Journal of Sacred Work

Days 59-61 - For Whom Do We Perform?

   Who decides whether our work is "successful?" We would like to say we are our own best judges. Yet, we are constantly yielding that power to others.

   "Performance" reviews raise the idea that we are on a stage awaiting applause, boos or indifference from those who wait in judgement beyond the white lights. The Academy Awards show, annual entertainment for an audience in the hundreds of millions, is one of the biggest stages we know.  How do actors ignore "judgment" from such a gigantic audience?  

   Organization-based caregivers face another kind of annual evaluation. Supervisors, often unprepared for such work, fill out forms evaluating subordinates. A whole year's work is summarized on short forms.

   It's an awkward and imprecise process. But, it determines everything from job-stability to pay raises. More critically, it may influence how caregivers think about themselves.

   If you believe you're doing a great job and your supervisor doesn't, what are you to do? I know one stellar caregiver whose supervisor is forever criticizing her for doing too good a job. "You spend too much time going beyond your job description to do hard work other people should be doing," her boss tells her." You are getting stressed and you need to ease up."

   Oddest of all, this same leader tells this caregiver, "you are making the other employees look bad with your extra efforts." To live Love, this caregiver has to ignore her boss. Recently, she was selected by senior management as the Employee of the Year. Patients and higher-ranking leadership see what the supervisor misses.

   In my experience, the most effective performance reviews highlight strengths to build on rather than criticism that may weaken the caregiver's ability to self-correct. Leaders need to build confidence, not undermine it. 

   The same is true in education. Teachers who harp on problems (as do most) discourage progress rather than nurture it.

   Challenging staff member to improve is different than harrassing them with threats of termination if they make mistakes.

   The best motivation for peak performance is to serve the interests of Love, not fear. However, subjecting ourselves to the evaluation of others is understandable as a world-based reality check. The performer who ignores the approbation of audiences does so at the peril of her worldly success.

   Still, some of our finest work will always go unrecognized. Our ultimate judge must be within, not without. Each caregiver knows that the key question is not whether we please our supervisor but whether we are serving those in need.

   All these words are only useful if they help us remember this: When we serve God's Love, we are performing for the only light that matters. In the face of crossfire from others, this can be incredibly difficult.

   At the end of each day, the finest caregivers don't ask themselves what their supervisor is saying (even if it's good.) They ask only, "have I lived Love?"

-Erie Chapman  

Days 57-58 THE RIDDLE OF HERE | WORDS by Nic Askew

Photo by ~liz: Dawn in the town of Flores, the Peten Guatemala, Feb. 2011

We're looking. For something so simple.

So simple, that we can't hold it in
our hands. Or in our heads.

So we look to him. To her.
To them. To there.

We look to everywhere but here.
To when. To then. But not to now.

It's hidden just beyond our cleverness.

So we presume it's out there.

But perhaps it's in here.

-Nic Askew

When I first watched this short film it resonated deeply within. It reminded me of how I experienced the people of Guatemala and their unique way of living. I wanted to share this with you and I received permission from the filmmaker, Nic Askew. (soulbiographies.com)

I am currently reading a book by Alan Watts in which he describes God as playing hide and seek. What a lovely metaphor!

~liz Sorensen Wessel

STARRING CHARANANAND 

Days 55-56 - The Medicine Cabinet

 
   A recent New Yorker cartoon portrays two women in conversation at a coffee shop. "In order to get through this," one says to the other, "I've had to find an inner strength that I never knew I had in the medicine cabinet."

   Whenever anything is funny it is always true. We all know that medicine allows us to turn to pills when we don't think we can find emotional strength anywhere else.

   There's an uncomfortable moral judgment inside this notion. Society suggests, sometimes with pity, that turning to the medicine cabinet for emotional stability implies weakness.

   The truth is that clinical depression signals that the patient may be unable to  recover alone. What's in the medicine cabinet might restore emotional stability. This is no joking matter.

   When we describe all feelings as born from chemistry (legal or illicit) it seems to cheapen the idea of  genuine emotion. If your partner is in a drunken state when he tells you he loves you, will you believe him? If I am emerging from anesthesia and tell you you're an angel will it sound true?

   Are all of our thoughts and feelings entirely the product of chemistry? No one, except the coldest scientist, wants to think this is true. For if it is, what is Love?

