Journal of Sacred Work

Reader Comments

After only a few weeks online, we at the Journal of Sacred Work have been pleased by the quality of comments we have received. In addition, our statistics show that hundreds are visiting this site each say. Soon, we hope it will be thousands as each of YOU spreads the word to friends to click on www.journalofsacredwork.typepad.com

Remember, that to post a comment, you need to follow all four of the simple steps: 1) fill in your name & email (the URL box can stay blank), 2) enter your comment, 3) click on Post, AND 4) (IMPORTANT) re-type the squiggly letters that will appear before you on the next page before hitting Post again.

At the end of this week, we wanted to highlight some of the terrific reader comments and insights we've received:

HCN: Alive Hospice - From Very Good to Great

What does it take to transform a charity that's already performing well into an organization that delivers Radical Loving Care consistently?

Over the past two years, in partnership with the Healing Trust, Alive Hospice has recognized this challenge and accepted it. What have been some of the keys to their success?...

Meditation: On Our Legacy

I ain't dead yet.   -Woody Guthrie

We express ourselves in our work, whether we want to our not. Our legacy of spirit is not something aimed at a history book but is something that arrows through each of us each day & enters the hearts of others.

History doesn't feel our love. People do.

We fill/spill our library of tears, shake our rattles full of laughter, tip our cups of anger, needle out our frustration, offer our gifts of compassion & it's all there in our work.

The surprise is, it turns out that everything matters...

Health Care:Lauer Power in Modern Healthcare

What a lovely thing to open Modern Healthcare (June 26 edition) to see the article (below) by Editorial Director Chuck Lauer highlighting the Healing Trust's work on loving care and our new book, Sacred Work - Planting Cultures of Radical Loving Care in America.

Chuck Lauer is one of the great positive influences in American healthcare. His weekly columns emphasize the best in each of us and call us to be even better. Chuck understands that the way to promote change is to emphasize the positive and to appeal to our better angels. That's why I call his writing and speaking, "Lauer Power." Read on...

Custom Learning

For those interested in learning more about how to spread energy and loving care in hospital cultures, here's a link to a fine organization that's putting on a conference this fall in San Diego: www.healthcareserviceexcellence.com

On Trust – And A Way To Build It At Work

Our distrust is very expensive.

                          -Ralph Waldo Emerson

A recent story from the Gannett News Service headlines: “25 percent of people have no confidants, study says.”

Putting aside the odd nature of such a study (how does a respondent “confide” personal information to a stranger on the phone?) it’s helpful to consider the significant implications of this report.

On Faking Compassion

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.

                                                                                                          -Albert Einstein

The internist sitting next to me in the doctor's dinning room at Nashville's Baptist Hospital appeared to be in her mid-thirties. "How do you give loving care?" I asked.

"I'm an actress," she replied. "I start rounds before 7. Mostly, I pretend to care. If I gave compassion to all my patients, I'd be exhausted by noon..." 

Caring for Angry Caregivers

Caring for Caregivers

Surgeons, as well as other caregivers, work day and night near the scalpel-edge of life and death. When a patient dies, feelings of anger and guilt may descend on these caregivers. How can we help healers heal when their hearts have been broken? The temptation for many is to try and "fix" the grief and anger. Yet healing requires that we first be present to the caregiver's pain.

.

A Surgeon’s Anger*

The mouth of the garage swallows me... 

Sunday Photo Meditation

To look at something is such a wonderful thing of which we still know so little. When we look at something, we are turned completely toward the outside by this activity. But just when we are most turned toward the outside...things seem to take place within us that have longed for an unobserved moment... - Rainer Maria Rilke                                                                                     Reflection: Click on this photo to enlarge. Spend a full minute or more contemplating it - it's silk and lace and sensual elegance. If this image is restful for you, carry it in your heart across this week. Perhaps it will soften the hard edges of your days.

Be well,

erie

Rest in the Ordinary

As you may know, Geisha's spend years learning how to prepare and pour a cup of tea with complete grace. The tea ceremony becomes a meditation.

We who have been raised in the west may never have imagined how ordinary work can become a meditation. In 1978, I took this photograph of a woman sweeping steps near a sidewalk in Montreal. This photograph hangs in our home. Whether this woman imagines her sweeping as a meditation or not, her image has become a meditation for me - a reminder of how the heart may rest while the hands work.

Today

Spread out on grains of sand

in

Northern Kenya....

  

Interfaith Dental Clinic

We are pleased that Dr.Rhonda Switzer-Nadasdi & Interfaith Dental Clinic have accepted the Trust's invitation to join the Healing Charities Network. Interfaith Dental is one of the finest and most caring charities in Middle Tennessee and we are grateful that Dr. Switzer will be lending her wisdom and experience to the group.

Mindfulness, Mindlessness & Grace

It has been my experience over and over again that there is hardly anything more difficult than to love someone.
              -Rilke
  One of the greatest obstacles to being present is the human tendency to fall into the comfort zone of mindless repetition. Health care and charity work are flooded with tasks that, once done a few times, may rapidly become monotonous. How does the dishwasher on the other side of the cafeteria wall remain attentive to his or her work when they've done the same job eight hours a day for four years? How can the receptionist bring energy and light to each one of her hundreds of encounters each week? How does the nurse who has delivered a thousand babies bring her sense of joy and energy to delivery number one thousand and one?...

The Poetry of Affection

Too many people fear poetry and, in the process, rob themselves of the joy that comes from letting a special wave of joy flow through their heart. The poem in this meditation is not presented for its high excellence, but for its way of expressing affection. In this case, from husband to wife. When is the last time you assembled words of affection and shaped them into an arrow aimed toward someone you love? Tonight, write love to someone, whether you find the courage to send it to them or not. It doesn't have to be perfect - simply motivated by affection. Imagine the impact your love can have on another. As David Whyte has said about poetry...

The Waiting Room

Today, millions of people will go to hospitals, clinics, & doctor's offices for care. Instead of being seen right away, they will be assigned to a particular part of the world called The Waiting Room...

Healing Hospital Network

Some hospitals are content with the status quo - even if that represents mediocrity. Others, like those who have joined the Healing Hospital Network (HHN) demonstrate a desire to strive to live out their mission of loving care in the best way possible. Healing Hospitals - actual or potential, represent, at best, a tenacious ten percent of the thousands of American hospitals. They strive to heal as well as to cure. Our new network includes seven of the finest...

Healing Charity Network Announced

The Healing Trust is pleased to announce the Healing Charities Network (HCN), established to highlight some of the best practices among top charities in Middle Tennessee

New Healing Network

Check this category for updates on best practices in some of America's finest Healing Hospitals (tm)

Be

What does it mean to be?

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Balcony Woman

Among the most extraordinary caregivers are mental health professionals who deal with those among us afflicted with schizophrenia. In some ways, it is hard for the rest of us to appreciate the searing pain of hearing disembodied voices - especially when those voices appear as demons that threaten. Caregiver meditations call us to share the pain of others by seeking to understand, and by being in touch with our own voices...