Journal of Sacred Work

Days 58-60 - Emily's Gifts to Caregivers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all...

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

[The only authenticated photograph of Emily Dickinson]

"I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves." (Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Thomas Higgenson)

   She never mothered a child or was married. Yet, her words live as deep spiritual gifts for caregivers willing to unwrap them.
   No matter how often I encounter her, I never cease to be astounded by the gorgeous contributions of this hermit-like woman. That is why I have written about her before and recommend her to caregivers again.      
   In all of her later years, Emily was so shy (I like to call her Emily because it makes me feel like her friend) that she sometimes refused to meet guests face to face, encountering rare visitors by talking with them while sitting out of sight in another room. She spent most of her life in a single bedroom in a single house in Amherst, Mass. From there she wrote words that continue to illuminate hearts around the world.

   This poet's story is impossible. As unlikely as that of Vincent Van Gogh or Edgar Allen Poe.
   Today, Emily's behavior would no doubt draw visits from psychiatrists, pronouncements of a personality disorder, and prescriptions for Prozac. Back then, she found expression by penning some of the finest poems ever written by an American. Today, it would be so difficult to find the silence Emily lived in every day. How slow her hours would seem to we who live surrounded by electric noise. To think that only seven of Emily's hundreds of poems were published in her lifetime is to mourn the blindness of her contemporaries who failed to recognize the jewel among them.
   Intrigued by the mystery of her life, modern American and poet laureate Billy Collins imagined himself into Emily's bedroom with an intimacy no man of her time ever experienced. His poem brings us into her presence in a startling fashion. His writing is called "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" and may be found easily on the internet. It begins:

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull...

   Collins engages an eloquence that flows from describing details and actions with an exquisite attention that recommends itself to countless men who wonder how to join love-making with grace. Collins own precious gift was learned, in part, from Dickinson herself. His delicate undressing of the imaginary Emily draws us, perhaps, a bit closer to this woman who would never have bared her body to a man but who opened her soul to us all.

  In a different way, I rarely experience personal pain without thinking of another of Emily's immortal poems: 

After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone

This is the Hour of Lead
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow
First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go

   Emily writes to us across the ages about "hope, the thing with feathers," and offers us that hope and grace to this day. Do we hear her? Just now, you may imagine Emily Dickinson, sitting in the next room, her hands in her white-dressed lap. How does she speak to you...and you to her?

-Erie Chapman

Day 57 - Living Today

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

    "...so we never live, but we hope to live." - Blaise Pascal.

 

     It seemed like a small shift at first and now feels like a tidal wave looming over our heads, and words like collapse, crisis, disaster are commonplace in speaking of our potential economic future. My son, a financial planner, shared a story of a new support group formed in New York City for anyone dating or married to someone in the financial sector – the group calls itself “Dating a Banker Anonymous.” Although at first glance the telling is somewhat humorous, the reality is grimmer. I heard a friend tell last week that she has just stopped opening her bills and another who just throws his financial statements into the trash, unopened. For some, comforts of the past are giving way to discomfort, while for others what has been hard is just getting harder.

     An insightful writer, Jill Caratini, seems also an astute observer of life and recently reminded me of the renewed timeliness of the writings of Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. In the 17^th century Pascal wrote of our human tendency towards escapism when fear is alive and hope seems out of reach. In his theological work titled Pensées ("Thoughts") Pascal observes “So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not think of the only one which belongs to us. And so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us... So we never live, but we hope to live” (emphasis mine).

 

     The choice to find solace in our remembrances of the past or in our dreams of some hoped-for future may be natural, if not tempting. Staying in bed seems very reasonable and safer to some. In Caratini’s words, however, when life is preoccupied with what once was or what might be, it is something less than living. Moreover, ours is a history marked by expressions, prophecies, stories, and assurances uttered in the very midst of famines, warfare, plagues, exile, and losses of every kind. These voices remind us that the antidote to fear is love, the perfect love which casts out despair and weariness.

 

     Christians have entered this week into the season of Lent, a time of reflection and preparation, a time of hope for what will come, but most of all a time of remembering to remember – perfect Love casts out fear. As caregivers we come into contact everyday with others who would love to escape the pain and suffering of today. They look to us for hope for a better tomorrow. For many that tomorrow will not come as we may wish it and dream it to be. But we can always offer Love, that perfect Love that casts out fear. Of course, we cannot give what we do not have. In this moment of time in which so many are living in fear, where are you living? Is your life founded in Love?  In the private places of your life, Love awaits – listen, look, rest.

