Journal of Sacred Work & Radical Loving Care

The Comfort of Silent Presence

To care means first of all to be present to each other. - Henri Nouwen

   A student of Dr. Nouwen's at Harvard Divinity School was walking with him across the campus after class. The student shared with Dr. Nouwen the recent death of his wife who passed away at age thirty-two. Suddenly, the student found himself weeping uncontrollably.

   What would the great Dr. Nouwen say? I wondered, as I listened to this story told to me by a psychologist at the Pastoral Counseling Centers of Tennessee. What words of wisdom would this great sage & author of over thirty books offer to this grieving man in the middle of the Harvard campus?... 

The Answer to Patient Gowns?

    No, the photo at left is not the answer (although its length has some appeal.) I know this isn't the answer because I spent ten years trying to solve the problem of patient gowns with new designs. As President & CEO of Riverside Methodist Hospital and the OhioHealth System in Columbus, I even hired a part time staff person to create a better solution.
   We came up with some incremental improvements. But a nagging problem remained. No matter what design we came up with, there was still the issue of how patients felt wearing one of these strange garments which, in turn, was based on how they were treated!
   No one wants to be a patient. No one says on Saturday night, "Hey, I know what would be fun. Let's check into the hospital."

   As I have been saying for thirty years, the experience of hospitalization is far more humiliating than it needs to be. In fact, hospitalization still bears too much resemblance to another form of institutionalization - imprisonment. But there is an answer to the patient gown problem...

The Call of Our True Nature

...Ask me whether
what I have done is my life...
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
   -William Stafford, Ask Me

   At five, I wanted to be a cowboy. At fifteen, I wanted to be President and give speeches like Winston Churchill. At twenty-five, I was a trial lawyer and wanted to be like Martin Luther King. At thirty-five, I was president of a hospital and wanted to be an artist. At forty-five, I was president of an Ohio hospital system and wanted to be a national television star. At fifty-five, I was president of a Tennessee hospital system and wanted to be a minister.
   Ask me whether what I have done is my life. It's a challenging question. How would you answer it?...

The Everest of the Heart

A British mountaineer, desperate for oxygen had collapsed on a well-traveled route to the [Everest] summit. Dozens of people walked right past him, unwilling to risk their own ascents. Within hours, David Sharp, 34, was dead. - AP 5/27/06

   Ever since Mount Everest was identified as the world's tallest peak in 1852 (and named Everest in 1856) people have sought to climb its peak. Mount Everest became a sort of Holy Grail for some as they sought to test the limits of their skill and strength by climbing her. A century of efforts passed before Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzeng Norgay, finally ascended the peak on May 29, 1953. They were hailed worldwide as heroes. Since then, hundreds more have tried and succeeded and many more have failed.   

Sunday Essay: The Golden Thread

Vocatus at que non vocatus deus ad erit. (Called or not called, God is present.) - - from a Delphic oracle, quoted by Erasmus and etched on a plaque that psychologist Carl Jung kept above his office door thorughout his career.

   Amid shades of purple, a silhouette appears. Someone is floating. To float through the air. It's a dream all of us have at one time or another - to be freed of the world's weight, to drift through clouds on currents of wind, to slip the ropes of earth for a few moments in a balloon.   

   As a child, I thought God lived in the clouds. After all, when our minister mentioned God, he pointed up, not down. He sure didn't point to the parking lot, which I came to understand as one of the places where people quickly forgot whatever the minister said as they walked to their cars fussing about their troubles and desires.

   It took me a long time to discover that called or not called, God is present. Not only in the shades of purple clouds, but near us in the middle of our darkest nights. Often, I still forget...   

Two Cent Rules & The Golden Rule- Moving From Bureaucracy to Community

I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if behind them they didn't have a little plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - and a little lookin' out for the other fella too. - Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) Directed by Frank Capra; Story -Lewis R. Foster; Screenplay -Sidney Buchman

   Across America, thousands of people seeking help from one organization or another will hear these dreaded words: "I can't help you. It's the rules." How often has this phrase been used in America's bureaucracies as an excuse by a clerk or caregiver to avoid personal responsibility for the problem before her or him. "Sorry, it's just our policy," a nurse will say to a patient or an executive will say to a complaining family member.
  Do we need rules? Of course. Do rules need to be informed by humanity? That is what differentiates a bureaucrat from a caregiver....   

