Journal of Sacred Work

Days 212-214 - Open Forum

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love." – Monet

 

   How does Love overcome a caregivers need for scientific understanding?

Day 211 - The Inner Journey of Leadership

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

     Parker Palmer, author and teacher, speaks often of the spirituality of work and, in particular, of the spirituality of leadership. In much of his writing, Palmer advances the ideal that spirit, thought, and human aware-ness are the deep sources from which change is created. Most of all, Palmer seems to believe that our inner quests lead us to co-creation of the world in which we live - and each one of us is responsible for projecting into that reality either a spirit of hope or of despair. A leader, asserts Parker, is particularly capable of projecting his or her own shadow or light,  is particularly powerful in creating conditions that can be illuminating or dark, and must take particular responsibility for what's going on inside him or her self "lest the act of leadership create more harm than good." Powerful thoughts, and powerful possibilities.

     Much has been written in leadership studies of the tendency in many noted leaders to be extroverted, operating most effectively in the outer world but sometimes at the cost of an awareness of what is going on (or not) internally. The risk, of course, is that an inward and deepening journey asks that we engage with what lies hidden in the shadows and for many of us that is the place shadowed by fear. It is just easier to stay engaged with the outer world, manipulating context and content to meet needs and desires. Palmer advocates for the only true way as "in and through" those dark places that we want to deny, moving on until at last we arrive at the place where we can rest in the one thing given to us all - the heart that cares.

     Shadows in leadership may include believing that who I am depends on what I do. Identity, suggests Palmer, doesn't depend on titles or degrees or functions. It only depends on the simple fact that we are each created as a child of God, valued and treasured. When a leader knows that without uncertainty, organization changes and work is expressed with meaning and purpose. Another shadow cradles the belief that ultimate responsibility for all things of importance rests with me. Some authors have referred to this mis-belief as functional atheism. Such belief ultimately leads to burnout, stress, broken relationships, and surely unhealthy priorities. And, of course, fear lives in the shadows - fear of silence, of stillness, of non-doing, fear of uncertainty or lack of control.

     These are some of our shadows, and like Beowulf we must also attend to what lies beyond and beneath in the form of not just the monster Grendle, but Grendle's mother. We need each other to find our way in and through the shadow. The journey is personal but our work asks that it not be necessarily private. As caregivers we need community; as leaders we need to especially pay attention to the inner quest. The German poet, Ranier Maria Rilke, called us to this shared journey with these words, offered here in a closing invitation: "Love is this- that two solitudes border, protect, and salute one another."

    

Day 210 - Summers of "Doing Nothing"

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,/ blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,/ handfuls of grain.  -Mary Oliver

   With so many things to do in our hectic lives, we may sometimes wish for nothing to do. What better season than summer to fulfill such a wish?  

   In our school days, we yearned for long summer break. I remember chapters of my childhood when I played alone in my California neighborhood. I hid behind trees firing at enemies with my Hopalong Cassidy cap pistols. Then I jumped on my horse (a red Schwinn bike) put my U.S. Keds to the pedals, and sailed off like the wind, hundreds of cavalrymen following my lead.

   Sometimes, we drove east to my parents hometown of Elyria, Ohio. There, on the farm where my father grew up, I swung from trees like Tarzan and jumped into the Black River, swiming to my heart's content, fishing with my dad, and rowing an old boat upstream.

   Doing "nothing," of course, usally means doing something we deeply enjoy.

   Sometimes, I actually tried to do nothing. I lay beneath a bush, looked up at the eucalyptus trees, and daydreamed about cowboys and generals and Presidents. But, it wouldn't be long before I felt called to action to protect the neighborhood from marauding bands of pirates and bank robbers. 

   It's interesting to see how many of my contemporaries, now in their sixties, spend more and more time recalling their childhood summers - almost as if it were impossible to create any kind of joy in the current season of their lives. They may harken back, as well, to their first days as a doctor or nurse or social worker.

   Through the misted lens of memory, they often see a special glow haloing their early days of caregiving.

   Other than a week or two of vacation, there is no summer break for most caregivers. What life can teach us now has to do with something we may not have understood as children: How to savor the gifts of the summer can offer us right now.

   Of course, we can choose to complain about summer's heat or her thunderstorms. But what about summer's "luminous fruit,/ blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,/ handfuls of grain"?

