Journal of Sacred Work

Days 142-144 - The Bridge To Being

   "We had the experience but missed the meaning..." T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

   "You're such an egomaniac," a family member said to me many years back. Her accusation sounded true. 

   After all, I had done so many things to make myself stand out in the world. All those things, I thought, must have come from the endless desire of my ego to satisfy itself.

   We swallow what the ego serves up. But, it's the fountain of wisdom from which every caregiver can drink (though not as easily as the cardinal from the birdbath.)

   The work to quench our spiritual thirst can be so exhausting that one day we surrender, perhaps landing for the rest of our lives on the island of the wrong answer.

   Yet, this mystery is resolved with another kind of surrender. 

   First, do you really want to escape your ego's grasp? Second, how do you do that?

   The reason I've always wanted to move to another place is that my ego grows in the garden of fear.

   One way I've found over the fence and into Love's garden is described by a genius poet named Stephen Dunn in his poem: "Meaninglessness."

   "He'd learned, but forgotten,/ the pointlessness of seeking;/ he was, after all, alive,/ and desire often sent him aching/ toward some same mistake."

   Minton Sparks sometimes tells her audiences that our lives are made up of "the bundle of stories we tell ourselves." 

   We want to explore these stories, not escape them. They are the fabric of our lives.

   Yet, that fabric is also woven with threads that scar our spiritual skin. 

   This need not be so if we can find a way to see our lives from a new story spoken from the loving heart of our Being. 

   For example, as a little boy, I was often told that I was bad and should be "ashamed" of myself. To the degree that shame has tainted my "bundle of stories" I need to hear those stories from a different point of view.

   Can I do this? I'm not sure. But, it seems worth trying because I don't want the word "shame" hanging around my neck any longer.

   I'll take responsibility. But, shame is poison mixed in the laboratory of fear.

   Our Being has a purity about it. The joy that rises from it grows from the verdant garden of Love. 

   Walk over the bridge from Fear to Being. From there, your old stories may appear, now, as a new-made quilt that comforts rather than torments. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: Garden & Cardinal - copyright erie chapman 2012

NOTE: I want to bring to your consciousness the most powerful video I have yet seen. It's from TED.com and is worth every second of its 16 minutes. Here is the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Days 115-119 - Creating the Sacred

    Wherever Love arrives, that place becomes sacred. 

     There is no such thing as sacred space (or a healing hospital) without Love.

    Whenever Love enters a relationship it brings with it the blessing of the sacred. 

    Love thrives when it encounters a receiving soul (symbolized at left as the woman honors the entry of the clouded sun.)

   The first appreciation of Beauty was the signal event in our higher evolution and laid the groundwork for our worship of God's Love. 

   This recognition probably came when the first people enjoyed flowers not for any "use" but as an expression of Beauty.

   The same epiphany occured when the classic female form was perceived not only as sexual but as Beauty speaking the language of the spirit (photograph below.)

   Sex is appetite. Beauty is spiritual. When joined they express true marriage in this world.  

   Great art only appears when an artist allows Love to move through him or her. An image of a nude is sacred or profane based on whether Love is present in both the creation and in the heart of the viewer. 

   There is no justice without Love. Love's presence makes the delivery of justice sacred. 

   Places classified as sacred: churches, temples, mosques, hospitals, courtrooms, museums lose their sacredness when Love's entry is blocked. For Jesus the money-changers in the temple were interferring with God's presence. 

   God does not live in a "holy" structure. God lives in our hearts.

   An excessive focus on "money-changing" crowds out the sacred. Such an obsessive "transaction focus" converts hospitals to little more than brothels where "love" is faked in exchange for money.

   Both settings are obscene because in both such places humanity is degraded. 

   No place becomes sacred merely by its physical location. Any place where Love meets need becomes clothed with holiness.

   When a housekeeper enters a room to comfort a man in pain, that space immediately glows with the holy. When a nurse ignores policy to stroke the back of a dying three-day-old being that bassinet becomes sacred.

   What about flowers, sky, forest, and sea? Nature wears Love's raiment. We encounter this sacredness the moment we extend our hand to meet God's.

   If we want our work to matter, if we want to bring quality into our encounters, compassion must be present.

   Shallow thinking causes us to believe that we can sustain quality care without Love - that only we can bring skill. God is excluded from this way of thinking.

   It is Love that transforms everyday caregiving into healing encounters. Quality care programs are doomed to failure when they are grounded in fear and rely on rote performance. 

   Caregivers are not called to fix widgets but to meet human need. 