How Art Teaches Loving Care

What else can one do, when we think of all the things we do not know the reason for, than go look at a field of wheat?
-Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his sister one month before his death, 1890

   During the summer of 1890, Van Gogh, in love with beauty, spent lots of time studying a field of wheat near Auvre-sur-Oise, France. He painted for us what he saw in an immortal image titled Wheatfields with Reaper (now owned by the Toledo Museum of Art.) It was one of his last works. Soon after he finished it, he walked out into the countryside nearby the field he painted with such power & passion and shot himself. He was thirty-seven. What can he teach us about loving care?... 

Rituals for the Spirit: #3 - Five Minute Magic

Meditation is being mainlined by the mainstream, from corporate offices to factory floors.
- Eve Savory, Reporter, CBC News (Canada)

The middle-aged man you see meditating in his office in the photo is not a Buddhist monk or a Catholic priest. He is Michael Herman, a senior partner with the law firm of Goodman and Goodman.
   Saint Joseph's hospital in Toronto offers meditations courses for staff. Nearly four hundred caregivers take advantage of the training every year. What's going on? How can busy lawyers and caregivers jump off the roller-coaster of work demands long enough to do what some consider to be "nothing?" 

Rituals for the Spirit: #2 - Three Minutes a Day

    For leaders and many caregivers, organizational life turns heavily on a strange rhythm of gatherings called meetings.  No one admits they like meetings and everyone says they want less of them. Having attended thousands, I can often see why many people dread them. Meetings can raise energy, but most meetings drain it away. No one wants more meetings. Everyone would like more meaningful meetings - gatherings in which the mission of loving care is truly advanced.
   Most faith-based, and some other organizations, begin meetings with a brief devotional. It usually takes a few minutes after which the leader will often say something like: "Now let's get down to business." The brief devotional is tossed aside by most as a necessary evil rather than a true source of inspiration to inform the texture of the rest of the meeting. This can change if leaders and team members find the courage to make a few changes. The typical meditation in the Journal takes less than three minutes to read...

Rituals for the Spirit: #1 - The Three Second Pause

   A nurse pauses three seconds before entering one of her patient's rooms, repeats to herself, "This is a person made vulnerable by illness." She then enters the room with grace and an open heart, ready to respond to the needs of a suffering human being.
   This nurse's pause at the door reflects a lovely if uncommon ritual, taught in some nursing schools and practiced infrequently. Before entering a patient's room, remember the special nature of caregiving. Recall the essential humanity of the person in need.
   What if each of us engaged in similar kind of ritual before every encounter with another (and mid-encounter?) Why is such a reminder necessary?...

Who Taught You Love?

As you continue to send out love, the energy returns to you in a regenerating spiral... As love accumulates, it keeps your system in balance and harmony.  - Sara Paddison

From whom did you learn love? Your mother, your grandmother, your father, a friend, a complete stranger, your own child, a group?

I first learned love from the woman in this photograph. She turns ninety-four today, August 21, 2006. Along with my three siblings, I am unusually to have my mother still here on this earth at such an advanced age. Her early mother's gifts enabled me to receive love from other, later, givers. And hopefully to learn to give love myself.
   We can all say about our mothers that without them we wouldn't exist. But that is, in part, a comment on biology that covers fathers as well. Most people experience love in the very first moments of their lives from the person who carried them within their own bodies for nine months or so. Our mother's love comes to us as she holds us against her in our first moments. But our mothers are not always the turning point people in our lives...

Caregiver's Communion

19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me." 20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.  Luke 22:19-20

   The challenge to the Christian caregiver is to honor a covenant with God. When Jesus sacrificed for us, he did so to signal that our responsibility was to model our lives after his teachings & example - to bring aid and comfort to the suffering, to do so out of a caring heart. Each time we reach out to others with love, we celebrate a sort of caregiver's communion, a merging of love with need. Whenever we feel hungry, thirsty or exhausted, it may well be it's time for us to recall a meaning of communion...

Heavenly Help

Our commitment to being part of humanity's rebirth is our commitment to fundamental change...We must invite the light into us and restore the bridges, open the gates by which it might enter our lives. Spiritual practice is the opening of the gates, now all but locked against God's love.- Marianne Williamson, Illuminata

   In the above lines, Marianne Williamson describes why it is that so many organizations fail in their desire to deliver the loving care called for in their mission statements. No strategic plan can open an organization to Love. No command from the executive office can awaken the spiritual power needed to create fundamental organizational commitment. What is required is an organization-wide recognition and a person by person awakening. How can this occur?...

The Speed of the Spirit

The heavenly spirit travels faster than the human eye can see, and slower than the human eye can see.
- anonymous quote passed on to me by Claire Bateman

   My friend, renowned poet Claire Bateman, sent me the above quote after I complained to her that nobody every remembers anything from sermons or speeches. "Maybe," she said, "but here's a line I've always remembered from a sermon I heard."

   She shared the above quote and I can see why it stuck with her. The line calls us to a special kind of consciousness. We can't perceive the heavenly spirit with our human eyes, yet we can feel the presence of the heavenly spirit if we are open.  What are ways we can become more fully present as the spirit travels through at speeds to fast and too slow to see?...

Bread AND Roses - Taking Care of the People who Take Care of People

Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
- from the 1911 poem by James Oppenheim

On January 1, 1912, textile workers at a Lawrence, Massachusetts factory told a bold and couageous action. Fed up with tyranical behavior and oppressive treatment by management, the workers, including women from twenty-five different countries, walked out into the winter cold and began a nine-week strike.

   So often, short-sighted employers think that all staff ever cares about is money. But these workers proved them wrong. Yes, we want better wages, they said, but we want roses as well. We want to be treated with dignity and respect... 

The Tao of Loving Care - The Mayo Way and Your Way

[To] practice medicine as an integrated team of compassionate, multi-disciplinary physicians, scientists and allied health professionals...  - First Core Principle of the Mayo Clinic 

While visiting a Florida medical center, one of the rising number that are actively planting a culture of loving care, I spoke with the manager of the nuclear medicine department. "Would you tell me some of your best health care experiences?" I asked. She scanned the ceiling, returned her eyes to mine, and said, "Well, once I worked for the Mayo Clinic," she replied in a reverent tone. "What was special about that?" I asked. "Well, you know, there's the Mayo Way. They indoctrinate you & everyone must perform within their protocols..."    

Best Practices Essay: Relationship-Centered Care – How Circles Balance Squares.

In 1997, I was invited by my longtime friend, Tracy Wimberly, to join a weekend retreat at the Fetzer Institute on Relationship-Centered Care (www.fetzer.org). “I’m not entirely sure you’re ready yet,” Tracy told me.

“After all these years in health care, how could I not be ready?” I asked.

At the retreat, I learned the answer.

On the first day, about thirty of us, doctors, nurses, administrators and other caregivers from all over the country, gathered in a circle. Tracy invited each of us to check-in, one at a time, moving clockwise around the circle. The only question she posed to us was, “How are you doing?” A nice question, but what did this have to do with the topic of the seminar?...

Monday Meditation: Dialogue with the Sacred

Every sacred place is a place where eternity shines through time.
- Joseph Campbell

   With loving care, a Japanese garden was created several years back as a sacred space on the outskirts of Nashville. It offers its peaceful presence in the middle of a searingly beautiful park called Cheekwood.

   The first time I visited the garden, I paused to read a small sign that recommended traveling the garden path slowly in order to appreciate the many fine details of nature and occasional small sculptures that live along the way. Part way through my journey, I entered a thick stand of bamboo. The stalks swayed in the breeze, tapping each other in rhythmic conversation. Amid the beauty and grace of the garden, something strange happened...

The Samaritan & The Chrisitan Caregiver

33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. Luke 10:30-37

     Outside, in the high heat and close air of a southern August, cicadas bow the cellos of their legs, woodpeckers lance the skin of oak trees, voices of children dance in the music of summer.  Inside churches, millions stand to sing time-worn hymns.

     On the way home from church and the christening of his baby sister, a little boy cries. “What’s wrong?” his parents ask. The boy whimpers, “the preacher said he wanted Jenny and I brought up in a Christian home and I want to stay with you guys...”

Joy

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.                                  -from The House of Belonging by David Whyte

   Among the many things hanging in my office is a handmade sign with one word on it: Yes.

   "Why the sign?" lots of people ask me.

   "Because I need to remember," I usually respond.

   In a world filled with conflict, grief, hostility and frustration, it is easy to forget the yes of life - to forget that "inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born."  When do we give birth to our joy and how do we do that?...