   How do you experience summer's most joyful gifts? How do you "do" nothing?

-Erie Chapman

Day 209 - Spiritual Inquiry

   A cartoon in a recent edition of The New Yorker magazine shows a man with an anxious look sitting in an armchair. His wife is instrucing him: "You should never engage in unsupervised introspection."

   In addition to pastors, psychiatrists and pyschologists, there is a whole new set of occupations springing up in America to offer help to each of us with our "introspection." Life coaches are now available to help us maximize our life experience. Spiritual guides are availabe to aid us in probing the depths of our spirituality. Combined with these are a growing army of fitness trainers to make us exercise, yoga teachers to help us increase our flexibility and our sense of calm, meditation trainers to help us nurture the center of our serenity, and integrative medicine practitioners who meld the best of eastern and western medicine.

   At long last, new versions of ancient healthcare practices have finally found a foothold in contemporary western civilization. In general, I think this is a good thing. Sure, it's possible to overdo anything. Sometimes, people who have spent a certain time working in these areas can even become self-righteous in passing judgment on others who, they believe, haven't yet "done their inner work."

   The fact is, many people avoid intense introspection because it's hard work and can lead any one of us to a set of very difficult questions - the central one being whether our life has any meaning or not. Yet, spiritual guides of one kind or another can be invaluable in helping us navigate our trickiest passages successfully.

   What counts is our willingness to ask ourselves these hard questions in an effort to ferret out our truth.

   Carole, a dear friend, shared with me what the opposite view can look like. A member of her Presbyterian church complained that Carole's husband was asking "too many questions about faith in church meetings." She said, "Carole, if your husband is going to keep raising so many provocative questions why doesn't he just go to a church where more people agree with him?"

   This woman doesn't want anybody disturbing her with inquiry. Clearly, she has a different idea about church than I do. She wants to be in settings where everyone agrees. 

   Perhaps, this is an understandable position for someone who either has a weak faith or a high desire for conformity and sameness. A church where everyone thinks the same thing may also be comfortable for someone who comes to church seeking complete harmony - a nice, tidy structure in the presence of as an escape from a personal life that may feel chaotic.

   As you may imagine, I prefer an environment where people are not only free to discuss different understandings of God but will challenge how faith is practiced. Those with solid faith welcome questions and discussion because the questions help them with their own introspective search. In other words, their hearts are open.

   The real choice for caregivers is to find ways to enrich their own beliefs through a balance of introspection and active expression of beliefs through work. In this way, we can be our own best spiritual guides to each other.

   In more than thirty years of advancing what I call "The Gospel of Loving Care" in hospitals and charities, I have found widely different understandings among caregivers about what Love means in their own work. Challenges from others have helped me enrich my own understandings of Love.

   The only way we make no progress in our personal spiritual journey is if we stop asking hard questions and accept easy answers.

   The caregiving milieu is a good a place as any for each of us to look into the mirror of our soul to ask ourselves: "What does my belief mean to me and how am I living Love today?"

   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

  

Day 208 - No Holding On

"...there is no holding on with love - it is all a letting go...it seems that holding on is a fear of something else."  - Karen York, Executive Vice President, Alive Hospice

   Karen York (left) and her colleagues at Nashville-based Alive Hospice work alongside death every day. 100% of their patients are terminal. Each has arrived at a remarkable moment when the idea of trying to "hold on" to life (whatever that means) becomes meaningless. Some reach this point with fear. Some come to it with Love.  In a comment posted recently in the Journal, Karen quoted Rumi: "Death comes, and what we thought/ we needed loses importance."

   As we reach the end of our days, what takes the place of what we thought was important?
   I have asked people close to death this question. Some have told me that think of family and others dear to them. One middle aged woman, on the very day she died, told me she was thinking about her relationship with God.
   No one has told me that wished they had spent more time at work or on the golf course. No one has told me they will miss their cars or their collection of things. Many have said they wished they had spent more time with loved ones or that they had lived more fully and joyfully.
   Not all, of course, die with regret. Some live their final days in gratitude.