   Their charge is to allow God to create sacred space through them in every encounter, in every place, all the time.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

*Photographs:

1. Madrid, 2012

2. "Figure Study - Afternoon Light" - copyright dane dakota 2009

Days 111-112 - How Childhood Stories Become Life

   Recently, our family of eight was reassembled on vacation. At bedtime, I walked down the darkened back hallway and overheard my adult children putting their small children to sleep.

   Behind one door,my grandson laughed as my son told him stories derived from tales I told him gleaned from ones my father told me. I recalled an image of him speaking at a camp chapel gathering twenty-five years ago (left) reciting parables. Today, as a trial lawyer, he knows the power of storytelling. 

   Behind the next door, I heard my daughter quiet-voicing her two to sleep with lullabys my wife and I used to sing to her.  

   Stories can bespeak Grace.  

   What my grandchildren heard was Love. The stories they listened to weren't coming from a television set or a video game but from the voices of their parents.

   We pass down caring with our stories. Through them, we teach without instructing. 

   Stories matter because, like a good joke, the listener gets to appreciate what the story means to them personally.

   There's usually not much Love in instructions. Rules often call for obedience, not caring. Regulations are put in place not because we trust each other but because we don't. 

  Nurses are told that visiting hours are over at 8:30 p.m. and may enforce that rule, not necessarily because they care about patients and families but because it's their duty to enforce policies. 

   There's nothing inherently wrong with rules and instructions. We all need them.

   What matters is the intention behind our decisions to carry out a set of rules.

   If I live Love my choice to follow guidelines helps caring. If I enforce laws unthinkingly, I am no more than a Nazi soldier obeying by rote, not by Love. 

   Better than either is what happens when I hear a story that illuminates Love.

   The stories my grandchildren hear from their parents are a way they learn how to live. 

   One day, beyond my knowing, they will pass this caring onto their children. Thus, they will bring light into the world.

   Right now, we can do the same. If I choose to communicate through orders, I may signal I don't trust the listener.

   When I decide to share a guideline through a parable, I act in the fashion of Jesus and the prophets of other faiths. I show that I can count on the listener to appreciate what happens when the chance arrives to figure out how the stories apply in everyday life. 

   If you want mere obedience, shout out rules. If you want to live Love, live Love's example - and tell stories that prove it.

-Erie Chapman

Days 108-110 - How Do Stories Change Us?

   Our stories define our lives. Particular stories can change the direction of our journey - the ones told by family and friends, the ones described in books, movies and on television and  the stories we tell each other.

   Most crucial of all, of course, are the stories we tell ourselves.

   Here are three books that have changed my life over the last several years: David Whyte's masterpiece, The Heart Aroused, John O'Donohue's Beauty and Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth.

   Along with this is the writing and speaking of storyteller Minton Sparks and my own book upon which this work is based, Radical Loving Care. 

   "...all our demons rise to meet us at the prospect of a fall," David Whyte writes. [There is] "the deep physical shame that we can never measure up.

   This is the plight of all sincere caregivers - the worry that we "can never measure up." We seek, we pursue and we often succeed. But we seem unable to accept that we have, in fact, done the best that we could.

   In other words, the demon-fire of shame burns us into a tragic corner. 

   This demon crumbles if we absorb what Eckhard Tolle writes: "The ego takes everything personally."  Obvious as it is, these five words struck me like a lightning bolt. 

   Tolle's path away from ego is, first,  to notice that the pain-body of our ego is shouting the wrong messages at us.

   We are not our ego. We are spiritual beings who can live well on this earth when our intention and actions arise out of Spirit, not out of ego. 

   We, as caregivers, are not what we do. We are grounded in Being, not in ego. 

   Only when we act in this world out of the Love rather than ego can we  practice the art of healing. 

   To escape the insatiable appetite of the ego, we move towards our spiritual Being and allow our lives, as healers, to be directed from The Source within us that is God.

   God is Love. 

   Where are Love's images? "The words sea and ocean are too small to image such wild divinity," John O'Donohue writes. 

   This is the world of loving caregivers. There are no words to describe the "wild divinity" that illuminates healing. 

   This is language that can send us beyond language - the knowing that it is powerful to pursue the art of description and to know, ultimately, that we may touch the hem but not the center.

   God will not accede to description. For this, we can only accept a "knowing" that is as personal, deep and sacred as the "flow of the ocean."

   Minton Sparks writes,  "Riding together but all alone/ Time sings/ 'Nothing but dust in the wind, child./ Why did you even get in?"

   We are "in" for now, living our story of the world moment by moment in eternity.