Day 56 - In Private Places

Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.  -Adolph Gotlieb 1903-74

   I often reflect on how irrelevant both the arts and the notion of risk must seem to the everyday lives of caregivers. Tending to those in need, often both at work and at home, most caregivers come to private moments in states of exhaustion. The shower or bath needs to be completed rapidly because, beyond the door, a clock calls. When bed is finally encountered, there may be no thought of graceful entry into the welcome privacy of a blanket over the shoulders and a pillow beneath the head.
   Instead, cranked through the machinery of life like Charlie Chaplin's character in Modern Times, we may miss the precious nature of our private times.
   What feelings cross your heart in those few moments between entering bed and entering sleep? Does your heart ever find room for the transcendence of the kind of art called poetry?
   Spanning the nine verses of his poem ARS Poetica, Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz writes straight forwardly:

   In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
   a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
   so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
   and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

   Where else but in poetry might we find such evocative language? Where else do we read of the universal longing we all share?

   And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
   and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
   People therefore preserve silent integrity,
   thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors

   Isn't it stunning how hard we work to preserve this sense of "silent integrity" among our peers? Whatever size audience we choose to play to, we want to be accepted and approved some place. In the course of this striving for approval, do we lean away from our truest heart?

   The purpose of poetry is to remind us
   how difficult it is to remain just one person,
   for our house is open, there are no keys to the doors,
   and invisible guests come in and out at will.

   Any art form we engage tugs us toward the center of our being - toward the core of the "one person" within us that spends so much time trying to be many different people to tohers. That is some of what I felt yesterday while staring at a rectangular painting of Gottlieb's that first appears solid red and then, upon further study, reveals the presence of subtle red squares within the red rectangle. What does our heart hear from such an abstract-seeming image? As my long-time friend Don observed, "One thing we know is that he is not trying to teach us how to paint a square." The unspoken question: Was this art? Milowz offers a similar meditation on this issue in the last stanza of his poem:

   What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
   as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
   under unbearable duress and only with the hope
   that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

   In your private places and in your most personal moments, I hope for you to be the kind of instrument through which Love's great spirit flows. Amid your busy life, are you finding private places to refresh your life and to hear the sound of your own, most sacred voice?

-Erie Chapman

Day 55 - Why Questions Matter

    My grandson, just turned five, asked his dad last week, "How did everyone get born...including the first person? How did that first person get born?"
   Miles, of course, doesn't know about either Darwinian theory or the various theologies that seek to answer such profound questions. What's important, in this story, is that Miles is lucky enough to have parents who will sincerely discuss such questions with him rather than to dismiss them with the kind of brush off so many children receive during their early, curious phases. One way my grandson, and all of the rest of us, know that we matter is by how people respond to the questions we pose. Do we really feel heard?
   When we brush off the sincere questions of others, we demean both them and ourselves. Caregivers are constantly in the position of being able to choose whether to truthfully and respectfully answer the questions of anxiously patients or to duck them.
   Recently, The New York Times presented a series of articles decrying the sad state of caregiving in America's hospitals. One anecdote described a daughter who asked a nurse how soon her mother, who had received a knee replacement, might be going home.
   "Knees take awhile," the nurse said.
   For the daughter her mother was not, of course, a "knee."
   Another daughter whose mother was diagnosed with cancer approached a nurse at a Nashville hospital. "This is probably a silly question," the daughter said, "but how difficult will chemotherapy be for my mom?"
   "You're right," the nurse said, as she turned and walked away "that is a silly question."
   Our questions, and how we respond to the questions of others, signal the level of our humanity at that moment. We are born wondering because life itself is a puzzle for any insightful person. How did the first person "get born?" Do we really know? The answer, it turns out, is not nearly so important as the way we honor the question.
   Do you feel heard in this world? How do you hear what is beneath the questions that rise before you each day from family, friends, patients, co-workers?

-Erie Chapman

Day 54 - A New "Caring Code" Ritual - Something to Build On

...They listened at his heart.
Little-less-nothing!-and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
    -Robert Frost, from "Out, Out-"

    Having now written hundreds of entries to you, I begin to worry that I repeat myself. I know I've shared with you something I could once make happen when I was running hospitals. Now, I hope to count on you to create this in your setting. The idea is from a Harvard Medical School resident doctor who thought of it after she attended a code which "failed."
   "After the patient was pronounced dead," she said, "everyone turned and just walked away." The majesty of the team effort to save a life vanished the moment spirit left body. Each member of the code team, "...since they/Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."
   The Harvard doctor saw a clear and elegant solution. She proposed that at the end of a code, if the patient dies, the head of the code team would simply ask the group to pause for about ten seconds "to honor the life of this person."
   I am so pleased that at least one hospital, Mercy Gilbert in Arizona, has adopted this practice. It is heart-breaking to me that Mercy Gilbert is the only place I know whose CEO, Laurie Eberst, has had the passion and persistence to make this beautiful practice come alive.
   Why is this idea so important? Because this new, caring-code ritual honors not only the humanity of the person who has died, but the humanity of the team that sought to save that life. Absent such loving rituals, the work of saving lives runs the risk of becoming transactional instead of transcendent.
   There is something you can do about this. Pass along the new code ritual idea (and perhaps this essay) to people in your organization who can implement this change. We are "not the one dead." We can turn away to other matters, or we can introduce a small and beautiful change into our corner of the world. It's a little thing, and a big thing. It's the kind of turn that opens the door to Love's light.
   What do you think? Let us know if this works in your setting.

