Journal of Sacred Work

Courage: You Against the World

   It's among the most memorable two minutes in film history and you can see it simply by double-clicking on this circular movie reel icon > from Reel Classics (Note: depending on your computer, you may have to wait a moment for the clip to play.) The movie is High Noon (1952) starring Gary Cooper. It profiles the enduring story of a solitary person facing the forces of an overwhelming enemy. Everyone has abandoned the protagonist. He stands alone for the cause of right and justice.
   The story is as old as David & Goliath. Yet it holds endless fascination for each of us. So often, the work of caregiving feels so solitary: you against the forces of illness, you as the only caregiver at a given moment in time, you against all those who misunderstand you...

Mood

   Through the magic of YouTube, you can click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbKJE7oQscw and watch a two minute clip from the early 1940s of Glenn Miller and his orchestra playing his famous hit: "In the Mood." Chances are (also the name of a Johnny Mathis hit) the lively music will put you in a good "mood."    Most of the time, though, when we use the word we mean something less than positive. When someone's "in a mood," it suggests they're unhappy or out of sorts in the same way the coming of "weather" means a storm.

   My own moods have often been baffling to me. Back in 1997, I took a 36-hour fasting & silence retreat. I kept a diary during that time and made frequent entries. The first thing I noticed was how rapidly my moods changed. I was happy and hopeful at 8:06 A.M.. At 8:09 A.M., I was worried and discouraged. Doctors tell us our moods are influenced by hormones and brain chemistry. They now have the capability to treat depression and other mood disorders with an array of pharmaceuticals. But I wonder if those chemicals help us understand who we are?...

Isolation

Some of us wear physical disabilities visible to all. The rest of us can hide our troubles from public view. - Erie Chapman

    My younger brother (in the foreground in this family photo from the '50s - we are nine years apart) must have felt so isolated growing up. Intensely shy, he clung to our mother as Linus to his blanket. When he reached school age, he fought getting on the school bus every day for years - as if it were a dragon come to gobble him up. By age thirteen, he knew there was something else different about him, but he wasn't clear what that was.
   After several years of silent struggle and torment, he grew confused and depressed. By age seventeen, he had reached a painful decision. He would seek psychiatric help. With tears and trepidation, he found the courage to approach our father...

Love & The Subway Hero

13:4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful...1 Corinthians 13:4-5

   During the time I was President of Nashville's Baptist Hospital System, i directed that the above lines be painted in script on one of the walls of the hospital. Baptist is faith-based, I reasoned, why not use the golden thread of Scripture to reinforce our message of loving care.
   Lots of people told me they liked seeing the Scripture on the walls. "It's a nice reminder," they told me. But I often wondered whether it was of any help to anybody. And I wondered, as well, if the Scripture might offend those who grew up in a different faith tradition. What is the power of Scripture to move us? How do we explain those, like the recent subway hero who act whether inspired by Scripture of not...

A Life of Meaning

(Note: Friday's Guest Meditation was written by Catherine Self)

“The core principle of high purpose…is that all great performance…flows first and foremost from an understanding of our meaning or purpose (mission)…”    - Erie Chapman, 1999.

   Of all the stories and lectures I have heard on the subjects of purpose and meaning, the life story of Victor Frankl (left) has been the most compelling. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl details his journey from despair to survival and hope. I ask you to join me in walking a journey inspired by his story, for it adds an important foundation to our understanding of what it means to live with a sense of high purpose...

Changing

Never turn over the guidance of your soul to others.  - Erie Chapman

   A man was swimming across a lake with a rock in his hand. Under the weight of the rock and the difficulty of swimming with one arm, he began to drown. "Let go of the rock," voices shouted. But the man continued trying to swim. As he continued to struggle, the voices shouted louder, "Let go of the rock." But the man would not release his grip even though he could now barely stay afloat. Finally, with his last breath, he shouted back to the voices, "I can't let go. It's mine." And with that, he drowned.
   Each of us carries around rocks we will not release because we are so attached to the comfort we think they provide. We fight to hold onto patterns that are drowning us because we think we own them. We even give up the guidance of our souls just to hang onto doing our jobs the old way, or the way we think an oppressive boss may expect...