   We don't, of course, need to wait for our last days to practice appreciation and Love.
   In the midst of your day or night as a caregiver, perhaps this is the gift of Karen's insight for us - that there is "no holding on with love." And as we let go, perhaps we can replace fear with not only Love, but gratitude.
   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

Days 205-207 - How Caregivers Elevate Their Lives

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of [a person] to elevate his [or her] life by a conscious endeavor." Henry David Thoreau

   As you perhaps know,  Thoreau came up with many of his most discerning insights while living in isolation in a cabin on Walden Pond. For those of you who toil by the bedside of sick patients or help other vulnerable people, you understand how lives are elevated.
   Our humanity is ennobled when we lift up others. The same is true when we gratefully receive the encouragement and compassion of others rather than to dismiss it.
   Today, may you see your life elevated through the mirror of someone you encounter.

Be well,
Erie

Day 204 - The Way of Love

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

"The worlds' battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet than on the most memorable battlefields in history" - Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887).

     Who is the greater hero - the one who stands and cries out with a loud voice against injustice, only to be silenced through imprisonment or death? Or is it the one who leaves everything behind so as to protect and preserve family, safety, and health? What about the one who stays to stand with hope and perseverance, quietly touching the lives of scattered individuals living in the shadows of great injustice? In healthcare systems and workplace settings across America there are tyrants as real and as unjust as those who lord over the camps of North Korea or the desert plains of Rwanda.

     It takes great courage to stand publicly and denounce what is wrong. I have witnessed the professional (and sometimes personal) demise of a number of caregivers who have chosen to take that path. They are heroes for many. And it takes great valor to walk away from a long career and strong ties in community in order to preserve (or restore) health and well-being that has suffered under the harsh hand of uncaring supervisors. As I've said goodbye to good friends who made that choice, we said we would stay in touch, but we haven't. Our community was forever changed. They are heroes for a few.

     But it also takes a special bravery to stay, quietly working beneath the shadows, bringing hope to the hopeless and compassion to those who have given up on love. And for the patient whose only hope is found in the hearts and hands of those who stay to serve, they are also heroes, and will perhaps always remain unknown. It seems love calls us at times to stay, serving from a place of authenticity, a place occupied by the heart and soul.

     Parker Palmer has said that a man or woman can skillfully use a knife to either cause harm or healing, the difference being found not in the external power but in the heart. External power seeks to control, impress, or succeed, and comes and goes with time and change. Fear dwells alongside external power. Sadly, in the hallways of many of our places of healing there are those who would seek to control with fear. Authentic power, however, emerges from within Love and perseveres, even when others would tempt with an easier path, a greater good, or a seemingly safer way.

     The Christian sacred tradition offers the Way of Love, recorded in a letter from St. Paul to the Corinthians. These words seem to me to be words from the heart of a hero:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
   Love never gives up.
   Love cares more for others than for self.
   Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
   Love doesn't strut,
   Doesn't have a swelled head,
   Doesn't force itself on others,
   Isn't always "me first,"
   Doesn't fly off the handle,
   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
   Doesn't revel when others grovel,
   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
   Puts up with anything,
   Trusts God always,
   Always looks for the best,
   Never looks back,
   But keeps going to the end. Love never dies…. (Scripture taken from The Message).

 

I wonder where are the heroes of our today? How does love inform your way?

Day 203 - The Quality of Your Day

"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts." - Henry David Thoreau (statue of Thoreau, below, before his cabin by Walden Pond)

    Sometimes, I discover that I have fallen into the odd notion that it is up to other people to "affect the quality" of my day. Perhaps, this is a carryover from early childhood when we were at the mercy of powerful people who stood above us and did affect the quality of our days.
   Adults know that it is up to each of us, as Thoreau also wrote, "to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look..." Yet, we often default to our childhood notions and allow other people's actions to damage the quality of our moments.
   My wise friend, Dr. Tom Bagwell, shared with me that he long ago heard a sermon whose message has stayed with him ever since. The minister quoted Pascal as saying that the worst sin was impatience. Impatience is an attitude devoid of God. Impatience suggests that the present moment does not matter. It is only a means of getting to the next moment. 
   I was startled at the enormous power of this idea - that impatience would actually be a sin. Yet, this thought makes complete sense. Any impatience robs the present of its potential power and sacredness.
   We like to think that some day we'll be happy, that sometime out in the future, perhaps a forthcoming weekend, perhaps a vacation, perhaps retirement itself, we will find joy. You and I know people who live their lives dreading work and living for the time when they are free of it. The tragedy of wasted hours is great - and such a negative thought process is stunningly widespread.
   Caregiving is such hard work that it is natural to hope that a given hard time will pass. Somehow, every moment has value, even the difficult ones. For these moments are also part of our sacred time here on earth.
   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

