Happy Halloween. And Happy Reformation Day as well. 
Halloween also happens to be my birthday. It's an odd time of year to be born - a time when people joke about graveyards and death, not the exultation of birth. I loved, as a child, hosting birthday parties where everyone dressed up. As I got older, the day seemed less entertaining - especially when adults popped up at the door holding out beer mugs for drinks.
The anniversary I now like to honor on this date is Reformation Day, which began October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral calling for reforms and an end to abuses in the Catholic Church. It was the founding of the Protestant movement. Perhaps more important, it was a celebration of the role of independent thinking in the face of authority...
Catholics now agree that their church of the time needed to be reformed. Periodically, those that have held sway over us across a long time can become corrupt in the same way that long time rulers can become abusive with their power.
This is what has happened in many American hospitals. The effort to operate healthcare along better business principles, originally well-intentioned, has now led to a period of bloated CEO salaries, boards obsessed with the bottom line instead of mission, and a medical-industrial complex so enchanted with technology they sometimes lose sight of the humanity of those they treat.
On the 490th anniversary of Reformation Day, perhaps we can consider launching a new Reformation - one that returns Love to the face of healthcare and helps all of us recall that the alternative to Love is, well, very spooky.
-Erie Chapman
