Journal of Sacred Work

A Carrier of Beauty

Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. - Lady Bird Johnson

   So much attention gets focused on the President of the United States that sometimes the contributions of the First Lady are overlooked. It takes a lot of courage to be First Lady. How would you like to be on public view every single day and to have your every move tracked by the press and the Secret Service?
   In the middle of her time as First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, widow of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, (1963-1969) got so wrapped up in the idea of beautifying America that she forgot to be afraid for herself. Every time you ride down a federal highway and see gatherings of wildflowers in the median strip, you can thank Lady Bird for that. It was her leadership that resulted in the Highway Beautification Act. Lady Bird was a caregiver for all of us...

Intimacy

   I was looking for poems about intimacy when it dawned on me. All poems are intimate. The better the poem, the more intimate, the more secrets to be shared. And like intimacy between those who love, the poem is a conversation between poet and reader. Here, for example, are the twin opening lines of an e.e. cummings poem I have referenced in a previous Journal entry. It is a poem first brought to my attention by Keith Hagan, M.D.:

somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:

   Why would we travel together into a subject so personal that it may seem distant from everyday caregiving?...

Creating Value

Life is not a question of what others owe to us, but of what we owe to others.  -Louise Abigail Wright, wife of Mayo Clinic co-founder Dr. William Mayo. 

   It catches my eye, embedded there in the asphalt of a parking lot, it's copper outline of Lincoln distinguishing it from the black tar. But it's only a penny. Is it even worth the effort to lean over and pick it up?
   My son, taken with the enormity of Bill Gates' wealth, calculated once what the value of a penny would be to this world's richest man as compared to the value of a penny to someone with a net worth of fifty thousand dollars. I think the answer he came up with was that a penny for Gates (left) was comparable to over a hundred thousand dollars for the rest of us. Imagine seeing a hundred thousand lying on the ground and wondering if it was worth the effort to lean over and pick it up. People as rich as the Microsoft founder can spill millions each day and never notice. 
   What creates real value in this world? It's a fascinating question...

Memorial Day Ironies

[Note: The following column was written for the Journal by reader Liz Wessel, R.N., M.S. Liz is a caregiver with St. Joseph Health System in Orange, California.]

   My father Philip Emil Sorensen was a medic in the army during WWII. He spoke of his skillfulness at bartering for scarce goods and of the many friendships he struck up along the way, but he spoke little of his lived experiences in the war. Dad 6’2” and lanky sought out a Japanese-American soldier who he nicknamed “Smitty" (with my dad, at Smitty's left, in photo.) Smitty was a 5’3” and wanted nothing to do with my father. Finally, dad’s persistence won out and they became best friends. While Smitty (Richard) Imagawa was overseas serving, the government seized his property and confined his family to an internment camp. So Smitty was fighting for our country while his family was taken as prisoners of war by, America, his own nation....

The First Dream

I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning...
   -Billy Collins

   I can't think of a better way to end a meditation series on dreams than with a poem by the great Billy Collins (left) about the very first dream a human being ever had. A goal of poetry is to awaken us to think in new ways. That is the special challenge, and the unique gift, which artists give to caregivers.
   Here is the joy of Billy Collins marvelous poem. Great poets work hard to make there words come to us as gracefully and easily as this...

The Poetry of Dreams

I would like to be the air
That inhabits you for a moment
Only. I would like to be that unnoticed
And that necessary.
   -Margaret Atwood (1939-  )

   Poetry is a sort of dream. And dreams have the strange power of art. Canadian poet Margaret Atwood wrote a terrific poem of Love called "Variation on the Word Sleep." It is a stunning tribute to loving presence: "to be that unnoticed/and that necessary. I have been saving this poem to share with you...

Daydream On...

All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.   
  - Edgar Allan Poe (left, 1809-1849)

   During his short life, Edgar Allan Poe contributed to many nightmares as well as dreams with his immortal collection of stories and poems. Plagued in later years by tuberculosis, alcohol and drug problems, he must have wondered often about the truth of his own quote. Is all we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?
   Commenter Karen York recently posed a question to Journal readers that many of us ponder: Why it is so hard for us to remember our dreams?...