   Sparks responds to her own question:  

   "I'll answer:/ Cause I mighta missed,/ Cause I mighta missed/ Cause I mighta missed this ride."

   How rich "this ride" becomes when our story moves beyond the clatter of ego to become the song of our Being. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman 

Days 244-246 - Just You

 As of September 4, 2011 at 2:33 P.M. (C.S.T.) the world held 6,959,939,818 people.  -World Population Clock

   Soon, there will be seven billion.

   And just you.

   You are the performer. You are the audience.

   You are the caregiver. You are the patient.

   In the beginning God welcomed you into the house of your body. You have made your house a home.

   You are the daughter of the sun. You are the son of the earth. You are God's only child.

   Unnumbered scars map your heart. Veins of gold illuminate your spirit and there is no doubt that you are the only one who can touch those veins, read the life of the leaf, know love's throbbing dance. 

   The chapters of your being are written by the sounds that have entered you and the scents that have breezed your memory. Your skin recalls sacred touch and angry slap. Warm zephyrs and the breath of winter know just you. 

   Your eyes have seen the world's prism, felt's pain's spasms, watched beauty curve, been cut by the serrated saw of the ugly. You have noticed the texture of tree bark, heard your feet touch the forest path, felt your body pierce the lake.

   Your tongue remembers bread. Rain has healed your throat.

   You are the only person who knows how you feel, thinks what you think.

   Yours are the words that matter. There is nothing more important then your presence.

   In your rooms live the only people you have ever known. Your hands alone know the feel of this moment's air.

    Just you know the glories of your day. Only you know the agonies of your night. 

    You are the single one who knows your hardest truth. You are the only one who can tell your story.

    [On September 4, 2011 at 2:36 p.m. the world held 6,959,941,211 people.]

    During the minutes you read this essay, Love welcomed another thousand into this world and received hundreds who left it.

   Soon, there will be seven billion.

   And just you.

  -Reverend Erie Chapman  

 

Days 293-295 - The Holy Kiss

"There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of Spirit on the body."  Rumi

    It may come as a surprise for many to discover that members of the early Christian church routinely kissed each other as part of their celebration of God's Love in community. This may also have been true of early practices in Judaism.

   The kisses, of course, were intended as expressions of God's Love among the brothers and sisters of the church - among the children of God - not as something erotic. "Greet one another with a holy kiss," the Apostle Paul offers in Romans 16:16. This instruction is repeated in Corinthians, Thessalonians, and in the first letter of Peter.

   American churches have, in general, long since abandoned this display of kissing - too many worries about erotic overtones no doubt. This seems a shame for, as Rumi wrote centuries ago, "There is some kiss we want with our whole lives..." The holy kiss affirms our humanity, not our sexuality.

   Hugs and kisses are exchanged among friends, almost always female, in American society. American men, on the other hand, are tacitly forbidden such expressions.

   Consider, on the other hand, the cultures of Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and many other parts of the world where hugs and kisses on the cheek are common ways of greeting. Paul wanted to encourage "holy kisses" because he understood that congregations needed to create a sense of unity.

   Some of he most beautiful kisses I have seen occur when a nurse caregiver leans to kiss a dying patient. As babies, we experience an immediate need to be held and kissed. As we age, or become sick and infirm, the young are less and less likely to want any physical contact. How tragic.

   I have see some caregivers offer kisses to old men and women in ways that are, oddly, condescending instead of holy. "I'm just going to give that sweet little old man a peck on the cheek" I heard a nurse say once. It was as if  the "little old man" were once again a four-year-old.

   The old and the sick are often physically shunned. This happens just at the moment they are most in need of being touched, of being loved, of an experience something like "a holy kiss." By avoiding contact with the old and sick, we signal that they have somehow fallen to the edges of humanity and are no longer "touchable" except for the purpose of a medical procedure.

   The question before every caregiver every day is: How may I bring healing to the sick patient in my care. Great caregivers listen for what the patient needs. A small number of patients want no contact at all and something like a kiss may seem intrusive.

   But for most patients, kind-hearted contact can be remarkably healing. It is not an actual "kiss" that matters. It is the holiness of touching with Love, of reaching out to another being who has fallen so deeply ill that they may feel they are no longer a part of the human race, no longer a child of God, no longer worth human contact. 

   "There is some kiss we want with our whole lives...." It is the kiss of the holy. It is the touch that helps heal our isolation and relieves us, for a moment, of the sense we have that we are alone in this world.  It is a gift that can heal beyond words.  

