Journal of Sacred Work

Day 245 Happy Labor Day!

What does Labor Day mean to you? Click on Comments, below, to share your thoughts with other caregivers.
-Erie

Days 242-244 - Open Forum on Rest

How do you find rest and peace? To share your thoughts with other caregivers, click on Comments, below.

Day 241 - Celebrate You!

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

     Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground. - Rumi

     Despite many who would assert we are driven by instincts for survival of the fittest, there seems to be a much deeper drive within each of us to love and be loved. For some this is best expressed through a deeper longing to contribute and to serve. Those who visit these pages live out of that longing and selflessly give through the care of their hands and hearts every day. Most days, there is great satisfaction and even deep gratitude for the gifts we are able to express through care giving. Beyond that quiet acceptance of gifts received, it is important to also celebrate those gifts, even if in solitude, noticing and experiencing the goodness of life and work.

Day 240 - When the World is "Too Much"

"Not to be onto something is to be in despair."  - Walker Percy, from The Moviegoer

   I have told this story before and I tell it again today in hopes it will help you in your journey as a caregiver. I lived more than fifty years thinking I was "onto something" before, in 1997, I finally experienced real despair. This despair arrived when the company I was helping run was acquired and I was suddenly out of a job. I went from the world being too much with me to a world that suddenly looked empty.
   Since I had made the lifelong mistake of defining myself by what I did rather than who I was, the subtraction of my job left me in the half-light of being "no one." Who was I if I wasn't working? Back then, my inability to find this answer plunged me into depression. To survive, I needed to re-sculpt my life view. I was not my job. But who was I?
   The current recession provokes organizations into their own kind of desperation. Anxious to survive, hospitals and other charities pick up the often harsh sculpting tools of corporations. They carve away operating expenses and slash the workforce. The human cost can be devastating because, in hospitals and charities, this means that many committed caregivers wake up one dark day to discover their work has been stolen from them....

Day 239 - Nurturing versus Controlling

   A friend of mine who works behind the scenes in the movie world told me recently about an experience he had as a crew member for a recent film starring Sally Field. "How was she to work with?" I asked him. "She was great," my friend said, "but the director was a nightmare."
   He went on to describe how this individual, directing his very first film, decided that a key part of his job was to tell the Academy Award winning Ms. Field how to act. "You'd think he was the veteran instead of her. He constantly interrupted her with correction after correction and instruction after silly instruction."
   Fortunately, Ms. Field was enough of a professional that she was able to deliver a competent performance in spite of the directors obsessive knit-picking. "She would have done so much better if this idiot director had gotten out of her way, " my friend said.
   Yesterday, I wrote of how stress arises primarily from our efforts to control the behavior of others. There is so much difference between leading people through partnership and love versus through intimidation and distrust. The director in the above story had so little trust in himself and others that he tried to correct this through obsessive control. Great directors (and leaders) on the other hand, set guidelines rather than rules and lead from principles rather than by trying to enforce laws.
   Great leaders nurture. Poor leaders intimidate. All of these same things are as true for parenting as they are for leadership.
   How do you experience this truth in your caregiving work?

-Erie Chapman

Day 238 - The Source of Stress

   One of the most potentially useful insights shared in these pages in the past is a bit of wisdom that goes like this: Stress arises primarily from our efforts to control the behavior of others. For caregivers and leaders alike, this knowledge can be invaluable.
   New leaders (as well as some veterans) often misconstrue that their job is to control the behavior of the people that report to them. The best leaders have come to understand that employee behavior cannot be "controlled." The role of a leader is to help in setting tone and direction as well as finding ways to encourage others to engage their best energies in living out mission. Leaders that try to compel compliance through threats and tight control are about as successful as basketball coaches who think they can control the arc of a basketball in the middle of a foul shot. When leaders approach their roles like this, they generate enormous stress for themselves and others - and they usually fail.
   Once guidance is offered, leaders need to trust in the skills of others.
   Likewise, caregivers often experience stress through letting supervisors decide their feelings. How often have we heard ourselves and others say, "That supervisor made me so mad." Or "My boss upset me so much I made a mistake." Who decides how we feel, ourselves or our leaders?
   This is all very easy to say and very difficult to live. Still, we may be able to access greater peace and serenity by letting go of our tendency to try and change the behavior of others. Personally, I find it hard enough to change my own behavior much less that of my fellow beings.
   May you live this week in peace and love.

-Erie Chapman

Days 235-237 - Open Forum

Welcome to our weekend open forum. All caregivers are invited to submit whatever comments they would like about the experience of loving others. Click on Comments, below, to share your thoughts.
-Erie

Day 234 - Growing and Change

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

     A quick look across the pages of my family photo albums is very telling about growth and change in my life! The lines of my face are deeper and more plentiful, my hair has changed dramatically, and parts of me have certainly grown. As I reflect on those images I can see what others cannot - there have been changes and growth that are invisible to the eye but that are knowable in the heart. Much of my younger life was devoted to achieving perfect scores and hosting the perfect party. Somehow I thought then that if I worked hard enough and long enough I could grow into the perfect mom and wife and therapist. I've shared Shakespeare's quote with you before, and I offer it again today as a beginning place of reflection:

"Everything that grows holds in perfection but for a moment..."