-Erie Chapman

Days 51-53 - The Comet's Pulsing Rose

   The following piece of a poem by Nobel Prize poet Seamus Heaney is from a six-part work he titled "Ministry of Fear." The last two line are what stay with me for they speak of the chance each of us is given with our lives - to live with "meagre heat" or to live"The comet's pulsing rose."
   Heaney's lines brought to my mind a photo of Dane Dakotas, taken around 1980. It portrays the timeless beauty of a female nude, wave-curled amid rocks somewhat the way a diamond is gripped by its setting. The woman seems so much like the pulsing rose of a comet. Yet, she also seems trapped the way so many of our hearts are trapped within spirits frightened to express themselves. We spend so much time "blowing up sparks for their meagre heat," struggling toward our idea of survival and reaching for safety. Sometimes I find myself thinking that it is our struggle for safety that keeps "the comet's pulsing rose" from blooming forth within us and without.
   How can we free the diamond within us to spin and sparkle and rise like a wave to meet the passing comet - and ride it to the oblivion to which we are already doomed?
   Here is the fragment from Heaney:

...Rain comes down through the alders,
Its low conducive voices
Mutter about let-downs and erosions
And yet each drop recalls

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner emigre, grown long-haired
And thorughtful; a wood-kerne

Escaped from the massacre,
taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;

Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing rose

-Erie Chapman

Day 50 - More than a Balancing Act

   "We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them."  - Alain De Botton 

 

     There are days as a caregiver when my life feels like a scene from the variety shows on TV in the late 1950s – plates perched precariously atop separate poles, lined up in a row, with someone running carefully but in a quietly frantic way from one to another to another working hard to keep them spinning fast enough to stay on their perches. The really good practitioners could successfully get them all spinning and then take them back down, one by one. My memory is that there were very few really good practitioners – inevitably at least one dish crashed to the floor.

     Have you ever felt that frantic hope that you can keep the dishes spinning? And maybe you’ve felt the deep disappointment or shame when one falls. At the very least is the exhaustion that comes from trying so hard to keep balanced these things we call work, life, and self.

     David Whyte makes a compelling argument that much of our exhaustion comes from attempts to manage what are, in essence, three separate, lifelong commitments. He refers to these commitments as marriages: the marriage that is in a relationship with another, the marriage that is to our vocation/avocation, and the marriage or commitment we seek to make to ourselves, that elusive thing we call “self.” Our struggle comes when we alternately give attention and effort to one and then the others, seeking at all times to find some sort of balance. No doubt you have felt the effects of that effort: “when I am work I am thinking about/worrying about/wishing to be with family,” or “when I take a vacation day I can’t stop thinking about all the work I’ve left at my desk.” We take a little from this commitment in order to give to a different one. As caregivers our commitment to self seems to often get lost in the shuffle, left in pieces on the floor long ago.

     Whyte suggests that in that separatist approach we actually impoverish each aspect of the being we are, as these “marriages” are all simply different expressions of the way we each belong to and participate in this life. Rather than trading time and bartering with each one for energy or attention – trying in vain to balance work, life, and self – we can instead choose to live life integrated, allowing each expression to embolden the others. His argument seems so simple on the surface: “Instead of asking myself what more I need to do, and killing myself and my creative powers in the process of attempting to carry it out, I ask myself: What is the courageous conversation I am not having?”

     Perhaps more challenging is Whyte’s assertion that our refusal to have these conversations out loud – to share dreams, hopes, needs for each of our marriages with and within the others – makes no difference as they will happen whether we consciously participate in the conversation or not. Our world needs your Love – to ignore the conversations is to diminish the potential to Love grandly, exquisitely, and boldly in response to the world’s deepest needs. So, I wonder, how’s your conversation going?

 

References from David Whyte (2009) The Three Marriages. Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship. New York: Riverhead Books.

Day 49 - Inclinations Toward Love - A Darwinian Paradox

Vervet monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in so doing, they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked (Okasha, 2003).
 