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Note: The painting above is by Alonzo Rodriguez

Days 209-211 - "The Least of These"

"My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending./ Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude./ Who are you, who are you?" - Pablo Neruda

   Billy is scheduled to be executed in six months. After many years on Tennessee's death row, it appears he is in his final weeks on this earth. Soon, the state will kill him. The only caregiver who will take Billy's final walk with him will be a minister.

   Who is Billy? Who are you? Do we really think of Billy as being as human as are we?

   Nearly 100% of death row inmates are poor. Are we really that much different from those convicted of felonies? Or were we just lucky to be born into a good family.   

   As I go about my life switching from mask to mask depending on the situation, I wonder about who we are. Who, really, is the man I have worked with for ten years making documentary films about hospitals? Who is the woman who waits on the table at the restaurant where my wife and I order dinner?

   Who is the nurse who shouts out my name as I sit in the waiting room? Who is the doctor who has treated me for years. In general, we only get a quick glimpse into the lives of others.

   As professionals, caregivers are so good at "masks" that it is difficult to know their true selves. I often think that professionals and the middle class in general are the ones who wear the most masks.

   Poor people have no need to fake it. Rich people don't either. It's the large middle class that determines the rules we live by. Perhaps, it is this group that forces us to pretend so much - so that we can fit in.

   Just before I saw Billy on death row today, I heard about a rule from one of the veteran guards. "These men don't touch grass," he told me. "When they're outside, they're caged in wire and concrete. When they're inside, they're locked in steel and concrete."

   Cut off from nature and cut off from society, it's hard to imagine how Billy, or the rest of his eighty-four fellow men and one woman (the population of Tennessee's death row) are able to sustain their humanity.

   In addition to my other prison ministry, I have volunteered to become a caregiver to one of these death row inmates and will start seeing him regularly in a couple weeks. My first thought was that I'd love to bring him a plant to keep in his cell - some sign of nature. But, that is probably against the rules.

   Prisoners, especially death row inmates, have been told who they are. Everyone has advised them they are worse than bad. They are evil. They are trash.

   Caregiving for this group is problematic. The program I volunteer with is designed to offer friendship to inmates who have no other visitors.

   No visitors, no grass, no friends - except volunteers. Down the hall, the death chamber awaits.

   Who are we? Are we caregivers who can think how to offer love to these children of God or will we join the rest of society and simply condemn them as subhuman?

   In the Gospel of Matthew (25:39-40) Jesus says, "39...when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? 40. And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are the members of my family, you did it to me.'" 

   Our humanity is determined by how we treat "the least of these" in the world. How we think about others - whether sick, injured, or condemned to die, determines whether we really believe that we are all children of God - and whether we are living Love, not fear.

   -Rev. Erie Chapman

Days 41-42 - God & The Human Heart - A Tale of Two Clinics

"Yes, there is a feeling, arising even from another's distress, that wrings the human heart." - Euripides (from the play Electra, 420 B.C.E.)

   Inside Euripides sentence (above) lies the core of loving care. God is Love. Human love is God-given.

   Sometimes, we open our hearts to God's Love. We are most alone and fall away from God when we turn our backs on the distress of others.

   As Paul Farmer wrote, "The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world."

   Here is a strange tale of two clinics that illustrates this flaw in the human condition.

   One of the faith-based charities in Nashville has two clinics in different parts of the city. While visiting one clinic, a colleague overheard a staff member say, "These poor people are driving me nuts. They are just so stupid." Her partner agreed. In that clinic, the staff arrives late and leaves early. According to interviews and observation, no one goes ever offers special help. And why would they since they think of their clientele as "stupid?"

   Clients opening the door to this first clinic are not likely to receive loving care.

   In the second office, the staff of the same charity is a model of loving care. Caregivers treat their economically poor clients with love and respect. It is common for caregivers to offer extra help and to stay late to do so. Morale is terrific.

   Clients crossing the threshold of the second clinic are very likely to be treated with loving care.

   The mission is the same for both offices. The difference in care is rooted in how the staff of each office views the people they are called to serve. One staff thinks their clients are "stupid" and "matter less" The second group of caregivers sees their clients as children of God.   

   The same dichotomy is common in numerous hospitals. It is startling to watch the range in caring attitudes from one floor to another, from one department to another, from one shift to another. Some caregivers allow God's light to shine through them. Others are so preoccupied with personal concerns that patients are seen as a bother.

   The easiest way to guide organizations toward loving care is to engage loving leaders.The responsibility for this rests squarely on the shoulders of those who govern faith-based organizations.

   For example, hospitals and hospices that display a cross are telling the public that their work is grounded in the example and teachings of Jesus. Don't patients have a right to expect Christian care from a Christian organization?