     I suppose this quote has become more meaningful to me out of my personal struggle to let go of perfectionism coupled with a desire to grow in grace and wisdom as well as in years! Possibility and change offer such great gifts. Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) is reported to have said, "To grow is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often." Change involves risk and ambivalence, but is it the very place where we may embrace and fully engage life.

Day 233 - Light Inside Pain

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

-Mary Oliver

   The words "gift" does not usually appear as a compliment to darkness. Yet caregivers understand this. They have seen light appear in the middle of darkness. They know the wisdom offered to us by Mother Theresa. In a documentary about her, these words emerged:
   "There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then, suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways."
   How have you seen this light emerge?

-Erie Chapman

Days 231 & 232 - Your Favorite Quote

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. 
- Aristotle (382-322 B.C.E)

   The above line is listed as the greatest quote of all time (101 Greatest Inspirational Quotes from Quoteleaf.) It wouldn't be my first choice. My life-changing line is the three-word description of God by Saint John: "God is love." When I discovered that line, it altered the way I think about God...and life.
   But this essay is not really about the greatest quote. It's about the impact the great language of others has in your life. Someone sends you a card with the line, "Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do," (Coach John Wooden) and I ask you, How do lines like these change your life, if at all?...

Days 228-230 - Open Forum

Thanks to those of you who have been kind enough to regularly share your thoughts in the week-ending open forum. Here's another opportunity. Click on "Comment" below.
-erie

Day 227 - Being With

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

     The wealth and values that have been spoken in this week's journal cannot be bought, and prove again that Love is priceless. To gaze upon the deep colors of a cloud painted sunset or the fragile and intricate veins of a deeply hued flower are indeed windows through which we may glimpse the sacred texture of the soul. And, as Erie Chapman has so eloquently framed Love's impact, as our lives are broadened and deepened, our souls are enriched. To stop and look and really see, to listen and truly hear, to walk alongside and feel the breath and gentle touch of the one nearby are gifts that cannot be purchased and fall into the place of the extra-ordinary. Beyond being with each other, the soul also longs to be with itself in solitude, silence, quiet, and hiddenness which serve to broaden and deepen life when we are willing to rest there. When I speak of hiddenness, I am not speaking of hiding from but as an intimate means to being with.

Days 225 & 226 - Our Soul's Desire

"The personality's wish [is] to have power over experience, to control all events and consequences, and the soul's wish [is] to have power through experience, no matter what that might be." - David Whyte

   There is nothing more difficult for the human mind to comprehend than the notion of soul. Still, we try. After all, if our soul's represent the essential and eternal within, why wouldn't we want to understand what they are? And isn't there a deeper way to understand the soul than through some phrase on a Hallmark card?
   What David Whyte appears to be telling us is that the soul does not seek to manage the height of our joy, the depth of our pain, or the flat nature of our boredom. Instead, the soul grows through our life experience.
The wider and richer our life, the more our soul is enriched.
   This actually makes a beautiful kind of sense and may be helpful to caregivers caught in wondering about God's "willingness" to allow suffering in the world. Whyte writes, "For the personality, bankruptcy or failure may be a disaster, for the soul it may be grist for its strangely joyful mill..."
   Perhaps our souls benefit from the widest possible range of life experience flowing through us. The soul can be seen as a sacred oriental rug - the denser the thread, the deeper the dyes, then the richer the rug...

Day 224 - Afternoon Church

   Happy Monday. I hope all your Mondays will be as happy as your weekends.
   On Sunday, my wife and I went to church in the afternoon. Our church walls were trees. Our arched ceiling was formed by clouds moving with the wind.
   We sat on a bench overlooking the Japanese Garden at our favorite Nashville spot, Cheekwood Gardens. From another pew we watched dragonflies dance above a pond, some of them mating in the middle of their zig zagging flight. As one four-winged dragonfly landed on a stone before us, the sun jeweled her wings.
   Away from sermons and far from the world tragedies of Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia and Darfur, we breathed air freed from the high humidity that characterizes most summer days in the south.   
   We didn't talk about friends or family or illnesses. We didn't discuss the suffering in the inner city or the pain in rural areas where medical care remains inadequate.
   Instead, we talked about the service underway before us: the choir of birds singing their afternoon hymns, the liturgy of shadows shifting beneath evergreens, the ritual of bamboo trees tapping each other on the shoulder.
   Our benediction arrived when, walking out, we happened upon a fanciful gift created by the imaginative staff of Cheekwood. A team of inspired staff members had created an Arthurian castle nearby the pond...

Days 221-223 - Open Forum

We invite you to use these days as a special opportunity to share your thoughts with other caregivers. Click on Comments, below.
Thank you,
-erie

Day 220 - Choose Joy!