Dream Life

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.   - Anais NIn

    It is one of the most strangely decorated experiences we have. It occupies one third of our life time. During it, we are, we may feel that we are literally in another world.
   All of these things are true of the period we call sleep. You may not remember, today, the dreams you had last night because the conscious mind has so much trouble understanding what happens in the world of drams. For example, what are we to make of the fact that last night we may have been flying (without a plane) above a medieval village or walking naked down a four-lane highway? 
   Experts say that during most, if not all, of our sleep, we are dreaming. The role of the mind is to think. When the body drifts into sleep, the mind continues to generate thoughts. But the body's lapse into sleep generates a very different consciousness than the kind you are occupying right now...

Til Death Do Us Part

(Note: The following column was written by Julie Quiring. Ms. Quiring - left - is a Seattle-based humor writer and a colleague of renown poet David Whyte in the Many Rivers organization. Her marvelous writing may also be found at www.nationalliteraryreview.org )

   Increasingly, a look in the mirror brings me face to face with the fact of my eventual demise. Although I might reasonably expect to frolic, or at least mosey, through a few more decades in a human body, it won't be long before gray declares victory in the battle of dominion over my hair and formerly perky body parts begin their descent in earnest. I try not to hold it against them. After all, they're getting a head start...

Retreat & Reflection

(Note: The following meditation was written by Liz Wessel, R.N., M.S., Director of Education/Mission Services for St. Joseph Health System Home Health Netework, Orange, California.)

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   When I told my sister Kitty of my plans to attend a silent retreat last weekend, she said, “You mean you are not going to talk for two days? That sounds like pure torture to me.” The retreat was facilitated by James Finley, a former Trappist monk, author, and psychologist who studied closely with Thomas Merton (left.) The following are some reflections from this expansive experience. I had the gift of time; to meditate, take garden strolls, make brush strokes with watercolors, sit in prayerful silence, and listen in deeper awareness. As my mind’s chatter began to quiet, my heart opened...

Life While You Wait

[he following meditation was written by Karen York. Karen is a Vice President at Nashville's Alive Hospice.]

   One of the cornerstones of the work of loving care is the notion of “presence”. We work toward attaining some sort of balance in our lives so that while we are in a moment, we are really “in the moment”. We ask caregivers to clear their minds of schedules and paperwork and other personal burdens so that they can hold the hand of their patient and provide comfort. We ask them to cultivate quiet time into their daily lives to refresh their spirits so they are calm in the midst of chaos. We hope that they remember to play and to laugh and to have fun so that they are also able to weep with a disconsolate family. But what does it mean to be in the present?...

Self-Love

[The following meditation was written by Catherine Self. Cathy is a veteran caregivers and a Senior vice President with the Baptist Healing Trust.]

Ask any patient how they would like to be treated and a number of commonalities emerge: most suggest they want someone to care for them with kindness, consideration and love; someone who will treat them respectfully and with unconditional acceptance; who will listen to their words and the feelings beneath the words; who will join in the joy of success and progress; someone who will be open to the pain of suffering and loss; someone who will relate with heart and soul and mind; who will be unafraid to touch and be touched...

Fatigue & The Journal

   The way I became aware that I was spending too much time on the computer was when my access to it was temporarily cut off over the last four days. Traveling and a computer malfunction were the reasons. And I became like any contemporary American who faces the loss of electricity in a storm. The candle light is soothing for awhile. And then the power returns and we rapidly forget the comfort of the candlelit moments.
   Stranded back in the real world (whatever that is) I found myself feeling anxious about my isolation from email and the internet. I discovered, also, that I was tired. This Journal, through which I campaign for meditation, rest, and times of silence, has, at times, become the enemy of relaxation for me. At the end of a regular work day, I have felt compelled to write something to you. And it has mostly been a gift to me to be able to offer whatever thoughts occur...

