious gift we can offer is the gift of ourselves.

John gifts us with this prayerful poem by Fernando Pessoa.

To Be Great Be Entire

To be great, be entire:

O what is yours nothing

Exaggerate or exclude

Be whole in each thing. Put all that you are

Into the least you do

Like that on each place the whole moon

Shines for she lives aloft.

                                                                              By-Fernando Pessoa

 

Contributed by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

Above  image by ~liz

Days 150-151 - "Smoke Upon The Wind"

   "Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust." It is the language of funerals. No wonder you may think, as did Dante, that your fate is "no more memorial/ Than foam in water or smoke upon the wind."

   Good news. Your choice to be a caregiver, whether professionally or elsewhere in your world can save your life as well as that of the one who needs you.

   But, what about those sensitive souls that suffer depression over things others toss off? Can you save them? A while back I saw a film about a woman who killed herself because her lover forgot her birthday.  What if she had called you in need of help? Could you have understood her pain well enough to hold back the hand she raised against herself?

   Depression is the illness no one likes to approach. Those who suffer depression are caught in smoke the wind will not blow away.

   Some acquaintance tells you "I'm depressed." How much longer do you want to spend amid their self-hatred? I'm not talking about your patients. I'm talking about your suffering friends or family. Or maybe you.

   There are other choices than pills. Novelist Graham Greene's answer was art. "Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness...the fear which is inherent in the human situation."

   Yet, the creation of art can also lift some of our finest to altitudes where the air is too thin to breath. "As an experience, madness is terrific," Virginia Woolf wrote, "and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about."

   Through her writing she left great gifts. To capture them for us she engaged her madness until the lava consumed her.

   So many around you are enduring life rather than celebrating it. "The human heart is always hungry," my colleague Minton Sparks mentioned recently during her story-telling  work. 

   Can we feed that hunger with enough Love to stay Death's hand awhile? Ultimately, no one could do that for Woolf. Her suicide note to her husband included these lines:

   "Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone."

   Or do we? Can we be companions that illuminate both our life together and the part of our path that is solitary?

   Is the sun entering the clouds or emerging from them? Either way, she dazzles us with her wild beauty.

-Erie Chapman  

Days 147-149 - How Stories Improve Care

   When spoken word artist Minton Sparks (left) launched her first story-telling session as part of our work with one hundred leaders at St. John's Regional Medical Center and later at Northridge Hospital some caregivers were skeptical. What would story-telling have to do with better caregiving, some wondered?

  At the end of the sessions, everyone understood. When leaders share personal stories with each other, barriers among team members come crashing down. In their place, new relationships are formed that strengthen caregiving and reinforce the highest values of loving care.

   "Take ten minutes and write your thoughts on why you became a caregiver. Then share them with the person next to you."

   Next to me sat a burly man whose demeanor projected a cool professionalism. He was a "stranger" to me.

   Ten minutes later, I asked him how he became a caregiver. His response stunned me. "I was a sniper in the army," he told me. "I shot people during skirmishes in Somalia - like you may have seen in the movie 'Black Hawk Down.' One day, I decided I wanted to care for people, not shoot them. I became an army nurse. That is my true calling."

   He is now a nurse at St. John's bringing love to people in need every day. The moment he told his story, he was no longer a "stranger." He was a team member living Love.

   Nearby, the man in charge of resperatory therapy rose to share his story. "A relative called recently to tell me she found a box in the attic with my name on it. Inside were eighteen statues of saints. What did they mean? she asked. My mother sent me a statue every time I was hospitalized with asthma. Eighteen hospitalizations for eighteen attacks. Now I help people who have trouble breathing like I did."

   Many organizations suffer from team dysfuntion. How does the sacred relationship of caregiver-to-caregiver improve? How do caregivers overcome suspicion and occasional resentment towards fellow workers? What causes one team member to step forward to help a colleague?

   Fellow caregivers consistently feel closer to team members who share their stories. Closed energy opens. In fact, if we could truly see into the hearts of others we would always feel more love and understanding.

   Story-telling is one of the beautiful ways St. John's President and CEO Laurie Eberst, Chief Operating Officer Kim Wilson and Senior Director Grace Ibe help advance the work of Radical Loving Care among the thousands of caregivers they lead. It is also one of the many reasons the organization they lead is fast becoming one of the top Healing Hospital Systems in the nation.

-Erie Chapman

Days 145-146 Meet Brandi

 

Today we welcomed a new companion into our family. Meet Brandi, A Labrador Retriever who is almost three. Her family surrendered her to a shelter because they were moving to Japan. As I write to you this twilight eve of a full moon night, I am sharing the easy chair with my new found friend. She wants to be right by my side and is lying across my lap, which makes typing challenging but definitely more enjoyable.

Our quest for a dog began a few months ago and it has been quite a journey. Woody and I could never have imagined how difficult it would be for us to adopt a rescue dog.  We filled out applications, were interviewed, had people come and inspect our home, and visited the local animal shelter weekly. Several times we were elated at the prospect of adopting a sweetie only to discover that another family was the lucky recipient. Crestfallen, we would trudge home saying," ah well, guess it wasn’t meant to be, maybe next time". My friends have leant an ear to our ongoing saga; it has been quite  an adventure!

Now we are all getting acquainted and discovering love in one another. Brandi is intuitive and wants my undivided attention. Even if I am sitting petting her if my mind wanders to the keys of the computer she is on to me. “Don’t give your affection halfheartedly; give me your full presence.” I can see she has much to teach me. Brandi (aka Bambi…sorry, just can’t bring myself to call her that) is camera shy and mellow yellow. She loves to play fetch and she has caught me unawares to slobber me.

When we go through life’s disappointments whether big or small; we are unable to see through to the other side to recognize the blessing that is in All.

“My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dog thinks I am.” ~Anonymous

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~liz Sorensen Wessel

Photos by Woody and Liz