Raising the Light

There can be no question of making "helpful" books. The help must not be located in the book but in the relation between the reader and the book... Rainer Marie Rilke

   My three-year-old grandson is a child of light. The way I know this is that whenever he enters a room, the light goes up - as if light encircled him, shinning forth into the faces of adults he encounters with his happy energy. Adults break into smiles at the sight of him. Sometimes, I start to laugh out of the pure joy at his arrival into my presence. But this can also be true of any child, or any person including you! It depends upon our relationship to that person.
   You are a carrier of energy that can illuminate (or diminish) the light in the lives of others. Your presence lifts those around you whenever you let Love's light shine through you.
   How do caregivers learn to be good carriers of light?  As Rilke writes, books don't teach us. It is our relationship to the book that may awaken some new understanding or appreciation...

How Story Circles Change Culture

One of the strongest needs of the soul is for community...  Care of the Soul, -Thomas More

   For culture to  change, the content of our discussions must change. Hospitals and charities are flooded with meetings. This is especially true for leaders. What is the content of our meetings? Too many organizations perceive change as coming through a barrage of new programs aimed at surface behavior change.  For these organizations, the challenge of creating a loving culture is often confusing.
   Leaders of hospitals and charities, in a well meaning effort to advance compassion, are forever asking what they are supposed to do. But the bigger change must come through an alteration in thinking....   

Understanding

Never underestimate the other person's ability to miss your point.  - Erie Chapman

   We learn the trick of the nodding smile as young children. The school teacher says, "If Johnny had three apples and Sarah had two apples, that means that together they have five apples, understand?" And we smile, in unison, "Yes, teacher." The truth is we may have no idea what she is trying to teach us.
  I remember getting lost in the middle of story problems wondering what kind of kid Johnny was and whether he and Sarah were pals - not exactly the lesson my teacher was trying to communicate. Understanding is difficult, even in the clearest of situations, because every human communication is informed by so many other factors besides the words used.
   This is dramatically the case in doctor-patient communication....

One Spirit

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:13

   As she breathed in her final hours, I looked into my friend June Ammons' eyes, asked her what she was thinking? Thoughts of husband? Children? Friends? "I'm thinking of myself," she told me. "I'm thinking about how I need to prepare for eternity."
   For a moment, I felt a unity of my soul with hers. Whatever seemed to differentiate us, our skin color, our sex, her terminal illness against my apparent health, these surface differences dissolved as I watched her life fade away in the light of her room in the hospital where I served as president....

Dreaming & Doing

(Friday's Guest Reflection is from Catherine Self)
   It was in 1999 that the dream first took hold in my core – we could become a place of healing, we could discover a new way of being, I could live my sense of calling and I could experience meaning in every moment – and, in those days I dared to believe that the dream could actually become reality!
   That year I heard words like significance, passion and persistence. These were among the words that our then new CEO, Erie Chapman, spoke to the leadership team at Baptist Hospital. The vision being offered was of a place where bringing the dream to life meant…

Signs of Radical Change - A List of Some of America's Healing Hospitals

Empathy and compassion are caught, they not taught...You can't get to compassion without empathy - Mary Gordon, founder, Roots of Empathy

   It is simultaneously one of the largest, one the oldest and one of the biggest urban hospital systems in America. It includes two of the finest medical schools in America. Yet, until recently, it had begun to slip backwards in the minds of sophisticated New Yorkers who sometimes left town for the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins instead of heading down the street to one of this center's hospitals. Then, in 1998, the board of the newly merged New York Hospital (founded in 1771) and Presbyterian Hospital made a key decsion. They chose a psychiatrist to be their chief executive. And the psychiatrist, Herbert Pardes, M.D. (above, left), announced a radical strategy. The new organization would focus on patient-centered care. "The only thing I'm interested in is helping patients..." Dr. Pardes announced. What's so radical about this?...

Open Forum

As an experiment today, I would like to invite readers to offer comments on whatever issue they find of interest in caregiving. 

Altered States

Language has the power to change reality.
                       -Karen York, VP, Alive Hospice
   
   Language reflects how we think toward ourselves and others. It can also have an enormous impact on our physical state. This effect is dramatically under-appreciated. 
   I can change your physical energy with only four words. Imagine that you are exhausted after working a double shift. You feel unable to even stand up from the comfort of the sofa where you rest. Four words will energize you instantly: “You won the lottery!” If you believe me, you will jump from the sofa as if launched.
   Caregivers need an exquisite appreciation of the impact of words like "You have cancer." The most loving caregivers also learn a deep understanding of the altered reality their patients or clients may occupy during illness and how to be present to them when they may occupy a different state of reality…

Gifts

12:4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 12:5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 12:6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 12:7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 1 Corinthians 12:4-7

  During a meeting a few years back with two veteran obstetricians, I asked each what had drawn him to his field of practice. "I love delivering babies," the first said to me with warmth and enthusiasm. "I've been doing it for twenty-five years and each birth is still an exciting experience."
   The other obstetrician, also a veteran of twenty-five years, looked at his colleague with tired eyes and then said to me. "I deliver babies because it's something I can do."
   What causes some caregivers to revel in the opportunity they have to "manifest the common good" while others view their work with a certain sullenness?...