Day 202 - What News is Important

Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough.  -Walter Cronkite

   When I saw the news that legendary newsman Walter Cronkite passed away, I recalled the concern he expressed so often about the dangerous changes that were occurring in news programming. Real news, the way Cronkite viewed it, had to do with major world and national events. Yes, the death of Michael Jackson, for example would be real news. But, the extensive follow up covering every rumor and every aspect of his life was not news and would, in his opinion, push aside reports of more major events.

   I thought of his words this morning when our local newspaper reported a giant piece of news that the television stations managed to miss. At this moment, the story said, it is estimated that over 200,000 people are being held as political prisoners in North Korea in conditions indistinguishable from the Nazi concentration camps of World War II.

   Any caregiver would be appalled at the enviornment in which these people are living. According to the report, filed by Blaine Harden of The Washington Post, prisoners are fed a "diet of mostly corn and salt" causing chronic malnutrition and early death. They are given one suit of clothes for the rest of their time in prison and nothing else - no soap, no underwear, no sanitary napkins, no socks. Of course, the clothes often become rags. As if the forced labor and criminal living conditions were not bad enough, prisoners are often tortured by sadistic guards in the same way the Nazi's tortured Jews in Germany, Hutus murdered Tutsies in Rwanda, Serbs tried to wipe out Bosnian Muslims and Saddam Hussein tortured and killed Kurds in Iraq.

   What can any one of us, as caregivers, do about such horrors? Part of the answer is for us to be aware of these injustices as well as to speak up about them. That's what Cronkite was trying to tell us. If we allow ourselves to be preoccupied primarily with fluff stories about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, then we will lose our sense of the truly important news of the world. And we will turn our back on those in need.

   Politicians and news stations say that they focus more on fluff now because "that's what the people want." It's frightening to think how true this may be. 

   Meanwhile, at this moment, tens of thousands of innocent people are suffering in North Korea along with millions of others elsewhere in the world. Who will do anything about international crimes if we, as caring Americans, do not?

   And by the way, here's another quote from Walter Cronkite that describes a truth closer to home: "America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system."

   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman  

Day 201 - Reaching For Love

    It happens toward the beginning of the Hitchcock movie, Vertigo. In a race across roof tops, the character played by Jimmy Stewart ends up in the spot about which many of us have nightmares. Hanging from the edge of a tall structure we wonder if he will be saved. A policeman stands above him. There is that crucial moment. Since Jimmy is the star, it's the policeman who ends up falling to his death in the course of saving Stewart.

   The great Hitchcock understood what I have written about here before. We are born with only two fears: our startle reflex at loud noises, and our fear of falling. Every other fear we have is learned.

   Because Hitchcock knew about our inate fear, he peppered many of his films with such images: Cary Grant clinging to a Mount Rushmore rockledge in North by Northwest; Jimmy Stewart hanging from the balcony at the end of Rear Window; Martin Balsam falling backward down the stairs in Psycho.

   There is another fear that arises soon after our birth. We grow up yearning for Love and suffer when we don't get it. Newborn babies wither in the absence of love and loving touch. Yet, as adults, we seek it too.

   What do we need to do to earn Love? What causes Love to leave our side?

   Each of us has experienced abandonment at one time or another in our lives. It can be an awful and degrading feeling.

   The good news is that since God is Love, Love is always present. The hard news is that so many of us decide to cut off Love's power when we encounter people we decide we don't like.

   Caregivers can transmit Love to us when we are hanging on the edge of our "cliff." Sometimes, with reasons such as the sudden rudeness or depressive behavior of a patient or in deep fatigue, some caregivers will choose to withhold Love. Their patient, reaching for Love's hand and not receiving it, may fall into a deep chasm, waiting there for Love's return. 

   Of course, there are times when Love means letting go: the mother and father who need to let their child head off to college; the nurse who needs to let the terminal patient pass away. How are we to know what kind of Love is needed and when?