   Charles Darwin, the great father of evolution whose 200th birthday is being celebrated this week and who was born during the same 24 hours as Abraham Lincoln, is famous for positing the notion of "survival of the fittest." We, as animals, act primarily in our own self interest, he believed.
   But the animal world offers endless examples of altruistic behavior by animals, like that of the Vervet money referenced above. Why do animals, including those that are unrelated to each other, seek to be helpful when they have nothing to gain?
   Scientists, struggling to defend the core Darwinian hypothesis, are anxious to offer an array of reasons. Darwin himself was confused by animal altruism. Among his apologists are those who say that what appears to be "loving" behavior by animals is actually a function of group-based evolutionary theory. Animals act to protect others in their species for the very purpose of preserving their group.
   But closer examination suggests that "group selection" is a faulty hypothesis because such a gene could not survive over time.
   Although I accept the fundamentals of Darwin's theory of evolution, I don't know the scientific answer to the question of animal alturism. It simply appears to me that loving behavior is the positive energy of God in this world. If that energy force can travel through humans, why can't it travel through animals or plants or a page of music or the canvas bearing the painting of a nude?
   Gorillas have 24 chromosomes. Humans have 23. Can the difference of this one chromosome cause one species to experience Love while the other doesn't? I doubt it.
   More likely, God's Love exists in far more ways than scientists may understand. I see Love wherever beauty and truth thrive - whether in a caregiver, a flower, a sparrow, a monkey or a stanza of poetry.
   Our goal is not to question Love's existence or to doubt through what form it may appear. Our opportunity is to nurture Love wherever she may appear.
   What do you think?

Erie Chapman

Day 48 - How Listening Can Save Lives

                    [The Good Samaritan - by Vincent Van Gogh]

It was my little sister's birthday. Nine friends and family, including my wife and I, sat around a table at a restaurant in Toledo, Ohio, this past weekend laughing and exchanging stories about how we'd met Martha and what a great pal she was. It was a light-hearted occasion. Different members of the group shared funny stories. Laughter lifted all our hearts.
   One of the funniest members of the group, a former security guard at the hospital where Martha works, had the group laughing until tears ran down our faces. Suddenly, his voice changed.
   "What I really want to tell everyone is that fifteen years ago, shortly after I met Martha, I had been very depressed. I felt so desperate and lonely I was ready to take my life. Martha was the only person who listened to me. She was the only one who showed up for me in my life. It was her presence that kept me from killing myself...So I'm still in this world because of Martha's kindness."
   Everyone sat stunned for a moment. Then, I saw a different kind of tears coming from Martha's eyes as her heart was remembering those dark moments for her friend. She knew he'd been sad, But, until that moment, she hadn't known that her listening heart had saved a life. "I knew you'd been sad. I really didn't know you'd been suicidal."
   "But, I was," her friend said. "I've got eight brothers and sisters. None of them cared. I've got other friends. None of them could hear me except you."
   The true Good Samaritan lives Love in more ways than just by physically lifting another out of danger. We know the power of listening. We know that listening is often the foundation of loving care. But, we often don't know that listening with Love can actually save a life.
   What do you think?

Erie Chapman

Day 47 - Cyber Communities

Remember the entries we all wrote in our high school yearbooks - especially the ones in our senior year? "Great knowing you, Marilyn." "Thanks for our years together on the football team, Larry." "Let's always stay in touch, Bobbie."
   Then life intervenes. People with whom we once shared a special connection vanish from our lives.
   Over the weekend, I decided to join an unusual village. The members of this community do not meet in person. There are no circle gatherings in which friends look into each other's eyes and share their joys and concerns. Through this odd new creation, called Facebook, I find myself connecting with people, including long lost classmates, in a new way.
   The members of Facebook, a contemporary creation only possible in this computer generation, meet in cyberspace. In a way partly similar to the community of the Journal, members of Facebook create a network of common interest for the purpose of sharing. By inputting personal information in your individual profile, such as schools attended, local church and hometown, members suddenly discover a whole array of people with whom they share something in common. Some are old acquaintances. Some are passing encounters which enter a new level through this odd meeting place.
   My son and daughters and their spouses are members of Facebook. I've already learned things about them that they might not have bothered to volunteer to me - things that help me feel closer to each of them.
   For those unfamiliar with the Facebook world or other similar systems, your personal page is somewhat protected by the fact that the network enables you to only admit people you know. Naturally, there is always the potential of abuse. And Facebook, I'm sure, has it's own list of downsides including the possibility of wasting time on the computer that could be devoted to more personal encounters.Thus far, though, Facebook seems to work for most participants.
   What intrigues me about these new cyber-forums, including Linked-in and Skype, is the way they provide a chance for human connection. I rarely see any of my 15 cousins, but I'm already in touch with three of them through this new community.
   The communities to which we belong bring meaning to our lives. In person gatherings are obviously superior to electronic interactions. But cyber-connections, like the one I am creating with you now through the Journal, give us a new way to see each other's hearts.
   Living Love is a daily challenge for caregivers. This is true, in part, because of the high degree to which we feel like strangers to each other. Caregivers are constantly confronted with intimate encounters with strangers. We are all part of the community of humanity. Anything which can lower the barriers that separate us provides the potential for us to celebrate our humanity with each other. This is a way that Love's doors are opened.
   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

Days 44-46 - The Valentine Shoebox & Other Signs of Love

    

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. - Elizabeth Barret Browning (1850)

