Journal of Sacred Work

What I Hear

What I hear,
sitting alone,
is conditioned air whirring,
a train moaning,
traffic stop-starting.

What I want to hear is
your voice telling tales

Beauty, Truth & Caregiving

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
  - from "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats (1795-1821)

   We nod our heads in agreement with Keats' couplet, but do we observe it? A great painting is never simply "pretty" just as a beautiful woman is never simply "cute." And yet we sometimes decorate our lives with images dressed to hide the truth instead of to revel in it.
   Over the past weeks, I have been watching the PBS series on great art. Without exception, the lives of the great artists have been marked by critical attack, narrow prudishness, censorship, and a public blindness to the genius these gifted people created in their time. Why does this happen? ....

Friday Open Forum: Self Care

   One of the biggest challenges for caregivers is self-care. In the course of focusing on the needs of patients, co-workers, family and friends, self-care often gets lost. "I don't have time to sit for five minutes with my eyes closed," caregivers often tell me.
   As a result, we see the development of the now well known syndrome called compassion fatigue. The answer is not to be found in simply squeezing out more time for yourself. It is important for caregivers to recognize the criticality of self-care. If we don't take care of ourselves, we're not going to be able to help others.
   Accordingly, today's questions are: Do you think you are deserving of better self care? And what are you doing for your self care? Click on Comment, below, to post your responses....

Love's Comfort

[Note: The following meditation was written by Cathy Self, Sr. Vice President, Baptist Healing Trust]

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain…                        
  - William Shakespeare “Venus and Adonis”

  This piece of art recently captured my attention and my heart. It is titled “Sunshine After Rain” and was painted by the American artist William Langston Lathrop (1859-1938). Letting myself fall deeply into its texture, I found recall and a relishing of the sweetness and delight in the experience of sunshine after rain.
   As much as I love a rainy day, there is something magical about the environment when the sun emerges after rain – the air still heavy with moisture…droplets of water glistening on tree leaves and covering my old, weathered deck chair…the smell of the damp earth… the sweetest of a gift in the faint whisper of a rainbow lingering with its promise. Yet, what we are privileged to do every day holds an even sweeter promise…

Love and the Face of Healthcare

Our cause must be to return Love to the face of healthcare.

    In the movie "August," derived from the famous play Uncle Vanya by the immortal Anton Chekov (left - also a physician) the central character says at one point, "An idle life can never be a good life." Do you agree?  After all, in the Journal, we often talk about the wisdom of being versus doing. But it is difficult for any caregiver to sit idle when the needs of others are apparent.
   The "cause" of every caregiver is clear enough if you watch the way Love meets need in the Sacred Encounter. But how would others describe you in terms of your cause in life...

Whyte's Midsummer Prayer

The following poem of Midsummer, by David Whyte(left) speaks a prayer beyond anything I might share with you today. If you are not accustomed to reading poetry, take a moment to read this poem at least twice. First, let his words flow over and through you with no effort to interpret. The second time through, look at his careful and surprising choices. Poets rarely use the word "beautiful." They work to find, amid the "laced structures of thought, the words that will help us know and feel that beauty.

Midsummer Prayer

In midsummer, under the luminous
sky of everlasting light,

the laced structures of thought
fall away

The Face of Love

   Love costs all we are and will ever be
  But it is only love that will set us free
                    -Maya Angelou (photo, left)

   There is a question taped to the edge of my computer screen at work. The question is: How does Love find expression in this world? Each of the seven commentators who posted in last Friday's Forum have expressed a part of the face of Love in the way they look at the world.
   It is remarkable to me that if this site were presented as a credible way to find gold, millions would come to it. Instead, the search for Love remains a rare and solitary pursuit. One that is undervalued by so many of the world's six billion souls....

Friday Open Forum

Friday's Open Forum Question is:
How do you express Love in your work?
Click on "Comment" (below) to post your thoughts

Living Faith

For what does it profit a man...if someone says they have faiths but do not have works?  - James 2:14

     It is the continuous challenge of our lives. Can we practice what we preach? Can we live what we believe?
   Faith-based hospitals and charities face the same kind of challenge. I've seen some hospitals with crosses on them that have done such a terrible job at living their missions that many would say they ought to take the cross down and replace it with a dollar sign.
   Fortunately, there are so many more that do a beautiful job living Love.
   What does it mean for a Christian organization to live it's mission? I've seen some organization carry forward the Christian narrative in very literal and lovely ways.....

Summer Stardust

Ah, what a pleasure
   to cross a stream in summer -
sandals in hand.
  -Yosa Buson (1716-1784) translated by Steven D. Carter

    Ever since the days when school released me into summer, I have treasured this time of year. Nature herself, tired from birthing spring, leans back in her easy chair. Flowers sway & sweat in summer's swelter. Here in the south, people of all ages walk & speak more slowly. Even the trees look lazy. The air exhales aromas of cut grass, boxwood and magnolia. Everyone not at work is going swimming. Everyone at work wishes they were too.
   Across the centuries, as Buson's haiku suggests, people have savored crossing streams in summer/sandals in hand, the water cooling their ankles, the mud massaging their bare feet...

The Courage of Lovers

   As school children, we all sat in wonder at the courage, hardship and risks which Columbus and his sailors took as they sailed "toward the end of the world." I heard a comedian say recently that perhaps the natives would have been better off if they had employed some form of immigration control since the discovery of the Americas was at best a mixed blessing for the existing inhabitants!
   Putting this wry observation aside, it is remarkable to imagine what happens to explorers of any kind when they seek to tell us what they have discovered in their travels. Do you ever feel like this as a caregiver? If you have traveled close to a suffering patient with a heart filled with love, then you have experienced something that is very hard to retell. If you have tried to create anything meaningful you know the challenge of the artist...

