Journal of Sacred Work

Day 121 - Being Teachers of Love

Since we remember 90% of what we teach as opposed to 10% of what we hear, why not find someone or some group to be your students – and to give them the chance to teach you Love as well? Your role, should you decide to accept it, is to flesh out each of the elements of Love and imagine how those elements would be taught.
   Who are the wisest teachers you have known? How did you learn from them?            
   Every week, I receive requests from people who want me to explain how to teach loving care. What I have learned is that the answers I send them are ineffective unless they choose to teach the work in their own words....

Day 120 - Renita's Faith

“…worship does not give us faith...Faith comes, or doesn’t come, in the struggle to live every day authentically and honestly.” Professor Renita Weems

   A Baptist pastor told me once how he was surprised, early in his ministry when a parishioner approached him for the third time in a year to say that he had been “born again.”
“How is it that you can be ‘born again’ so many times?” the minister asked skeptically.
            “I don’t know,” the man said, “I guess the spirit comes to me, then leaves me, then comes again.”...   

Day 119 - Guardian Angels & the Love Effect

"I knew if I were drowning you'd try to save me. And you see, you did, and that's how I saved you." - Clarence, George's Guardian Angel in It's a Wonderful Life, by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett & Frank Capra

   We like to think of our guardian angel (if we think of them at all) as protecting us from danger. In "It's a Wonderful Life," Clarence the Guardian Angel Second Class (left)actually places himself in danger to give George a reason not to commit suicide. Instead of jumping off the bridge to drown himself, as he had been planning, George jumps in to save his suddenly materialized angel.
   In this way, those we love and care for save us...

Days 116-118 - Open Forum - Love's Secret

Healing the universe is an inside job.     - from the movie, MindWalk.

During these open forum days, consider the answer to the question, What is Love's Secret? Take a HeartWalk.
Click on Comments, below, to share your thoughts.

Day 115 - Fear not the Broom!

Today's meditation is written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

     Perseverance is the ability to thrive under the weight of mediocrity and the seduction of the average and the ordinary. It is the ability to remain faithful for the duration. Great things of Love come out of small acts of faithfulness, acts born out of an unshakable confidence in the power of Love. How easy it is to miss the undeniable work of Love because we give up too soon. Perseverance is often the only thing that separates failure and success, and surely it contributes to the difference between the ordinary and what is extraordinary. The perseverance of wind and rain, for example, have crafted from what might otherwise have been ordinary rock an extraordinary sculpture (picture at left).

Day 114 - Stealing Excellence

We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre. - Uta Hagen (actress - left)

   If there was ever a down-the-middle success story in my life, it's my mother. She is a model of the advantages of living life within societies careful and sometimes subtle boundaries. She has been rewarded with a long life and hundreds of people who love her. And she has excelled in an areas that matter deeply - as a wife and mother.
   I've always wondered how her life would have gone if she pursue the Journalism career she studied for in college. It might not have been happier, but would more of her gifts have been used? Would she have been able to reach more people?...   

Day 113 - Cultures of Mediocrity

...without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely it would be worth the journey.    -Seth Godin

   I don't know Seth Godin, but I like a phrase he uses in a recent entry on his blog: "the forces of mediocrity." It's an attention-getting phrase because we each, instantly, know what he means. We've all seen these forces at work and they are so very powerful, aren't they?
   A caregiver spends extra time with a family member grieving her sister's cancer diagnosis. "Come on, Mary Jo," a supervisor chastises, "you need to spend time with the real patients."...

Day 112 - The Seduction of the Average

   The lure of the average is so very seductive. All our peers call to us to walk the trodden path. If we slip to mediocrity, we are chastised. If we soar to great heights, we are ridiculed with jealous attacks.
   This is why Jim Collins book, From Good To Great was and is so popular. He issues a stiff challenge to us and we know he is right. Others may envy us if we want to excel, if we want our lives to have meaning, if we abhor the average. Yet, for caregivers, only the best is acceptable. Presidential candidates often illustrate how tough it is to go from good to great...

Day 109-111 - Open Forum

These are open forum days. Click on Comments (below) to share your thoughts.

Day 108 - Courage to Be

(Today's  meditation is written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust).

"Actions and words are the windows through which the heart is seen." - American Proverb.

     In the meditation for days 105-106 in this journal, Erie Chapman notes Zora Neale Hurston's probable fear of anything that would constrict her ability to express her truth or to sing enough if only to satisfy herself. The conversations that emerged from that meditation turned to dealing with threats to our attempts to live Love. There is no question that this calling requires courage, and courage always involves risk - risk of rejection, intimidation, loss. Theologian Paul Tillich refers to genuine courage as  "the courage to be." What does it take to have the courage to be who we say we are and to do what we say we feel called to do?

Day 107 - How to Stop Complaining

[The following meditation was written by Dr. Jerald Smith, Chaplain at Parrish Medical Center in Titusville Florida.]
“Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers of at least what the saints are blinded by…” (Frederick Buechner, Listening To Your Life)   

   One week into the challenge to go 21 days without complaining and my best so far is one whole day. When I began this effort, I didn’t think it would be that difficult. I am not much of a complainer, or at least I didn’t think so. But I am one of those persons who process a lot of things internally. I think others who more readily verbalize their thoughts might have more difficulty, but that is just speculation on my part. In any case, only spoken complaints count. Unspoken complaints don’t count. But I have noticed that I am more aware of my complaining thoughts too, which helps me to avoid saying them.