We all brought empty shoe boxes to my first grade classroom at Warner Elementary School in Westwood, California. There were slots cut into the top so that our shoe box could act as a mail box to receive cards from other children.
   Our teacher had arranged this for the Friday before Valentine's Day. We were all given time to make Valentines out of construction paper, glue and crayons. Then came the big part. When the little hand was on the 10 and the big hand was on the 12, the teacher said: "Children, you may now put your Valentines into the shoe boxes of your friends. And they will do the same for you."
   Even at that young age, something immediately struck me as mean about this. In the midst of my happiness over my own box full of cards, I looked up to see other children with no cards at all. Hastily, the teacher went around to these children and dropped in a card from her. One girl with an empty box started to cry. "What's fun about this?" I thought to myself as I handed her one of my cards.
   It's hard for Love to thrive is an atmosphere where some are "loved" and others are excluded.
   Early in life, children are given the strong signal that there are some people to whom we can give our affection and trust and others who don't "deserve it." It's a devilish sort of message. It tells us that Love is some kind of quantitative thing that we need to dole out carefully lest we run out.
   The reason Love doesn't run out is that it doesn't come from us, it comes through us. Yes, I know that Valentine's Day celebrates the exclusivity of romantic love. There are special people who have captured our hearts. For them, we will give them something heart-shaped to celebrate the intimacy of romance.
   What about those whose shoe boxes will be empty this Valentine's Day? Is there some way that we, as caregivers, can honor these people? Is there some way we can live Love by finding a lonely soul and handing them the gift of our Love?
   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

Day 43 - The Hero Within

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

 

        “Heroes from time immemorial have lived for something greater than themselves “ (Pearson, author of The Hero Within). President Lincoln was such a hero, one who lived for his country, for principle, and ultimately for history. By definition, heroes have a transcendent function, says Pearson, and bring renewed life not only to themselves but to the world. Progress is not automatic but rather results from aggregate decisions of individuals who consider not only their own good, but the greater good of society, humankind, and the planet.

     Pearson describes a number of heroic archetypes, including the Altruist which, when it emerges in our lives, helps us connect to our capacity for love and devotion, and even to an instinct to sacrifice ourselves when necessary for the greater good. In ancient days revered saints and martyrs were known to have given their lives for country or faith. Today such sacrifice is expressed in our willingness to forgo individual achievement to be a good team player, to sacrifice for our children, and to reach out the poor and vulnerable. This is altruism at its best, and the most authentic expression of altruism comes from love. And there is a paradox – the more freely and fearlessly we give from authentic love, the less it feels like sacrifice and the more is becomes a way of being, a place of living out of abundance and generosity.

 

     The altruist hero is asked to face some hard questions – what do you love enough to die for? What do you really value? What do you want to give to the world? What do you want your legacy to be? On the other side of these questions, whether we can give voice to the answers or not, is the opportunity to be kind and caring to others, to be attentive to what others need, to pay attention.   

 

Abraham Lincoln paid attention and let the altruist within step out into the light of love and right. And today, we are better because he did.

Day 42 - With Malice Toward None

    It's hard to imagine a more unlikely location for the birth of one of the greatest leaders in history. The original cabin, located in a remote area of rural Kentucky, was not seen as important enough or stable enough to be preserved into the present time. But the replica stands as strong evidence that it's not our location of birth that matters so much as what we do with the life to which we are given.

   There is no possibility that Thomas Lincoln and his wife Nancy, two uneducated farmers, could have foreseen that the son born to them February 12, 1809 would one day be revered as an almost Christ-like example of leadership. Equally unpredictable would be that John Wilkes Booth, born into a successful family of British actors, would become vilified across history as Lincoln's assassin.

   What is both predictable and true is that Lincoln's stirring language of Love will endure so long as American history is alive. When, in his second inaugural, Lincoln spoke the phrase: "With malice toward none. With charity towards all" it was against the backdrop of a country-ripping war that had stirred hatred and hostility. Indeed, as Lincoln sought to sew seeds of Love, his assassin, flooded with anger, stood just yards away among the crowd of onlookers. As Lincoln spoke eloquent words of Love and forgiveness, Booth let hate's energy flow through him as he laid plans to murder America's political savior.

   Lincoln's Love speaks to all caregivers because we all know we want to live according to the "better angels of our nature." We want to live "with malice toward none." And yet our human condition makes us constantly vulnerable to thoughts and actions which may harm the very people we seek most to help. We want to help the old lady with Alzheimer's, but her very condition may sometimes feel aggravating. We want to help the person with alcoholism, but the disease can challenge our ability to be compassionate.

   Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. He was a President who let Love enable him to reach out to enemies and friends alike. This anniversary is a time when caregivers can, perhaps for the first time, encounter Lincoln the Caregiver, not just Lincoln the President during the Civil War. For all who seek to be healers, Lincoln has set the bar high. And yet, by his own statement, he was just an ordinary fellow born in a log cabin with a dirt floor. We know that it was Love that enabled this humble man to rise as a great lot that yet shines across this world.

   How does Lincoln inspire you as a caregiver?

-Erie Chapman

  

Day 41 - Love's pathways through this world

    What does it mean to be a path of God's Love? We humans are generally imperfect vehicles. Born into this world with a natural desire for self preservation, we find it hard to surrender our will in order to receive God's Love and pass it on. Love is not meant to be held, but transmitted. The more we try to own Love, the more it will elude us. The more we seek to let Love pass through us, the more we will experience the ineffable grace which only Love's passage through us can bring.
   For many years, I had the wrong notion that the value of a life was measured by its impact. The greater the impact, the greater the life. I thought in terms of life forces. Some people had a strong life energy. Others frittered away that energy and lived lives that were less meaningful. I was wrong.
   The truth is that the value of life is not determined by the radius of its impact. Instead, we are simply greater or lesser vehicles of God's Love.
   This is why I have such great admiration for the caregivers of the earth. I love caregivers because they are dedicated to being lenses through which Love's light passes. There is no greater mission on this earth than to be a pathway for Love. It's a difficult challenge. Surrendering to Love means letting go of many of the things we think we want for ourselves. When we are wondering how to make Love based decisions, it may be that we need to return to the wisdom in a sentence I've written here before: Whatever the question, Love is the answer.
   What does it mean to you to be a prism for God's Love?

-Erie Chapman

Day 40 - Replacing Pity With Compassion

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
to see oursels as ithers see us.    - Robert Burns (above - Scottish - 1759-1796)

   The dentist, exhausted from a long day of volunteering at a clinic for the poor, had experienced enough. The small boy before him had terrible teeth. "When did you last brush?" the dentist asked.
   "It's been a pretty long time," the boy said. "Maybe a month."
   "That's ridiculous," the dentist shouted at the boy and his mother. "You should be brushing twice a day, every single day."
   The boy looked down. So did his mother. They knew the dentist was right. He had shamed them. "We'll try to do better," the mother said.
   After the pair left the clinic, the dentist raged at his hygienist: "Can you imagine a mother letting her son go a whole month without brushing?" he fumed.
   "There's something I should have told you," the hygienist said. "That mother and her son have been living in their car."
   Now it was the dentist who was humiliated. "Oh my God," he said. "I cannot imagine that."
   He's right. How many of us can truly imagine what it's like to be living in the cabin of an old car every day and night week after week?
   More than two hundred years ago, the Scottish poet Robert Burns challenged us to see ourselves as others see us. The dentist suddenly saw himself as not a loving volunteer but a harsh judge.
   How often do caregivers look down with pity and condescension on the homeless alcoholic, the obese mom, the drug addict? How often do we hear that someone is dying of lung cancer and ask "Did he smoke?" If the answer is Yes, how often do we find ourselves shaking our heads as if to say, "Well, he asked for it." Perhaps, to ease our own pain, we like to think the smoker deserved the painful death he will face instead of experiencing the loving care we have it in our power to offer.
   What do you think? How do you fight the temptation to judge instead of Love? I know I have often been guilty of feeling pity instead of compassion. How do you transform your pity into Love?

-Erie Chapman 

Erie's movie recommendations for films that help caregivers learn more about compassion:

1) The Reader

2) Slumdog Millionaire

3) Revolutionary Road

Days 37-39 - A Listening Caregiver

[Below is another terrific column suggested to the Journal by nurse Liz Wessel]

Listening Is Powerful Medicine

by Alicia Conill

Listen Now [5 min 6 sec]

“Listening to someone's story costs less than expensive diagnostic testing but is key to healing and diagnosis.” - Alicia Conill, M.D.

 

Courtesy Alicia Conill

Dr. Alicia Conill is a clinical associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. A native of Cuba, Conill also directs a nonprofit that teaches patients and caregivers how to better cope with chronic illness and disability.

Weekend Edition Sunday, February 1, 2009 · I believe listening is powerful medicine.

Studies have shown it takes a physician about 18 seconds to interrupt a patient after he begins talking.

It was Sunday. I had one last patient to see. I approached her room in a hurry and stood at the doorway. She was an older woman, sitting at the edge of the bed, struggling to put socks on her swollen feet. I crossed the threshold, spoke quickly to the nurse, scanned her chart noting she was in stable condition. I was almost in the clear.

I leaned on the bedrail looking down at her. She asked if I could help put on her socks. Instead, I launched into a monologue that went something like this: "How are you feeling? Your sugars and blood pressure were high but they're better today. The nurse mentioned you're anxious to see your son who's visiting you today. It's nice to have family visit from far away. I bet you really look forward to seeing him."

She stopped me with a stern, authoritative voice. "Sit down, doctor. This is my story, not your story."

I was surprised and embarrassed. I sat down. I helped her with the socks. She began to tell me that her only son lived around the corner from her, but she had not seen him in five years. She believed that the stress of this contributed greatly to her health problems. After hearing her story and putting on her socks, I asked if there was anything else I could do for her. She shook her head no and smiled. All she wanted me to do was to listen.

Each story is different. Some are detailed; others are vague. Some have a beginning, middle and end. Others wander without a clear conclusion. Some are true; others not. Yet all those things do not really matter. What matters to the storyteller is that the story is heard — without interruption, assumption or judgment.

Listening to someone's story costs less than expensive diagnostic testing but is key to healing and diagnosis.

I often thought of what that woman taught me, and I reminded myself of the importance of stopping, sitting down and truly listening. And, not long after, in an unexpected twist, I became the patient, with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at age 31. Now, 20 years later, I sit all the time — in a wheelchair.

For as long as I could, I continued to see patients from my chair, but I had to resign when my hands were affected. I still teach med students and other health care professionals, but now from the perspective of physician and patient.

I tell them I believe in the power of listening. I tell them I know firsthand that immeasurable healing takes place within me when someone stops, sits down and listens to my story.

Independently produced for Weekend Edition Sunday by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.

Day 36: Living a Life Undivided

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

     Some scholars refer to the phenomenon as emotional labor - the effort it takes to live when feeling or acting differently than what is experienced within. The greatest movements of our country have taken place when, as Parker Palmer has noted, isolated individuals who suffer from a situation that needs changing to decide to live "divided no more." They come to a juncture where they must choose between allowing selfhood to die or claim the identity and integrity from which whole living comes.

     Many of us know what it feels like to live a divided life. Inwardly we exprience one imperative for our lives but outwardly we respond to very different ones. Our complex world makes that a reality for a great number of us, but sometimes the extreme of "dividedness" becomes intolerable and action is required to bring the outer life into congruency with the inner life. When that happens to one, and then another, and then another individual we see and experience the birth of change in our society. This is not, however, a strategic or planned decision made in order to achieve a particular goal. According to Palmer, the power of such change lies in the fact that it originates in naming and claiming one's identity and integrity rather than accusing one's "enemies" of lacking the same. Palmer calls this a "Rosa Parks decision." Her decision was to begin living a life as she understood her self to have been created - fully human - and no longer relegated to the back of the bus. In her own words, Rosa Parks was just tired, or at least no more tired than she usually felt at the end of work day: "No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

     The dream of changing the heart of healthcare, of returning to our roots of being and ministry, has been nurtured for years, and is nurtured every day in each of your own hearts. But I wonder what it will take for all of us, any of us, to finally be tired of giving in. When will we decide to live our lives undivided no more? Most of us speak courageously in these pages and find community here. Some of us have been willing to take our dreams to a greater public, sharing our hopes with those who lead and have power in our healthcare organizations. Such dialogues inevitably attract conflicting influences, but there is where we will find our hearts' reward.

     The influence of Rosa Parks' decision was not an overnight transformation of society but rather modest steps that have taken years to unfold. Stories of racism and hate are still told every day, and every culture is touched. The power of change, of Love, lies within each one of us and communes in co-creation as we, one by one, make small and large "Rosa Parks decisions" every day. The question we must face is whether we will step out with courage, over and over, to live our lives undivided. Loves calls us out of the shadows and waits for us there, in the Light. Be bold, dear Lovers! Live Love, undivided no more.

Day 35 - The Meaning of Life x 6 Billion

   Thirty-five years ago I stood in front of the exit to the Jeep assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio with a Super 8 mm camera and a microphone. At the 3 o'clock shift change, I asked several workers leaving the plant to answer one question for the camera: What is the meaning of life? Years later, the Monty Python group made a film with the same entertaining name. The question, can be serious, random, or ridiculous.

     But the question about the meaning of our life is, perhaps, the central philosophical inquiry of civilization. No one ever finds an answer that will satisfy everyone. Last time I noticed, the census showed that there are about six billion of us currently occupying the planet. By mid-century, there may be as many as nine billion. It's a staggering number.
   What is the meaning of the life of a tribal leader in northern Afghanistan or a tribal chief in the jungles of the Congo or a nursing supervisor at a thousand-bed hospital in New York? Some measure their life meaning by the amount of power they imagine they have over the lives of others?
   What is the meaning of a life that is born into the neonatal intensive care unit and expires fifteen minutes later? Is that baby's life "meaning" measured by the amount of time lived, by the grief shown by parents, family, and nurses?

   The powerful sometimes imagine their lives are more meaningful than the weak. The rich may think they matter more than the poor. The healthy sometimes act condescendingly toward the sick. Some 25-year-olds may believe their lives have more meaning than that of any 95-year old.
   We can quickly say that every life has meaning. Every life has equal value. Every life is divine.
   But, what is the meaning of the life of someone who lives their time on earth making the lives of others as miserable as possible? How do we assess the value of someone who abuses those around them including children, who murders, tortures, rapes? How do we assess the divine meaning of the life of someone we classify as "evil."
   Thirty-five years ago, the workers leaving the Jeep plant gave mostly lovely answers. As they paused briefly at the microphone on an October afternoon, they mentioned family, friends and God. For me, the most entertaining answer came from a middle-aged man who said nothing. As he walked to his car, he simply raised his hands to the air and shrugged his shoulders.
   That shoulder shrug is the answer so many give. Yet, people starving in Darfur at this moment probably aren't asking the "meaning" question. When we are reduced to struggling for food and water, questions about meaning seem like insults.
   As you gaze about your day, encountering vulnerable people in the course of your caregiving, I wonder how you answer this question. Part of the trick in the inquiry is that I've perhaps created a false confusion between the meaning of life and its impact. Presidents and Prime Ministers may be in the position to have the most influence on the most people. But, you and I know that their lives have no more meaning than the life of the patient in the bed before us. When we are giving loving care, it doesn't matter if the person in need is a dying baby or a hardened criminal. Love sees need and seeks to heal it.
   When we are vehicles of Love, everything has meaning. When we are not, nothing does.

-Erie Chapman

Day 34 - Crystal Balls vs. Mirrors

 

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.  - Sydney Harris

   I used to read Sydney Harris' syndicated column regularly. It made a great impression on me from the time I first encountered him as a 16-year-old high school student.
    We encounter mirrors every morning. Most of us work hard trying to rearrange the reality presented there. Presto, the crystal ball! Who doesn't love the image of hope presented in the glass orb through whose eye we can imagine a bright future?
   Crystal balls seem like fun. Mirrors seem like work.
   But crystal balls are guesses. Mirrors provide current reality of a particular kind.
   Most powerful of all, for caregivers, is neither of the above. What counts is to have a seeing heart.
   A friend of mine recently experienced a double loss. In a short space of time he lost first his wife and then his hospital job. For a long time, he was inconsolable. On the other side of this darkness, he sees the world more brightly than he ever has. The fire of his twin pains have burnished his soul, burning away false views and distracting noise. Now, he finds deep joy in things like playing with his dog and talking with his teenage children.
   In the midst of this terrible economy, my friend has less money and more joy. He finds himself uniquely equipped to deal with financial hardship because he understands the empty happiness money provides. In other words, whether he is gazing into his crystal ball or the unmeltable ice of the mirror, he is fine, just fine. His joy doesn't arise from anything outside, but from within.
   What do you see in your mirror?

-Erie Chapman  

Day 33 - The Gift of a "Noticing Eye"

"Today I wrote some words that will see print. Maybe they will last forever and that someone will read them there, ink making a light scratch on his mind or hers." - John Updike

   When the great American writer John Updike passed away last week (January 27, 2009 - lung cancer) at the age of 76 I felt a lump rising in my throat. I had no idea he was sick. I had no notion he was so young. Like all great writers I've encountered, he created characters that have become a part of my life and the life of millions. Author Nicolas Delbanco said that Updike was a great writer because he had an especially "noticing eye." And that is what all great caregivers have, a "noticing eye" that sees suffering, sees the pathway to healing, and takes it. Updike made more than a "light scratch" on the minds of so many.
   Updike won almost every literary award a writer can win. His work, especially his Rabbit quadrilogy (beginning with Rabbit Run) is considered to be among the best writing of the 20th century. You may also know him as the author of the Witches of Eastwick, made into a movie starring Jack Nicholson.
   What does Updike's life have to do with caregiving? It was words by Updike and others talking about him that may help us better understand the way in which our striving enriches our spiritual energy. Our tendency to think what we say, write and do is important only if we get credit for it turns out to be a mistake. It is the act of creating and of appreciating creations that enriches us, and sometimes others.
   This is true of caregivers. When we strive to live Love in caring for others, applause from the patient or from a supervisor for our efforts is not what matters. Our spirits, and the collective spirit of the world, are enhanced by such efforts.
   In a recent Vanity Fair Magazine article, actor Dustin Hoffman was asked his motto. He quoted Oscar Wilde: "The true mystery of the world is the visible. Not the invisible."

   Since caregivers are always so busy, it may seem a chore to read an Updike book or other writing. Yet, perhaps this little sample from an Updike writing that "saw print" called "The Rescue" will offer some insight into the heart of a man with a "noticing eye." 

I think back with greater satisfaction upon a yellow bird, a gold finch that had flown into the garden shed and could not get out, battering its wings on the deceptive light of the dusty, warped, shut window.

Without much reflection for once, I stepped to where its panicked heart was making commotion, the flared wings drumming, and with clumsy, soft hands pinned it against a pane, held loosely cupped this agitated essence of the air, and through the open door released it like a self-flung ball to all that lovely, perishing outdoors. - John Updike

-Erie Chapman