   God's Love is perfect. We are not. But, we come closer to God when we respect the sick and let go of the pervasive idea that the lives of the poor somehow "matter less." 

   Since we are all children of God, don't we want our brothers and sisters to be treated with love no matter where they go for care?

-Erie Chapman

And something else for your reflection: 

Eli Eli

Miriam Kessler

 

My God, My  God, he cried,

if he is quoted right.

Somehow that moan is comforting

to us, alone at night,

who tremble, daring dawn,

that He, so wise and strong,

should weep and ask for aid.

     Somehow, my lovely distant God,

     it makes me less afraid.

Days 25-26- The Inner Life of Caregivers

"Outwardly, my life has passed calmly and uneventfully and can be covered by a few dates." Dr. Sigmund Freud

   Dr. Freud,(left) arguably one of the greatest minds of the last two centuries, says that his outer life passed "uneventfully." From his extensive writings, we know that Freud's inward journey must have been as remarkable and eventful as that of any great explorer who discovered new lands.

   Freud was the Columbus of the ego (he even created the word') He was the man who helped us learn to sail alongside our own dreams so that we might better understand what our subconscious might be trying to tell us. He literally tried to tell us why we do what we do.

   When Freud tells us his outer life passed calmly, he was signaling the enormous importance of our journey inward.

   First line caregivers do so many things each day that one wonders how they have time to reflect. Yet, you know how rich your own inner travels are. You are the one who understands the personal thought processes that inform your caregiving. You are the one who appreciates that it is your spiritual life that enables you to live Love in the outer world - or not. 

   In job interviews, questions typically circle on what we have done. It's hard to describe our inner thoughts on a resume.

   At funerals, our lives are so often described with a list of our accomplishments in the outer world. But, it is our inner journey that may matter most.

   God's Love lives within each of us. As we reflect on our inner journey, we may come to discover that there are three commandments of Love: The first is that we love God; the second is that we love other; the final commandment is that we love ourselves.

   As you engage your own inner journey may you know that without loving and honoring yourself, you will be unable to love God or your patients and colleagues.

   If you are wondering if it's okay to love yourself, consider the reverse. We are all created by God. If we don't love ourselves, then we are betraying the Love of our creator.

   When we truly love ourselves, we are not engaging in the indulgence of our egos. Instead, we are accepting, with humility, the gift of the life we have been given by God.

   As we our inner journey opens us to God, Love shines through us. It is God's Love that enables us to be a healing presence for patients.

-Erie Chapman

Day 341 - Love's Legacy

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

  I'm struck with the efforts of so many in our world who seek to leave a legacy - something that will mark a life's meaning and purpose. Great pain and sacrifice has been offered over and over to place that perfect and final brushstroke on the canvas or the perfectly placed pause between the notes. In this past month I have said goodbye to three giants whose names you have not heard and whose work was done quietly and without acclaim. The legacies left by these remarkable people are legacies of Love.

It occurs to me that as caregivers we have that same opportunity for a legacy - not of public renown or acclaim but of quiet Love. My Dad felt the touch of Love as he lay dying some years ago in a hospital bed. Limited by pain and weakness, his only recourse was to receive the ministrations of a caring nursing tech who quietly gave him a bed bath each morning. Larger-than-life, fiercely independent, capable and strong, Daddy could do nothing but surrender into Millie's hands and care. Each day she came and went, saying very little, offering so very much. And each day, as Daddy settled back into his pillow after her leaving, I would hear a deep, peaceful sigh and watch a sweet but barely discernable smile find its way onto his face.

There was a day when a different nursing tech arrived to do what was technically and competently the same task. As she finished her work and left, my Dad rolled over, opened his eyes and said very quietly to me, "I miss Millie." You see, Millie did her work with great Love. As the days rolled by it was easy to appreciate Millie from our vantage point. I doubt she was ever recognized publicly or widely. When I spoke of her to the nursing manager, the response I received was "Yes, she has been with us a long time. She is very dependable and proficient." I suppose that is what the nurse manager thought I'd want to hear. What she missed, and what I remember about those days is that Daddy felt Love through Millie's hands.

Love does that - it cares more for others than for self, doesn't want what it doesn't have, doesn't strut, or have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn't always "me first," or fly off the handle, doesn't keep score, always looks for the best, keeps going to the end (1 Corinthians 13, The Message). The giants in my life that are no longer physically present were like Millie - quiet, sure, and deeply loving people. They understood what matters. And they, like Millie, left legacies of Love.