Groupthink?

I am mourning a murder; One I have done. - from "In Mourning for Betrayal" by Robert Bly

   June 23, 2007 was a Saturday. It was an ordinary day in the life of a convenience store on the corner of 25th and Hillside in Wichita, Kansas. Sometime during the day, 27-year old LaShanda Calloway, (left) bleeding from stab wounds just inflicted, staggered into the store and fell to the floor. Who would step forward to help?
   This was not New York City or Baghdad. It was the middle of the Middle West and there were plenty of folks there to help. No one did. Instead, video surveillance cameras show several shoppers walking around and even stepping over the wounded mother of three.... (http://www.firstcoastnews.com/video/player.aspx?aid=104690&bw=)

Leisure

But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise
-William Blake
       In a week that has no doubt been filled with many worries and cares for each of us, I offer to you a  poem about leisure. These days, I don't much like rhyming poems. But this one caught my fancy as I hope it will yours. Nothing deep, just a simple poem by British poet W.H. Davies. A poem that invites us to self-care.

What is this life if, full of care,
We have not time to stand and stare...

Angels Among Us

(Note: The following essay was written by Catherine Self, Sr. V.P. of the Baptist Healing Trust.)

   I saw an angel today. She floated among the elders, white-haired men and women gathered for a time of prayer and singing in a senior citizens center. As she entered the room, faces that had seemed frozen with time lifted to make eye contact. Eyes brightened and weathered hands reached out in greeting.  Calling her by name, those who could speak spoke her name with tenderness. In one voice I heard the spirit of a small child greeting a favored friend.

   Songbooks were patiently handed to each one present, carefully turned to just the right page. Singing to the beat of a prerecorded tape, the group sang verse after verse, hymn after hymn.

Love vs. Papal Arrogance

Pope: "Other denominations are not true churches."       - headline - MSNBC     http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19692094/
   In one of the saddest statements I have seen in my lifetime, Pope Benedict has chosen to announce to the world that not only is the Roman Catholic Church the only true church, but that all other Christian denominations are not true churches and their members cannot achieve salvation. Other churches are "defective," he says. This pope is not the first Catholic leader to make such an arrogant pronouncement. However, many believed that Pope John XXIII and Vatican II (1962-65) had taken a different and more enlightened position - one that was far more tolerant and inclusive than the narrow position this Catholic leader is now reasserting.
   My concern about this position is the way it may impact the thinking of various Christian caregivers. The goal of Love is to be inclusive and tolerant of all faiths. To assert, as this Pope is doing, that all other Christian faiths (including Orthodox and all Protestant denominations) are "defective" and "not true churches" and "do not have the means of salvation" is an enormous insult to all other Christian caregivers and must be an embarrassment to enlightened Catholics... 

Our Voices

Part of our mind is speaking, and the other part is listening. It is a big problem when [many] parts of your mind are all speaking at the same time.   Don Miguel Ruiz

   In a futile yet dangerous effort to simplify the world, we often label other people by the personality characteristic that seems most prominent. If Judy is often sad, we may label her as depressed. If Bob laughs a lot, we may categorize him as always happy. This may be why people are surprised to discover that gifted comedians like Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters (left) also suffer from depression and alcohol abuse. How can this be when they are so good at making us laugh? We all have many voices within. And yet for some reason we seem to think that other people have just one - the one we usually hear...

Friday Forum - Healthcare Reform

   This week, we've been focusing on options for healthcare reform. In particular, we've referenced Michael Moore's provocative new film, "Sicko" now in theaters.
   Today is a further opportunity for you to comment in our new Friday Forum - an open opportunity for you to engage a dialogue with caregivers from around the country.
   To post your comment, just enter a name and an email address (it doesn't even have to be real) in the space below. Then enter the letters that pop up in a box designed to block spam. What do you think about healthcare reform? Do you support universal healthcare coverage or not?...

Polls: Americans Want Universal Coverage

   As one commenter wrote in yesterday's Journal. It's painful to think how long it will be until change finally comes to American healthcare. The subject we write about so often in this space, radical loving care, cannot be legislated. But universal healthcare coverage can, of course, be passed into law. (click on cartoon to enlarge)
   It's taken a long time for the majority of Americans to understand the severity of the problem. And the long wait is not a positive commentary on the generosity of most Americans. The majority who carry health insurance have been reluctant to recognize the suffering of the minority that has no coverage. Finally, the problem has become acute enough for public opinion to change...

Freedom From Worry - About Personal Healthcare Bills

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.  - Martin Luther King, Jr.

   Happy Independence Day! One of our readers, Diana Gallaher, posted the above quote inside her comment in yesterday's Journal. Dr. King's statement is a painfully apt commentary on American healthcare today. Why would the world's most famous democracy tolerate the terrible inequality of our medical system?
   King would be stunned to know that 50 million Americans live without health insurance coverage. In so many ways, we need the power of his voice and his presence to lift America out of her complacency on this issue. One answer is clear, even if it is complicated to implement. It is universal healthcare...

What We Can Do

It's important to make a little effort once in awhile.    -Woody Allen

   For the most part, the Journal is dedicated to reflections that are focused on bringing peace to harried caregivers. Every so often, as yesterday, we offer opinions on how healthcare may be changed for the better. Sometimes, the subject of healthcare change can be very upsetting. But we all need to use a little effort to bring about improvements.
   Every caregiver is intimately familiar with the challenges the American system presents to patients. On the one hand, we have available the finest technology and medicine in the world. On the other hand, we live in with a system that can impose enormous hardships on the poor and vulnerable...