   The reason why it is so important for health leaders to love their staff is that staff who are cared for are more likely to become vehicles of Love. The same is true for caregivers as they encounter each other. Love breeds Love.

   Love knows when to hold on and when to let go. And it is Love that we seek when we are hanging onto the edge of sanity, or feel ourselves falling into isolation, dismay and melancholy.

   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

Days 198-200 - From Lost to "Found"

"...one small thing/ I've learned these years,/ how to be alone,/ and at the edge of aloneness/ how to be found by the world." - David Whyte, from "Ten Years Later"

   About fifteen years ago my son found himself lost in the middle of his beloved Boston. "I had absolutely no idea where I was and it was late at night," he told me. "For a moment, I was afraid. And then I thought how this was, for me, a safe city in which to be lost. Then, I knew I loved Boston and would always love her."

   In those moments, my son went from alone to being "found by the world." Many of us spend much of our lives feeling isolated, loneliness burning at the edges of our consciousness. Any one of us may find ourselves suddenly cast into a hospital bed, unable to speak because of a tube down our throats, unable to hear beyond the noise of machines pumping nearby. It is then that we will want to be able to feel like my son did that night in Boston - not lost, but found; surrounded by the comfort of caregivers who help us feel we have been discovered by a friendly world - and loved.

   As a caregiver, when have you felt lost and then found by a friendly and loving world?

-Erie Chapman 

Day 197 - A Sabbath Mind

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

"To the mind that is still, the world surrenders." - Taoist saying

     I met this week with a group of caregivers who serve those whose lives are centered on finding bread for today, shelter for tonight. The unmet needs represented in the room were palpable and almost incomprehensible. Stories flowed throughout the room like swift mountain streams, covering every corner, crevice, and shadow within the room. What struck me was not the power of well-intentioned social service programs so abundantly represented that day, but instead the capacity of simple presence expressed through seeing eyes and understanding hearts. From within that group of people there emerged what Parker Palmer has called a hidden wholeness, great courage, and bright vision, deep and passionate wisdom. What I experienced was a group of caregivers willing to sit quietly, patiently, though surrounded by despair and alck, listening for the answer to emerge.

     Author Wayne Muller describes the Sabbath mind as one that can be still, "a mind that can rest in delight." Muller teaches that taking a day of rest, a moment of prayer, or a time of meditation disrupts the patterns of desperation that so quickly overtake our thinking. A Sabbath mind enables within us the capacity to "see the healing that is already present in the problem." Healing, asserts Muller, makes itself known if we will but sit quietly, listen, and patiently wait. This does not mean that we will not act on behalf of others but that we understand our work to be not of creating or making but of uncovering and evoking the good that is present and ready to emerge. In Muller's words, when we seek to give care we must take care to ensure we do so with a "fragrance of tranquility."

     Our work seems to evoke more opportunity for frenetic activity than for a fragrance of tranquility, and yet our patients and fellow caregivers need most from us that sweet aroma of peace. What seems so dark at the moment eventually gives way to light if we can but rest with a Sabbath mind. Muller notes how "often in our striving for a particular result, we are not willing to be surprised by a healing we cannot imagine. Paradoxically, it is often cowardice that makes us hold on to our own small solutions; it takes infinitely more courage to surrender."

     In your place of Sacred Work, how do you find the courage to surrender to the sweet fragrance of tranquility? How will you find today a place to rest with a Sabbath mind?

Days 194-196 - Rainbow Man

I am thinking of faith now/ and the testaments of loneliness/ and what we feel we are/ worthy of in this world.  - David Whyte, from "The Truelove"

   I never met him, but you and I think we know "the type." He was one of those sidewalk preachers who wander the streets shouting sermons to disinterested cars and the deaf sky. He must have experienced agonizing loneliness and fear until he discovered something one day. 

   My friend, Tom Bagwell, told me about him. Some people called him "Rainbow Man" because he preached a particular gospel. This man, whose name I don't know, told everyone that rainbows protect us from evil. Perhaps, like Joseph in the Bible, he believed that a coat of many colors was a special thing. In his case, he believed that rainbows would protect him from some of the nightmares he must have experienced. And if they would help him, maybe rainbows would help everyone.