Friday's Guest Reflection

(-From Catherine Self, Senior Consultant, Baptist Healing Trust, Nashville):           Today’s thoughts emerge from my personal journey to understand and embody this thing we call healing. I say I believe in the possibility and reality of healing and yet am awed and honestly quite often surprised when I see evidence of its occurring. When the patient leaves our care, uncured of the cancer that brought him to us yet speaks of having been healed, so many questions rise within me. How does healing happen? What makes healing happen? Where and when does healing begin?
   Some, like Dr. Masaru Emoto, (www.hado.net) would suggest that we carry within ourselves the power of healing (or harm!). This doctor of alternative medicine and Japanese research scientist turns our attention to water as a messenger for what is possible...

Learning Love

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
-ee cummings

   I was lying still-wet on the floor of a purple bathtub as my mother twisted the washcloth raining a final stream of warmth upon me, the coda to my night's bath. I was less than three. It's my earliest memory & I got to share it with her again in one of our regular Saturday chats. She chuckled more at my remembrance than at hers. And we laughed together once more when I recalled a ritual in which I lay in beds as she fluttered a fresh top sheet down upon me, a cloud landing in a meadow.
   From where do we learn love? How is it taught to us?...

Strangers

  The medical-industrial complex is so bent on fixing us & billing us that it threatens to crush our hearts in the process. -  Erie Chapman

  Rachel Remen, M.D., first told the story in 1992. She described an old German women with cancer who came to one of her healing retreats. At the retreat, there was lots of hugging and kind words. The woman liked the kindness, but her upbringing caused her some discomfort with what she called, "all 'dis hugging business." 
   One day, Dr. Remen saw the woman emerge from some alone-time wearing a big smile. "What is it?"" she asked the cancer patient.
   "I been asking God about whether it is okay for me to hug strangers," the woman said. "God says to me, 'What is 'dis with the strangers. I don't make strangers. You do.'"...

Two Earthshaping Developments

1) By the year 2050, the world's population is predicted to reach nine billion people. - United Nations publication
2) A Texas company has started producing batches of ready-made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about...characteristics of the egg and sperm donors. - The Washington Post (1/6/07)

   I remember the shock I felt during a conversation I had with a physician friend of mine after he and his wife returned from a vacation to Kenya. "Weren't you concerned about AIDs and starvation?" I asked him. "Look Erie," he told me, "there are too many people over there. Something needs to happen to trim the population." It was a if he was talking about Kenyans as a herd of deer.
   Years later, I read the first prediction (above.) I've been trying to comprehend it. If the current population is six billion, this means a fifty percent increase in only forty-three years! By the time my grandson is forty-six, he will be one nine hundred billionth of the population instead of one six hundred billionth. Will the difference matter? This depends on how his generation (and ours) handle the challenges of this astonishing growth: whether, for example, we finally confront global warming before the process starts "trimming the population." And whether we become clearer on the value of human life or more confused.
   Now the second news bulletin: science is making the process of becoming a parent easier. Does empowering a potential parent to "select" an embryo raise ethical questions about eugenics?
   These issues will have a critical impact on caregiving...

Our Why - Bricklayers & Caregivers

Loving Cultures are contagious. So are cultures of mediocrity. - Erie Chapman

   It's an old story and I've told it before. But the story deserves another telling. Three bricklayers were working on a project in New York City. Each was asked what he was doing. "I'm laying bricks," the first one said, a bored expression on his face. "I'm building a wall," the second man said with a little more enthusiam. The third bricklayer smiled, raised his eyes to the sky, and answered, "I'm building a great cathedral."
      Motivation matters. Where does it come from? What is the energy that fuels our daily efforts?
      Not everyone is motivated by high purpose, but the best caregivers always are. We want to feel that our work and the effort we put into it, have meaning. Our role as caregivers and as leaders is to breathe this meaning into our work. AS Nietzsche wrote long ago and Dr. Viktor Frankl taught more recently, "He (or she) who has a why can bear almost any how." ...