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

     Many of us are familiar with the concept of compassion fatigue. According to one researcher, compassion fatigue is "a function of bearing witness to the suffering of others." In many of the helping professions, healing and hope come from the caregiver's ability to be present with authenticity, positive regard, and empathy. That very empathy, however, opens the opportunity in the caregiver to not just understand but to also internalize the distress felt by the one who is in pain. A more recent finding suggests that many caregivers may also experience compassion satisfaction. As described by researchers, compassion satisfaction plays a key role in reducing compassion fatigue and in mitigating burnout. Compassion satisfaction is among the harmonies I hear sung by the voice of Love, calling us to joy.

Day 219 - Spirituality vs. Religion

"Soul...is the indefinable essence of a person's spirit and being." - David Whyte

   As leader of an organization with a religious name, I am often asked about the engagement of religion in our work. I typically reply that, although the Baptist Healing Trust is grounded in the Christian tradition, our main premise, Love, is universal.
   Still, some are uncomfortable with the idea of engaging with an organization that carries a denominational name. They seem to fear that we will evangelize a particular faith perspective.
   This confusion of religion and spirituality pervades and sometimes poisons the American work place. Because our constitution separates church and state, we somehow conclude that this means we must also separate our spirituality from our work. David Whyte contends that too many of us leave our hearts out in the car when we come into work. He's right.
   The disengagement of the soul converts us into robots. The engagement of our spirit enables us to live as complete beings as we encounter our work.
   The key question is not whether you work for a faith-focused organization. The crucial issue is whether your soul is truly engaged in your life. One way we gauge this is by asking whether a given individual thinks of their work as a calling or "just a job."
   How would you answer this question of "calling?" How do you engage your spirit without triggering issues of religion?

-Erie Chapman

p.s. Today is my 42nd wedding anniversary. I am grateful to my wife for staying with me all these decades.

Let the beauty we love, be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi

Day 218 - Artists as Healers

   I was sitting in a hotel lobby in the Boston area recently when an embodiment of healing energy walked in. Although my companions didn't know who he was, they immediately sensed the same light and power emanating from this figure that millions have experienced.
   Yo-Yo Ma is a healer who happens to be a musician. He is currently the most famous cellist in the world. If you've every seen as well as heard him perform, you will know what I mean about his healing energy.
   You don't have to know anything about classical music to appreciate Ma's gifts. He exudes such passion and joy with his playing that you simply feel better as you watch and listen.
   One of the healing gifts least appreciated by the traditional medical world is the power of the arts. Stories of the impact of music and art therapy in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, and shelters for abused women and children abound. Yet the tendency is to tell these stories as anecdotes - as if they're simply quaint occurrences. 
   Artistic expression, both by performers and listeners, involves the movement of energy. Illness represents toxic energy. The arts can dilute some of this poison by the way they introduce Love's energy into the patient's presence. The arrival of beauty counteracts the ugliness of illness.
   The arts are also healing for caregivers. Great caregivers always appreciate the power of the arts because they know what the arts do for them.
   How do you engage the arts in your life?...

Day 217 - Caregiver Creativity

"...the sound and the fury of an individual's creative life are the elemental waters missing from the dehydrated workday." - David Whyte

   "What would happen if you and I were flying through the clouds on a magic carpet and we started to fall?" I asked my four-year-old grandson recently. "A Power Ranger would jump out and save us," he answered instantly (and with complete confidence.)
   Children possess the genius of imagination. Free of the constraints of ordinary reality, they can concoct lovely and honest answers to complicated questions.
   It's easy and popular to blame our work settings and our supervisors for "dehydrating" our creative powers. Perhaps it's time for us to take some accountability for restoring our imagination and applying it in the workplace as a tool for healing. 
   Why wait for the latest version of some clunky strategic plan to stumble down the hallway from the executive offices? Caregivers are the ones positioned to heal patients and clients, not executives.
   "Contained fire is the vital force that we direct to accomplish firstly a task, but more importantly, a way of being," David Whyte writes in his seminal work, The Heart Aroused.
   How do we stir the embers of our "contained fire" awakening their heat and light for healing?...

Days 214-216 - Daughters & Caregivers

   It's a strange and wonderful thing to see your daughter with her daughter. As a father, I look at my daughter's daughter and find myself thinking back 36 years to the time when Tia was the little baby in my arms. Of course, I feel all the same love for her today that I felt back then - and more.
   Today, our family celebrates my daughter's birthday with her. It's wonderful to see her displaying her special gifts as a caregiver as she looks after her seven-month old. All the characteristics we would want in our own caregiver are present with Tia as she expresses her love to her child.
   What are the characteristics of an ideal caregiver and how do they compare to the gifts of mothering? Today is our traditional Open Forum day. Perhaps it is an opportunity for us to reflect on the relationship between mothering and fathering on the one hand and caring for the poor and vulnerable through charitable work. What are the similarities and what, if any are the differences?
   Click on Comments, below, to share your thoughts.

-Erie Chapman