Days 105 & 106 - Watching God

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. - Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

   What a gift we had, and have, in the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston. She is known, as a novelist, through her transcendent novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. She wrote the novel, she said, because "she had to." It was a story she had damned up inside her. A story she needed to tell.
   She wrote so well because of a fact central to all great writers. She understood Love. And she let this love flow through her like a fire...   

Day 102-104 - Open Forum

On Friday and the weekend, it has become the Journal's tradition to establish this open forum so that caregivers may share with each other whatever is on their hearts. Click on Comments, below, to do this.

Day 101 - The Beauty of Imperfection

  (Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust)

   This picture of a summer flower caught my eye at first because of what I would call beauty - deep colors, striking contrasts, interesting texture. Looking more closely, there are a number of imperfections that become evident - asymmetry in the petals, light that is somewhat flat, even a little out of focus perhaps. Curious how easily I find myself losing the beauty because of perceived imperfections.

   How we see ourselves, how we hope to be seen, and how we see others seem to me to be at the core of this week's sharing. We wear masks, we create stories and desire to emulate other magnificent personas, or we strive to create the perfect legacy for those who will follow. Recently I heard a speaker suggest that he doesn't want to try and emulate someone else, even a highly admired individual like Gandhi, Churchill, or Martin Luther King, Jr. - he just wants to be the best "him" he was created to be. I like that perspective. But I know that some days I find it a challenge to be the best "me" that I think I may have been created to be (begging forgiveness from the grammarians among you). There just seem to be too many opportunities to judge myself as failing or falling short. I heard this pain shared by a number of caregivers in a recent gathering of people who work in non-profit charity care.

Day 100 - Laguna Laughter

[The following meditation was written by Liz Wessel, R.N., M.S., St. Joseph Health System]

If you drive by Laguna Beach, California on a Sunday morning, you may be surprised at how life bustles at daybreak. I am. Each week, Christian men gather faithfully to cook a hot breakfast for homeless people. They stand shoulder to shoulder in a circle of prayerful fellowship singing songs of praise. The nearby coffee shop is busy filling cups of fancy brew for a line of eager customers. Dogs happily trot beside their masters on the boardwalk attracting warm smiles and the greetings of passersby. Thirty hopeful teenagers train for lifeguard positions. They fan the icy water in a sight as wondrous as a pod of dolphins emerging and disappearing amid ocean waves...

Day 99 - What Do Our Lives Reveal?

   Our lives reveal who we are, don't they? Behind each of the masks we wear for different situations lives the truth. What do you want your life to say?
   To a remarkable degree, I find that most people live unexamined lives. The questions they might ask themselves, the ones that could provoke potential from them, are often never raised. They have buried gifts that might be unwrapped if they worked to let their lives speak the best truths they have.
   I learn this when I ask people about their dreams. "What do you want your life to say?" I sometimes ask. I often get back a blank stare, sometimes followed with an answer like: "That I was a nice person." There's nothing wrong with this answer unless there is a lot of distance between the answer and reality. Parker Palmer has written eloquently about this subject in a book I have referenced before, Let Your Life Speak...

Day 98 - Hero Worship

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves. - Joseph Campbell

   In his riveting series of interviews with Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, recorded in 1987, Bill Moyers (left) probes the question of hero worship. Why are we so fascinated with heroes, both male and female? Campbell says hero stories are the only ones worth writing. Perhaps there is a broader answer.
   Do we want to be the heroes of our own lives? Each person might answer this question differently. But our fascination with heroes may flow, in part, from our amazement with the way energy can be concentrated in a single human life...

Days 96-97 - Weekend Open Forum

Please feel free to share your thoughts by clicking on Comments, below.
thank you
Erie

Day 95 - Long Live the King

   Today is the 40th anniversary of a terrible moment in American history. Four decades ago, the man who was arguably the greatest American of the 20th century was gunned down by an assassin's bullet. Moments later, a photographer captured the image at left.
   As always happens when a great figure is murdered, the earthly voice of the victim was stilled, but his legacy seemed to take on even greater luster. Today, every school child knows about  the man who had a dream, a dream which has yet to be realized as fully as it must be.
   I remember that day forty years ago. I was a law student in Washington, D.C.. On the afternoon of April 4, 1968, I was working in a ghetto on a law school program addressing juvenile delinquency. That night, in the minutes after the death of King was reported, that very neighborhood went up in flames...

Day 94 - Appreciating the Garden

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

"Where there is a gardener, there is a garden" - Michael Brown

In his book The Presence Process, author Michael Brown uses the metaphor of a garden to communicate the impact of awareness and intention in life. When we choose to fully participate in life, with sleeves rolled up and a willingness to dig in the dirt, we become what he calls gardeners of life. The simple act of giving thought to the practice of presence brings us into the acute awareness of the moment. There are wonderful possibilities that are awakened as a consequence of choosing to embrace present moment awareness. In the author's words, these are the fruits and flowers that emerge as a result of our intentions. In the Christian tradition the Gospel of Matthew says "By their fruits they shall be known" (Matt. 7:16). It seems to me that these fruits are the same gifts that are born as we seek to Live Love. Today's meditation is an invitation to walk through your own garden to notice and appreciate the fruits and flowers that may have emerged from your efforts as a gardener in the Garden of Love: