Journal of Sacred Work

Days 149-151 - Weekend Meditation

The painting that accompanies today's caregiver meditation was done by Liz Wessel, M.S.

Butterfly Rain

The rain that grays
the forest

finds yellow wings
that dart & weave.

Unable to dodge the wet
the butterfly rows beneath

the overhang
of my cabin roof,

fans, waits
for the sun.

When my childhood

hand first closed
on a butterfly

I remember how
his wing dust

sun-brushed my
fingers the way that,

now, the
softening rain

butterflies my
upturned face.

-Erie Chapman

Day 148 - Conversations in Community

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

     "In this healing space, we share from our hearts in an atmosphere of acceptance and we are learning some new tools for healthy dialogue. It gives me hope" - Liz Wessel, speaking about her small circle of women friends' journey in communication and community.

      Community is where we learn to honor each other not with flattery but with love informed by truth. It is where we learn forgiveness, to give and receive, to love and be loved. Conversation may be among the greatest gifts of community; in conversation all relationships may find meaning and hope. Author Gordon T. Smith suggests it is in conversation that "we grow in wisdom, grace and strength. It is through conversation that we are encouraged, that we fill one another with courage. When we are encouraged, we are able to overcome our fears or at least keep them at bay - and know that our fears do not drive the engine of our hearts and lives." 

     In conversation we have the opportunity to listen - to attend to one another, honoring, accepting, and responding to what matters most in each other's lives. Some have proposed the idea that nothing demonstrates more love for another than the act of deep listening. Listening, at its best, resists the urge to tell or teach or counsel. Smith has noted that in community, the act of speaking before listening most often leads us to jump to conclusions or make premature assumptions about what is going to be said and, in the process, conversation literally dies. When we do speak in conversation it is a gift when it comes without innuendo, sarcasm, pretense or posturing. For some, a patronizing tone has become habitual, words no longer connected to hearing much less to one's heart. What is important to understand, says Smith, is that such habits undermine the possibility for genuine conversation.

     Conversations in community create the possibility for each of us to enter into joy and sorrow, acknowleging and living through pain, anger, sadness, happiness, or discouragement. It does not seem likely that we will encounter such freedom in every community, or that we will have many opportunitites like the neighbors lingering across the fence in Pissarro's Conversation (pictured above). What joy, however, when those special few find in each other that healing space where both hope and Love live and breathe. What immense healing when our patients experience the deep listening of a caregiver's heart. Deep and healing community may seem impossible to some caregivers who live under oppresive leadership. It does seem possible, however, that we may each bring ourselves into every encounter with genuineness and willingness to listen. And maybe, just maybe, a conversation will begin in that sacred place.

    

Day 147 - Presence to the Depressed

"Depression has no friends, Alex. Find courage or you'll find yourself alone." Judas in Who Loves Judas? by Dane Dakota

   It takes courage for those who are depressed to engage with the world of people who seem happy. It takes another kind of courage for friends, family and caregivers to be present to the special needs of our fellow beings trapped in the cloud of depression.

   The theory goes that everyone wants to be happy. Why wouldn't we? Every message we hear, from the time we are children, preaches "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." When we're around someone who's feeling down, the temptation is to want to "snap them" out of it, as if a click of fingers could magically make the clouds disappear.

   I have heard depression described as anger turned inwards. If that is so, what is the source of this hostility? One possibility is the messages our ego sends our way. We're told not to take things personally, and yet we're also told to open our hearts. Sensitive egos (including mine) are easily hurt. It's a short distance from this hurt to anger. When anger can't find an external target, it turns inward, gradually transforming our serotonin levels from healthy to toxic. I'm no physician, but it's also possible that our brain chemistry changes in ways that trigger melancholy.

  In any case, I count myself among the luckiest people on earth. By most measures, there is very little, if anything, the world could give me that I don't already have. But lucky does not guarantee happiness. Strangely, I still manage to find myself slipping into temporary states of melancholy. When one of these visited me about 12 years ago and stayed too long, I was fortunate to find an angelic caregiver, a spiritual adviser who remained present to me until, gradually, the light reappeared in my life.

   During my darkest time, it was easy to see that most other people around me did not want to be around me. I had become contagious. We quarantine people with contagious illness. And the depressed quickly find themselves isolated. As the character of Judas says in the quote above, "There's no audience for depression." And that is why it takes courage for caregivers to help patients emerge from the terrible cave of self-loathing and the profound feeling of worthlessness that accompanies depression.

   The very feeling of joy that arrives in my heart when I celebrate my precious grandchildren is tinged with thoughts of how irrelevant I am in the lives of my own children. The darker side of my soul tells me that the gift of their success and good health is simultaneously a reminder of how much they don't need me. This, of course, is the curse of a hyper-sensitive ego. Such egos need massive amounts of affirmation beyond that which the world is able to give.

   Perhaps the real "cure" for such egotism is not courage, but the recognition that gratitude is a great pathway to Love's light. There are other "treatments"  I engage to drive back what Churchill called his "black dog." I offer them in hopes that might help you as a caregiver, or someone you love.

1) Find a spiritual companion or psychologist who is trained to deal with depression.

2) Move around. Physical activity is a recognized way to ease mild depression.

3) Divert your thoughts away from yourself to someone or something else. By the time your thoughts return to you, the darkness may have left.

4) Prayer and/or meditation can be healing. When I'm depressed, I do NOT pray for the clouds to leave. Instead, I turn my prayers to gratitude and the needs of others.

5) If none of these work, it may be time for one of the relatively new and often effective serotonin-uptake inhibitors like Prozac or one of its progeny.

   It is a great gift to find caregivers here and there who possess both the courage and the skill to appreciate the role of loving presence for those who are traveling a dark chapter in their lives. This loving presence never passes judgment on the depressed or tells them they have no reason to be depressed.

   Loving caregivers are pathways for Love.

-Erie Chapman

Day 146 - The Lap of Silence

   Every caregiver knows how hard it is to rest. Many forces block the path to quiet. One of those is our inner voice that often shouts at us that we can't rest. Too many people need us. In order to serve, we need to find moments of silence and do draw from that silence the energy to live Love. Turn off the cell phone for five minutes. Turn your back on the computer. Close the door to the world so you may find a few moments to restore your spirit.

The Lap of Silence

Let yourself fall

silent.

The work will wait.

The people will live.

 

The traffic will swim its

desperate strokes without you.

This is your time to collapse

into the lap of silence.

 

Curl in the quilted corner

that needs you.

The silence loves your

company.

 

Breathe the song

of your center.

Hear the air sway,

the hammock swing.

 

The sea’s torso swells like yours,

sighing with the moon’s tides.

Ride, this current of quiet

into rest.  

-Erie Chapman

Day 145 - Caregiver Memorial Day

   As we remember those who have sacrificed their lives in the service to their country, I invite you to consider caregivers who have lived for their patients.
   Today, I remember Dr. Harold Poneman, whose great gifts of healing and round-the-clock commitment brought healing to the thousands for whom he cared. I remember, also, my friends Marian Hamm, R.N., and Tracy Wimberly, R.N., who remain lights on the face of this earth although they are long retired from direct caregiving.
   Millions upon millions of our fellow beings have spent their work lives looking after the needs of others. They have trained their minds to find answers to disease and opened their hearts to mend ours.
   For each and all of them, Happy Memorial Day. Thank you for your sacred work.
   Who are the caregivers you remember?

-Erie Chapman

Day 142-144 - Fun-day

First of all, public congratulations to my colleague, Cathy Self, who was awarded her PhD on May 9! Anyone who has traveled this journey knows how long and harrowing it can be. We're grateful to have Dr. Self as a member of our team at the Trust.

Second, Dr. Self sent me some relaxation therapy for all caregivers in the form of the following link, which comes from a scene shot in the waiting room of the Mayo Clinic:

http://www.fark.com/cgi/vidplayer.pl?IDLink=4365716

Happy Fun-day and Weekend.

-Erie Chapman

Day 141 - The Possibility of Miracles

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

"We turn not older with years, but newer every day" - Emily Dickinson.

     Some astrophysicists have devoted their work to the proposition that life exists in many other places and dimensions of time. Other theorists and scientists have suggested life, as we know it and understand it, is far more rare. Author John Izzo notes that the only thing we know for certain is that life surrounds us here and now. He defines a miracle as "an extraordinary event that we cannot explain" and offers the idea that we are surrounded by miracles and are, indeed, living a miracle.

     "This fact that I am writing this and you are pondering where you stand on the matter is a miracle," writes Izzo. We celebrate the miracle of new life created between a man and a woman, the miracle of a sunset, the wonder and miracle that this planet revolves at all around a massive sun. And there are the everyday miracles of friendship, hot soup, and a place to safely rest at night. But maybe, "maybe we are so surrounded by miracles that we start to miss them, to take them for granted. And maybe, just maybe, life would be very different, and more profoundly good, if we thought about it more often and remembered how miraculous it all is. Perhaps then we would start treating it all with just a little more respect, a little more care, a shade more awe, and maybe the miracles will keep happening (John Izzo)."

     My colleague Jennifer Oldham has noted we seem to pay attention to what is miraculous only in its absence. The miracle of friendship is too often recognized only when it is betrayed, the miracle of acceptance longed for in the face of rejection. Perhaps it is a good thing to ponder, to recognize in this moment the miracles that surround us, and most of all the miracle of ourselves. Perhaps today we may ponder the miracle of healing we hold in our hands and hearts, the potential that rests in each and every day and in each and every encounter. I have seen in your words and lives the miracle of Love. Where have you seen a miracle today?

Day 140 - Secret Struggles

   Secrets twine through us like the bones of trees that support the darkness.

    On a lovely afternoon in May, 1963, my doctor sent a cloud across the sun. "You have an incurable disease," he told me. "You might not live to age 40. You're five times more likely to contract cancer. Your prognosis is not good."
   If I wanted to beat his prediction, he said, I would need to live a careful life filled with as little stress as possible.
   "But, I'd like to be a lawyer," I told him. "I'm also considering a career in politics."
   "Out of the question," he said. 'That kind of work will kill you."
   In the spring of '63, President John Kennedy still lived. Millions of young women and men, including me, were inspired by his example. Politics seemed like an appealing choice back then.
   I was nineteen years old and a sophomore at Northwestern University. And I was ambitious.
   What my doctor told me remained a secret for much of my life. I had contracted an auto-immune illness called Crohn's disease in that awful spring. And I kept that news to myself. I didn't want people thinking I was disabled, a sort of cripple. I didn't want anyone's pity. I didn't want this disease to control my life. So, I struggled with this secret by myself.
   Of course, my parents knew. But, they didn't understand. Back then, you couldn't just Google Crohn's disease and get a sense of what that illness was about. Eventually, I told my fiancee who became (and still is) my wife. She carried the secret with me, sharing my burden through the long nights when my body was inflamed as it attacked itself.
   Fortunately, I ignored my doctor's advice and became not just a lawyer, but a trial attorney. During law school, I had a brief flirtation with politics when I became a staff aid to a prominent Congressman.
   Fate, in the form of a kind old fellow named Bruce Trumm, drew me into the strange world of hospital leadership. Meanwhile, I told no one else about my secret struggle for many years.
   Don't all of us carry on some secret struggle within us? A difference between acute pain and a chronic illness is that we may develop some level of amnesia for a specific episode of agony. Chronic illness, on the other hand, provides a daily reminder of life's discomfort. It can help us stay present to the pain of others.
   Every patient who comes to the hospital or a charity with an obvious affliction is treated by a caregiver who has her or his own secret struggle churning within. These secret struggles can awaken within us the compassion we need to express when caring for the vulnerable patients before us.
   We need to be in touch with our own pain in order to relate to the agony of others. At the same time, we need to maintain our strength so that we can bring aid to those who need our help.
   The source of our strength rests in the endless power of Love. It is Love which provides our light and our salvation. When we let Love shine through us, our secrets depart from the shadows and dissolve in the light. In the presence of Love, secrets lose their power to frighten and terrorize us.
   How do your secret struggles inform your caregiving?

Erie Chapman

Day 138-139 - Michelangelo the Caregiver

   Nicodemus wanted to talk with Jesus. But, he was afraid of being criticized by his colleagues, so he visited Jesus at night.

   Michelangelo was subjected to constant crossfire from various voices within the church about his art. Some compelled him to paint veils across some of his nudes. Fortunately, some of his greatest art, including the David (above,) survives uncovered. As an artist and a genius, Michelangelo's courage is healing for caregivers today. If we allow ourselves to revel in the line and shape and music of his statue instead of acting nervous about its nudity, we will find ourselves in the presence of Love. Life without such art would, for me, not be worth living.

   When plans for the Eiffel Tower were unveiled, many Parisians thought it was ugly. Some sued to block its construction. Fortunately, they failed.

   Fear drives so many life decisions when Love should be our guide. So many of the most gorgeous and important ideas that have found expression across history faced fierce cross-fire when they were first introduced. In our everyday world, caregivers are constantly called upon to decide when to speak up and when to remain silent. Most, fearing the risk of offending others or of facing personal consequences, keep their best and truest thoughts to themselves.

   Fine art illuminates what some consider limited thinking on the part of much of the public. Even though art is supposed to provoke and challenge us, some people insist on wanting to censor artistic expression. When the Impressionists first presented their work, they were not only ridiculed, but their work was barred from all major museums of the time. "Why don't they paint a realistic image of a tree or a pear," outraged Parisians complained. Parochial thinking narrows the universe of what is beautiful to the obvious: a flower, a tree that looks like a tree, a bluebird landing on a fence. All of these can be lovely. But to limit art to such things is to straight-jacket beauty.

   I asked psychologist Dr. Thomas Knowles-Bagwell about this. He told me, "Some people try to block provocative art, including nudes, because it touches their fear." Healthy thinking, guided by Love, calls us to a higher place.

   It's a short distance from suppressing art to suppressing the art of caregiving.

   "Why do we need to see people naked in a painting or a photograph," some complain. "Couldn't the artist have done just as good a job without exposing us to 'everything?'" The simple answer is "no." Fortunately, there are obvious examples like Michelangelo's statue of David. Would this statue be a masterpiece if the artist had been compelled to cover up his subject? Clearly not. The essence of great art, like great religion, is indescribable.

   At the opposite extreme is pornography which, of course, I find disgusting and degrading. Yet, we can say that any mature person who seeks to appreciate true art will come to know that censorship is the enemy of beauty. The line is often hard to fine which the reason courts have leaned toward freedom of expression subjected to reasonable boundaries. For example, age limits have been placed on some exhibits and commercial establishments to protect the young. 

   If art is in the eye of the beholder, what about ugliness? Some think nude images like the David and thousands of other artworks should not, like pornography, be presented because such art might inflame the passions of people with sexual addictions. If we determine what can be created and shown based upon the tastes of the mentally ill, than we will have allowed the insane to determine the tastes of the sane.

   In general, should we keep quiet because what we say, with words or with art, even if right, true, and beautiful, might offend someone? Sometimes. But, not always. The Supreme Court gave a sound answer to this question by determining that speech should be free so long as it does not offend the minds of "reasonable people." So we are not free to shout fire in a crowded theater because that would cause panic. Most other forms of speech are now allowed in this great democracy. 

   One friend of mine said recently that not doing something was not the same as doing something. I believe her implication was that inaction may be less offensive than action. But inaction is, itself, an action of a sort and can be deeply offensive. An oft-quoted phrase is that "all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing." Millions of people living in my region of the country kept quiet for decades about the injustice being done to African-Americans. "Good people" heard other "good people" admit it wasn't right to discriminate. But, these same "good people" didn't want to upset their friends, so they remained silent - and the tragedy of discrimination continued.

   It is time for all of us to speak up on behalf of the patients and first line caregivers who are, together, mistreated by our healthcare system. Hospital executives, in particular, should be taken to task for the outrageous disdain with which many of them treat caregivers. 

   Of course, this is all very controversial stuff. It's easier, I suppose, to stay quiet in the presence of injustice - to spend our lives suppressing the expression of fairness so we don't offend the status quo. Personally, I find this position offensive. It offends the vulnerable who need for the strong to speak up on their behalf. It forces truth and beauty into the shadows and only allows them to emerge through very narrow doorways. Worst of all, it offends the voice of Love.

   What do you think?

Erie Chapman

Days 135-137 - The Art in Our Work

"Whenever I can feel a Bach fugue in my work, I feel I have arrived." - legendary photo-artist Edward Weston

   Beauty is always present in the middle of caregiving - sometimes in the midst of what seems like the greatest kind of drudgery. When do you notice that art has revealed herself in your work? How does this help you discover meaning?

-Erie Chapman

Day 134 - What Will You Stand For?

     Sometimes the consequences of love asks a giving of self beyond what may appear necessary or essential. Yet it seems that some of us have learned to live out of distrust and self-protection. Living authentically and with integrity of all that makes each of us a unique gift as members of humanity takes courage and sometimes boldness. Creating community takes compassion and great love.

     David Whyte asks in his poem (recorded in yesterday's post in this journal) "I want to know if you are prepared to live in this world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand." I want to stand on the side of love, compassion, and empathy - always, even and especially in the face of difference. Of course in the face of moral wrong I must also take a stand. I cringed at the headline in my local paper that proclaimed "Christians back torture despite faith." Buried in the article is the detail of the percentage (44%) of regular church goers who actually believe that. I stand as a Christian and I think torture is wrong. Yet there are those who make sweeping generalizations and jump to incomplete and inaccurate assumptions about me because of my professed faith and religious affiliation. If I sometimes feel misjudged how much more, I wonder, do others feel misunderstood.

     Mary Mackenzie speaks of empathy as a potent healer: "I cannot say it enough. Most of us rarely feel truly heard and understood. Empathy, the simple act of hearing someone and focusing your attention on them, can be incredibly healing. Try to listen for the feelings and needs behind someone's words. This isn't always easy, but the results are remarkable." Her words remind me of the gentle and deeply wise counsel offered by Dr. Rachel Remen - listen, she offers. Just listen. "A loving silence," writes Dr. Remen, "often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well intentioned words."

     My own words, though well-intentioned, still too often get in the way. Words seem to do that, with judgment, reaction, and hurt rushing in for the ride. Love calls us to respond, sometimes indeed with tough mindedness yet always with tender heartedness. I wonder today if you feel truly heard and understood. What helps you feel heard and known? How can we as caregivers best offer healing through empathy?

Day 133 - "That Fierce Embrace"

At the Journal, we turn often to the gifts of David Whyte for the wisdom and art he brings. His writing defines both the challenge of life and the high strength we seek to meet that challenge as we encounter "that fierce embrace" with ourselves.
Thanks to a reader for bringing this particular poem of Whyte's to my attention.
 
Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God. 

David Whyte
      from Fire in the Earth
      ©1992 Many Rivers Press

Day 132 - Waiting For Justice - Respecting Every Culture

"Sitting Bull: You must take them out of our lands.
Col. Nelson Miles: What precisely are your lands?
Sitting Bull:These are the places where my people lived before you whites first came."
  -From the film Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - based on the book by Dee Brown

   One of the great myths you and I grew up with is this strange headline: "Columbus Discovered America." This blatantly Euro-centric view reflects the wrong-headed notion that centuries of Native American life and its rich culture in America were meaningless. According to this view, America didn't matter until Europeans "discovered" it. This arrogance was reflected by the shameful treatment so many Europeans inflicted on the native people they encountered
   Four hundred eighty-one years after Columbus' "discovery" a group of Lakota Indians took a last stand (in 1973) against government oppression at a small South Dakota town called Wounded Knee. This story was retold again on May 11 in a PBS documentary: "We Shall Remain." What happened at Wounded Knee was perhaps the last armed attack on Native Americans by the American government. Perhaps the leadership of the band of Lakota that fought in those bloody days was wrong to choose violence. But, their frustration and righteous indignation emerges clearly in the PBS documentary.
   According to the leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Russell Means, "Wounded Knee happened because Indian people wanted to survive as Indians and there wasn't any way to survive, so we made a stand and made a statement, but now Indian people are beginning to rebound, rebound according to their [concept of] 'Beauty.' And that's really what's necessary.to understand: Indian people have to become free again."
   "Free again!" Free to live their concept of Beauty.
   Across history, and inside our healthcare system, there exists a chronic human temptation that entices the powerful to oppress the vulnerable. All of us need to absorb into our hearts the energy of the second part of the three-part Serenity Prayer and find,  "...the courage to change the things we can." We, as caregivers, need to change healthcare - to stand up for patients against the oppression of our healthcare system.
   Patients of hospitals and clients of charities wait not only for healing but for justice. As caregivers, only one question needs to live at the forefront of our consciousness. The question is not, "Does this patient have insurance?" The question is not, "Does this patient come from a culture like mine?" The only relevant question is: "What does this person need?
   Europeans oppressed Native Americans because of their bias that the European way was the the only right way. Native Americans, according to this arrogant view, were "uncivilized" and needed to be "taught" (as in "forced") to live like Europeans. This meant that European ways and European religion must be shoved down the throats of "these heathen savages" as they were often called by arriving boats of Englishmen, people like my own ancestors, who came to this land in 1635.
   Similarly, the American healthcare system often shoves patients into the role of second class citizens. For example, if I am doctor in a white coat and have a stethoscope draped around my neck and you are sick and wear nothing but one of those humiliating patient gowns, then, clearly, I am powerful and you are weak. It's a short step from this point to the position that I am better than you and you must do things my way.
   Where is justice in all of this? Justice and healing lie in listening to the most important truth about God. God is Love. And whatever the question, Love is the answer.This is why loving caregivers work in partnership with patients, not as one kind of being trying to dominate another. 

   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

Day 131 - Waiting for God

"We wait. We are bored. No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it... A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. . .In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!"  (from the play Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett)

   My fingers tapped the steering wheel. My foot edged off the brake. I was late. I needed to accelerate. But, no, the light was still red.
   One of the strangest things that I do, along with millions of others, is to imagine, subconsciously, that I can make red lights turn green, minute hands go faster (or slower) or make lines move faster at the movie theater when the feature has already started.
   Rather than take responsibility for this silly behavior, I like to blame my efforts to control the uncontrollable on my father or my older sister, both of whom always seemed to be in a hurry. But, I guess that means that my kids would now be able to blame me for their own bouts with impatience.
   Why is waiting so hard, especially for fast-food Americans? In Waiting for Godot, the characters wile away a piece of their lives waiting for someone who never comes.

   Is this like waiting for God? Is it like the way we wait for hope, for the weekend, for justice, or for Love?
   It turns out that one of the key questions for all of us is how we spend our waiting time. Do we spend it, like Godot's character, "bored to death." Do we wait for retirement and end up so resenting our jobs that we let our work lives go to waste?
   The keynote of good, patient-centered, loving care, in the minds of patients, is often a question of how long they have to wait: for the x-ray, the nurse, the doctor, the MRI, the lab results or, perhaps most crucially, for pain medication. One of the great cruelties of our health care system is the way it makes people who are already sick wait for care.
   In spite of efforts to equalize care in this country, there is no question that the poor wait longer for medical care than do the rich. For some suffering patients, waiting for relief is like waiting for God. After all, what do so many of us say when we finally gain relief? We speak those lovely two words, "Thank God."

Days 128-130 - How Humanity is "Won?"

...humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.  - Ralph Ellison

   What does this mean to you? Do you think Ellison's statement is true?

Day 127 - On the Road, Again

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

     I am on the road this week, and if all has gone as planned I am driving today - all day - through the beautiful hills of Virginia (somewhere in there is a song...) In the past few days and weeks I have been with a number of people who are deeply devoted to healing with love. Many days have been filled with long and meaninful conversations. Some days I have driven many miles, counted lots of cows and marveled at the wondrous and deep hues of sunset. Where I have lately spent my nights has been comfortable but it isn't home. I know where I belong but I am pulled to other places, in many directions. Some days I understand what my grandmother used to describe as feeling "tired to the bone."

     In conversations with loving and devoted caregivers, found working in hospitals and charities large and small, I have heard too many overwhelmed and fragmented hearts crying for rest. The exhaustion is physical but also emotional, mental, and spiritual exhaustion described often as fatigue but almost always expressed as a complete disintegration of self and a sense of crisis within and without.

     If you've read many of my journal entries you know Henri Nouwen is among my favored authors, one I have recently savored in my reading and re-reading. He has described this crisis of our lives saying "most of us have an address but cannot be found there." Too much demands our attention and, as Nouwen has noted, "all these other things lead us so far from home that we eventually forget our true address, that is, the place where we can be addressed." This is the condition for too many of us - busy yet unconnected, filled yet unfulfilled, all over the place yet never at home.

     Love responds to our condition and wants to bring us back to the place we belong. Home is where we are known and welcomed by Love, and it is there that we truly find rest. Borrowing from Nouwen's words, I am, like you, a traveler "on the way to a sacred place" where Love holds me and welcomes me home, to the place where I belong. It's comforting to find you along the way, to walk with you, together...on the way home.

Day 126 - Owing

 Caregivers are called to give and give and then give even more. I owe this gift to you, wishing you a heart that can hold joy next to any sorrows that come. Both I and countless others owe you so much.

Owing

A skein of Canada geese
trims the oak tops,
skims the lake's skin,
tucks into the water
the way we enter bed.

Their keening over the
day's death reminds me

I owe you
what the forest
provides:

the truth
of every evergreen,
their emerald
& the way their
breath inhabits
each room of my soul;

the justice
of the cougar that lunges
for the deer's throat
as each
lusts for air;

the passion
of the lightning stroke
that splinters the sycamore,
burning her taste into
thunder's
trailing tongue.

And I owe you this:

protection
from rain, cold
& your heart's hunger;

comfort
through afternoons
when shadows frighten
you with their
length;

love
that passes through
hands & eyes
as the gratitude of a place
you have made sacred.

You are owed everything
the forest can bring
to the gracious nest
of your heart.

-Erie Chapman

Days 124 & 125 - Other Worlds

   Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, Jr. can play Beethoven on the cello with the gift of a naturally blessed musician who has struggled to develop his talent. But, his audience, until recently, was made up of homeless folks on the streets of Los Angeles. "I'm not always sure what's going on," Ayers says through the voice of actor Jamie Foxx in the new movie, The Soloist, based on the true story of the lives of Ayers and Steven Lopez, the L.A. Times columnist who brought Ayers story to public attention. The problem for Mr. Ayers is that the blessing of his talent is counterbalanced by the terrible curse of schizophrenia. For most of his life, Ayers has lived in another world, a world occupied with voices over which he has no control.
   As a caregiver, you will have encountered perhaps many who live different worlds. I speak not only of Alzheimer's patients but of typical patients as they fall under the influence of anethesia, alcohol or other mind-altering drugs.   
   Meet my new friend Don. Don has a gift. He can recall the batting averages of most major league baseball players and how each team did, whether the match was yesterday or maybe a few years ago. He can do the same "trick" with football. I didn't ask him about other sports. But I know that most of Don's day is occupied thinking about sports. So what? Isn't that true of lots of people?
   The problem is, Don doesn't know how to answer questions in a typical job interview. This is because most of his brain functions at a level most experts would describe as about second grade.
   Don's friend Billy has a gift for remembering people's names. This would seem like a handy talent. Again, a problem arises when you put Billy's ability in a setting run by people like you and me. When I met Billy, he immediately wanted to know not just my name but the exact spelling. When he got it straight, he turned to his fifteen or so colleagues in the day program at Progress, Inc (a Nashville charity) and shouted very loudly, "Hey everybody, THIS IS ERIE CHAPMAN!" "He'll remember your name forever," Donna Goodacre, head of the Center told me. Come back in ten years and he'll shout, "Hi, Mr. Chapman!"
   The folks at Progress, Inc are used to Billy. None of them responded to his announcement of my arrival. They are each living in their own consciousness and their different world leaves them isolated from the existence most people inhabit.
   How do we, as caregivers, build bridges for these afflicted beings so that they may join our "world?" Sometimes we can't. Sometimes, it's better if we don't even try. The consciousness of our world is not always a place we enjoy ourselves. And that is why some who have been traumatized by life develop amnesia or other ways of escape.
   What we can bring to Nathaniel and Don and Billy, and to each other, is the unique gift of Love. Love can be so difficult to find and offer when the patient before us is occupying an awareness far from anything we know.
   There are so many stories like the one portrayed in the movie. Schizophrenia afflicts a member of my extended family who is "fine," according to her sister, when "the voices leave her alone." My cousin Ronnie was born just hours before me in 1943. His mother's case of German Measles meant that Ronnie would be permanently deaf and unable to speak as well as profoundly challenged mentally. Another aunt of mine fell off the delivery table during the birth of my cousin, Doug. That was fifty years ago. Doug is "fine" according to his family. If you met him, you would like him. And, you would also know, instantly, that there is something "different" about Doug. He occupies a different world.
   Perhaps all of us do.

-Erie Chapman

Days 121-123 - Happy May Day...How Poets See Hospitals

   I've often wondered how the hospital or hospice experience looks to someone who doesn't work there. Most of us grow up frightened of these places. They are populated by people in various kinds of uniforms and, of course, the occupants are sick.
   I came across a fragment of a poem by Susan Mitchell in which she offers a glimpse of the deeper ways poets seem to experience everyday things:

I went to visit a friend, the hospital
room dark except for the branch
I placed in a vase before leaving,
so she might hear the buds
open, no lid no roof for them, as they persisted
in blooming, though severed,
isolated from the tree, sweating
as if running uphill, as if this coming
into blossom were a race, this
opening, all five together, an ache in
the side of the tree, the fragile
anther gasped out-

          ***
   People are forever dying and blooming in hospitals. The gift for the caregiver is that they have the chance to be present for these vital events - and for the pain that often punctuates the time in between. How do experiences change when we seek to express them in some artistic form - painting, poetry, music, or other form?
   Happy May Day to you!

-Erie Chapman

p.s. I had to look up the word 'anther.' You may know that it's the pollen-bearing part of the stamen.