   While rainbows are a rare occurence; imagining them is not. When my younger sister is in pain from occasional bouts of vertigo or chronic back pain, she likes to imagine her favorite spot, a town called La Jolla on the coast of California south of where she and I grew up.

   In the movie The Sixth Sense, the boy lead, played by Haley Joel Osmet, surrounded himself with Christian icons to protect himself from the visions of dead people that plagued him. It was the only thing that brought him comfort.

   We all seek "rainbows" to transport us from the pain or boredom that sometimes invades our lives. This is, perhaps, the gift of stories - whether told through books, movies or songs. Imagination can tranport us. 

   The world before the eyes of caregivers often holds the saddest of stories. Nurses encounter the pain of their patients. Hospice workers work every day with people living their last days. Social workers at the Sexual Abuse Center in Nashville seek to bring comfort to women who have been raped. The staff of Brightstone, Inc offers respect and love to adults with developmental disabilities.

   After days and nights of dealing with such hard reality, it's no wonder we seek the comfort of stories. Perhaps, rainbows do in fact, protect us. Like hope, rainbows rise out of dark skies to spill beauty into our lives.

   What do we feel, in the words of Whyte's poem, "we are worthy of in this world?" We are all worthy of peace. Pain brings loneliness and isolation. We are all wrothy of Love.

   Compassionate caregivers are prisms through which the rainbow of Love travels They create beauty that dissolves fear in the hearts of those who, right now, may see only darkness.

-Erie Chapman

Days 191-193 - Opening & Enjoying Your Gift of Praise

 Back when my daughter (left) was a teenager, she noticed an important way to figure out what presents to give to someone else. "Notice the kinds of gifts they give to you. It's usually a clue to the kind of thing they want."

   Okay. I admit I'm one of those guys that likes electronics. But, I also know not to give my wife something like that. I made that mistake once about forty years ago. I haven't made it since, at least with her. But, there is another side to my daughter's wisdom.

   In three decades of running hospitals and health care organizations, I've noticed that most people love a particular kind of gift: sincere praise. Some need it much more than others. How do we know which ones like this "gift?"

   If you know someone who offers lots of praise, that's probably a signal that they appreciate receiving it. The confusing thing about this is our western tendency to deflect praise. If I tell someone they're great and they say, "Well, not really," does that mean they are they throwing away my gift without even opening it?  How do I know if I should keep giving this person this gift?

   The answer is that the gift of sincere affirmation is rarely wasted and hard (but not impossible) to give away too much. We all like to think we're self-sufficient and don't need praise. It is also true that in order to live in society, we need to find clues that help us determine if our actions are pleasing in the sight of others. The balance can be tricky.

   As someone who grew up with a father who heaped lots of praise on me (and occasional blame) I may have come to depend too much on what others thought and to crave their approval. Love, as always, provides the best answer for us. Accepting ourselves as loved enables us to know how to affirm the divine in others.

   In case of doubt, give the gift of honest praise. If you are one who has trouble doing this, think of something about the other person that is genuinely appealing. When you share that, you will have done your part in affirming the gifts of another. By the way, this gift has a special magic for the giver that is a part of all sincere gifts of Love.

   Caregivers are chronically under-praised. Today, and everyday, thank a caregiver you know.

-Erie Chapman 

Day 190 - The Grace of Letting Go - The Case of the Monkey Trap

[Editor's note: Cathy Self is on vacation.]

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. - Albert Camus 

   Most of the world's great religions teach a practice that can be deeply difficult for many. Jews, Christians and Muslims are commanded to "surrender" to the higher power of God.
   As a youth, and into adulthood, I have always been uncomfortable with that "surrender" word. Most people, particularly young males, are raised to secure victory, to triumph. We are taught that "giving up" suggests retreat and weakness. But, I wanted to live my faith.

   How do we surrender to God and still succeed in a world that shouts at us to compete and rewards us only if we win? It turns out that the first kind of surrender is the only way the second type of victory becomes meaningful.

   One day, I settled on the phrase "letting go." What this meant, for me, was simply letting go of the idea that it was up to me to gain a given "victory". There's nothing new about this notion. Sometimes people use the phrase "give it to God."  Still, this is difficult for many to do because it requires so much trust.  
    My friend, Dr. Tom Knowles-Bagwell (left) told me a powerful old story I had never heard. He said that long ago an African tribe developed a unique kind of cage to catch monkeys. They built the cage with an opening just big enough for the monkey to reach in. A large piece of the monkey's favorite fruit was place inside inside the cage. The monkeys would reach into the cage and grasp the fruit. But, they would be unable to remove their hand while still holding the fruit because the combination of hand and fruit was too big. The monkies would absolutely not let go of the fruit and were caught.
   How many different ways are we "caught" along our life journey because we "won't let go of the fruit?" I know that I have been no wiser than a monkey in holding on to some things and some ideas until I am trapped.

   Perhaps grace is defined by our ability to let go and trust Love.

   What do you think?

-Erie Chapman

Day 189 - Chemistry & Our Soul

   Many years ago I heard a fascinating lecture by an ophthalmologist on the impact of failing eyesight and other eye diseases on the work of major artists. This physician contended that the work of some artists changed, and sometimes became richer, because their changed eyes caused them to use odd color combination's and distorted angles.
   Did Rembrandt's age affect the genius of his work? In another way, was it Van Gogh's distorted brain chemistry that caused him to create some of the most striking and beautiful masterpieces in history? Did cocaine help Edgar Allan Poe scare us with his horror stories? Did alcohol influence the creation of some of F.Scott Fitzgerald's finest stories?
   Some psychiatrists might contend that we are our brain chemistry. Certainly, our personalities including our moods and the way we behave are enormously impacted by our state of mind.
   As an assistant district attorney, I often prosecuted criminals who claimed they were "out of their minds" when they committed a particular violent act and that their criminal action was not "who they really are."   

   How do you see the patients who come to you for care? I believe our concept of the humanity and soul of another often has a big impact on the quality of care many receive.
   If you, as my caregiver, can understand that my irritability and anger is a function of my fear and not a personal attack on you, than perhaps I can give you better care. If you hear my anger as a personal attack on you, how might it affect your care of me? Will my call light be ignored? Will I be labeled as a "problem patient" on your chart and be discriminated against by other caregivers?
   The thing I've never liked about the brain chemistry idea is that it always seems to demean human individuality and accomplishment. If I'm not responsible for mistakes caused by my brain chemistry than I guess I don't get any credit for any good stuff I've done. My good acts, after all, must have been because my brain chemistry was balanced just right.
   Should we praise Van Gogh for his genius or write it off to brain chemistry? Should we honor Mother Theresa or just say she was driven toward sainthood by some kind of obsessive disorder?

   Classifying people by disease states can be hazardous to the humanity of both patients and their caregivers. If a sick human being becomes merely "the gall bladder in 4028" then who is the caregiver? If we think of ourselves as simply a combination of chemicals, than how does our soul find expression?

What do you think?

-Erie Chapman  

Days 187-188 - The "Intimate Sensitivity" of Quiet Angels

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity. -Anne Truitt, sculptor (quote supplied by Liz Wessel, R.N.)

 

   Dr. Elizabeth Krueger is one of this world's quiet angels. She works in an area of medicine that is so challenging people often shake their heads when she tells them her specialty. "I could never do that," they tell her.

   Dr. Krueger is a neonatologist. A high percentage of her patients are among the tiniest people on earth. All of them are in critical condition. She and her collegues are routinely asked to guide these fragile beings, some weighing less than a pound, along the dangerous pathway to health and stability.

   On most days, this exceptional doctor deals with a second group of patients. They are the parents of critically ill babies who look to her for help, for healing, and sometimes for magic.

   Dr. Krueger is living "along the nerve" of her "most intimate sensitivity" as surely as is any artist, sculptor or poet. It requires not only "strict discipline" but impressive courage for her to perform at her peak across the twenty-four hour shifts she works. When she can, she catches rest in a room down the hall from the unit when her patients wait. But, how do you rest when you know that at any moment the phone will ring? The calls are rarely good news.

   "Sometimes I feel like kicking a hole in the wall," she shared with me once. She has plenty of reasons to. Even with today's medicine, many premature babies are born with permanent problems.

   Instead of "kicking a hole in the wall," Dr. Krueger chooses to open her heart as well as her skilled hands. Across nearly a quarter century of working "along the nerve" of her deepest sensitivity, she has had plenty of moments of exhaustion and frustration. She always overcomes.

   I attended Divinity School with Dr. Krueger. She was a top student in that setting just as she had been in medical school. Her hard work and extra education are part of the tough training she has pursued so that she can apply her best potential to solving critically important, life-and-death problems.   

   Elizabeth is one half of a remarkable couple. Her husband, T.C., is a surgeon who has worked extensively and heroically with the Nobel Peace Prize winning program Doctors Without Borders. He was featured recently in the spectacular documentary "Living in Emergency." If you want to see more angels in actions, be sure and see this film. Amazingly, T.C. also graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School like his wife. Perhaps Divinity school has helped both of them go even deeper in engaging God's Love in their work.

   Whatever the case, the Drs. Krueger are among the quiet angels of medicine. They extend their magic touch in the center of the day and in the middle of the night; in Nashville and in distant lands. And In every case, they offer healing as well as curing in a very special ministry of Love.

 

-Erie Chapman   

Day 184 - Open Forum

Happy Fourth of July weekend.
-erie

Day 183 - Listening with Love

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

      Listening with the ears of our hearts, recognizing need before it can even be expressed is surely a great gift of the Servant's Heart. This week I have listened for the sounds of a 20-month-old's awakening, sometimes in the middle of night, always at daybreak. Often the sounds are clearly a search for the familiar face and sweet smile of his mom; other times this young adventurer-explorer awakens with abject joy in the dancing light that sneaks its way through the shutters making patterns on the wall that tell a great story. He hears airplanes so distant my ears and eyes cannot even conceive of and points, looks, and he waits . . . until my attention and my understanding can meet him at his place of wonder.

     Both my 95-year-old mother in law who lives with us and my young grandson visiting for a few days are teaching me to to watch, to wait, to listen in new ways. Poet William Stafford writes of listening with ears that must be of the heart:

"My father could hear a little animal step,/ or a moth in the dark against the screen,/ and every far sound called the listening out/ into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night/ than came to our porch for us on the wind;/ we would watch him look up and his face go keen/ till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand/ inviting the quiet by turning the face,/ waiting for a time when something in the night/ will touch us too from that other place."

Watching shadows cross the face, translating syllables into words, asking and then asking again so that need may be met - is this not what our days of giving care are all about? What does your heart hear today that touches you "from that other place?"

Day 182 - The Ears of the Heart

All those years/forgetting/how easily/you can belong/to everything/simply by listening... - David Whyte 

   When I was five, my father (with me, at left, when I was two) sustained an injury that almost killed him. After seven days in a coma from a blow to the head while playing handball, he lay at home in his bed recovering. The doctor had given strict instructions that he was not to move from that bed.

   One day in 1948, I found myself playing alone in a room nearby his with a knapsack and knife - one whose blades he had warned me not to open. I opened one and it closed on my thumb.

   As I watched the blood pour from my gashed thumb (I have the scar to this day) I knew I should not disturb my father. He was dangerously ill. I only had a cut.

   Hiding my bleeding thumb behind my back I asked Dad if he could reach a bandaid in the cabinet above my height. Listening with the ear of a caring father, he knew there was something else going on. "Why are you holding your hand behind your back?" he asked.

   When I showed him my thumb, I watched him struggle to his feet to help his tiny son. It took all of his strength to help me deal with my little cut. I will always remember this act of his caring heart.  

   It is in the "listening" that caregivers discover the need of others and the nature of their role in meeting that need. What a gift lives in this power each of us possesses and infrequently uses - the power to listen with our hearts!

   Of course, listening symbolizes every other way we connect to the need of another - through seeing, through touch, through tasting another's agony, through smelling the fear that lives in those who have become vulnerable, and most of all, through listening with our hearts.

   "Listening" here, means listening and seeing with through the eyes of our hearts. It means reaching back through everything we have learned to touch the core truth of what we knew, intuitively, as children - the truth that lives beyond our mere senses.

   My dad died in 1995. One of my many sweet memories of him is how he rose from his sick bed to care for his little son - a thing he could do only because he heard a need beyond the words I spoke to him.

   Today, someone will speak their need to you. They may use other words. They may seek to cover their true pain. If you are "listening" you will hear what gift of love is needed from you to meet the unspoken desire of another.

   Live Love, not fear.

-Erie Chapman