How We Change

  As I travel the country speaking about the need for loving care I wonder what it is that actually causes change. On my old national T.V. show, Life Choices (1987-1995) I once asked Dr. Bernie Siegel about this. "The only way we change is through trauma," he replied. "It takes a significant emotional blow to cause anyone to change over a short period."
   If this is true, what is the value of all the other change efforts that we launch so often? Even something as simple as a diet is typically something with a short-lived effect. Why, then, do we think we can achieve major change through reading or listening to any writer or speaker?
   Perhaps the answer includes understanding the kind of change we seek...

Mission Fraud!

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.  - Yogi Berra

   Everyone has always loved the way Yogi Berra, the legendary former catcher for the New York Yankees, expressed himself. In the course of mangling every rule of grammar and sensibility, Berra has had a remarkable gift for making sense.
   We all need to shake ourselves out of our paralysis, our frequent over-weighing of choices, and just move ahead. The question is not so much whether we will take the correct fork, but whether we can make the best of whatever choice we make.
   For healthcare users, the American government, long paralyzed over how to gauge patient satisfaction, has finally made a decision...

One Ambition

For some, ambition fuels achievement. Caregivers are called to be ambitious about continuous excellence because their work is sacred. - Erie Chapman

    How many of us grow up with the ambition to achieve excellence? The American school system certainly seeks to imbue this in us from an early age. Our performances are graded, we are coached, and, if we fail, we are threatened. We are surrounded with images of success in all fields. The message is, excel!
   I fell hook, line and sinker for this message. As I child, I read biographies of the famous and dreamed of being one of them. Toward the other end of my journey, my dreams have been trimmed dramatically. This may have happened because my ambitions have always been so large. Now that I've lived most of my life, I find myself living more in admiration of everyday caregivers than I do of politicians or movie stars or other famous folks...

"Brave of the Dark"

  Shortly after my grandson turned three, he got up one night to use the bathroom by himself (an important accomplishment for a three-year-old.) Midway down the dark hallway, he called out to his Dad for help. "What's wrong, son?" My son said to him. "You know how to go to the bathroom by yourself now."
   My grandson gazed around the dark hallway and said, "Well, Daddy, I'm a little bit brave of the dark, but I'm a little bit scared of the dark, too."
   When I heard this story, all I could think was how true it is about all of us. We're all a little bit brave of the dark and we're all a little bit terrified as well. In the middle of the darkness in our lives, we may even think about calling out for our mothers or fathers so they may ease our terror.
   Caregivers often hear these cries for help. They rise from the throats of those who are living a time of pain that can be terribly lonely...

A Favorite Painter

I believe I would rather have Stieglitz like something - anything I had done - than anyone else I know.   
- Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)

   Across the arc of the 20th century, Georgia O'Keeffe created an extraordinary body of work that enlivened and enriched the texture of American Art. Her well-known marriage to Alfred Stieglitz brought together two of the finest American artists in history. O'Keeffe's paintings are characterized by a bold and startling use of color and a selection of images which animated everything from New York skyscrapers to desert flowers, to cattle skulls. One art critic says, "She is chiefly known for paintings in which she synthesizes abstraction and representation in paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones and landscapes."
O'Keeffe's paintings offer a special opportunity for reflection and meditation on what is interesting and beautiful...

The Net of Gems

It’s an idea that appears ...in the mythic image of the Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other... gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else...It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all.   -Joseph Campbell, interview in The Power of Myth.

   Even in the 21st Century, I know many who are reluctant to embrace learning from other faith traditions. Joseph Campbell's work enables all of us to enlarge our thinking by giving us easier access to the wisdom of others. His reference to the "net of gems" touches a fascinating notion that links directly with the mission of Radical Loving Care...

Judging Others?

(Note: The following meditation was written by Karen York. Karen is a Vice President with Nashville's celebrated Alive Hospice organization.)   

Never judge a book by its cover

   We know the above adage all too well. In the journey toward human decency, we’ve been taught not to exclude people based on the way they look. The right thing is to look deeper into personality and heart. Within the context of the Loving Care Movement, this is our mantra; this is how we are supposed to live. We are to love others as brothers and sisters. We are to understand and accept them just as they are in their journey.