   These questions aren't new. What matters? That our thoughts, feelings and bodily health are influenced by chemistry does not diminish us. It simply helps explain the impact drugs have on our lives.

   Substances as common as caffeine and alchohol stimulate particular energies. Medicine cabinet drugs like tranquilizers provide support for many who are so sensitive to the world they want to soften their irritability.  

   The contemplation of Beauty changes our brain chemistry. Focusing on hate also changes what is happening in our brain.

   Ultimately, the cultivation of God's Love brings to us the brightest energy that exists. When we are depressed, as I have been, we may feel distant from this energy. When our spirits soar, some may feel very close to God's light.

   But, the truth is far more complex, isn't it? Kahlil Gibran wrote that he felt closer to God when he was in the midst of deep illness. Job found God at a deep level through his trials.

   Although neither of these found God in the medicine cabinet, it is crucial that caregivers respect the impact drugs have. Drugs can take us to a consciousness that can seem transcendent or cast us into a darkness where we become another personality.

   High doses of cortisone sent a late friend and respected lawyer under her hospital bed, terrified because she saw tumors running into her room. Caregivers know these stories. That is why understanding (rather than judgment) is so important.

   Our deepest thoughts are sacred and often secret. It is in our hearts where Love arrives holy and ineffable.

   God's Love exists far beyond brain chemistry. For God is Love.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

*Go to the Journal's Facebook page and click "Like"

Days 52-54 - Flowers, Friends & Spring

    It is suddenly warm across the south. As I "greeted this day" (in the language of Liz Wessel's lovely weekend essay) I was startled to find something strange in our February garden.

    Atop green shoots, buds are forming. Nearby, weeds arrive as unwelcome as Cinderella's sisters.

   There is no more common or powerful metaphor for hope than spring. When it arrives early, we almost hesitate to believe its promise for fear winter will charge back and trample our trust.

   In April of 2004, my brother-in-law, dying of cancer, faced his last spring. I wondered if it was painful. "I've seen lots of springs," he told my sister, as if one more might not matter. But, such responses often mask a sadness within. All who Love, love spring.

   Elsewhere in our garden, my wife has planted a reminder of something even more hopeful than spring itself. "Friends are the flowers in the garden of life," the sign reads.

   For those of us lucky to have dear friends, we know those relationships have no season. Friends need no springtime sun and rain to nurture their Love into being.

   The demands placed on full-time caregivers mean that most spend more time with co-workers than they do with their family. How fortunate when co-workers become our friends as well as our colleagues.

   We may even spawn a kind of friendship with our patients, most of whom spend just a few days with us.  Length of acquaintance may not always be the sole determinate of a quality encounter. We can meet many new friends every day - the cashier, the store clerk, or, as happened to me recently, the woman sitting next to me on the plane. During our two hour flight, we struck up a terrific sense of knowing as we exchanged stories.

   As I de-planed in Nashville, she headed on to Chicago. It is very unlikely that I will see her again. Yet, that brief, plane-ride friendship was a spring surprise.

   Sometimes, friends come from even more unexpected places. On some occasions, people I once thought of as enemies have since become friends.

   Though I once thought otherwise, I now believe this: Love knows no enemies.

   How will you "greet this day?" What new friends will appear?

-Erie Chapman 

Days 50-51 How do I Greet This Day?

As some of you may be aware, my colleagues and I recently went on a pilgrimage to Guatemala. Each morning when we met for breakfast,  someone would read a passage from Genesis 1. Then before  setting off for the day we spent time quietly reflecting on the question, "How do I greet this day?" 

We were encouraged to open our hearts and minds to see through the eyes of the people we would meet and what I saw was very beautiful. I felt as though we had traveled back in time to a simpler way of living. It seemed to me that without technology and all the accompanying distractions people were fully present to one another. It was apparent that the people of Guatemala have a  true sense of community and interdependence. They are working very hard to help each other and provide a better life for their families.

It is as if when all else is stripped away, all that is left is what really matters. Although, few people have material wealth, and most live in extreme poverty, there is an overflowing generosity of spirit.  Mother Nature provides a rich landscape of immeasurable beauty and an open invitation into communion with the Divine. 

There is something very appealing about this down to earth way of life. I was touched by the warm hospitality we received. This awakened a longing in me for a deeper, more sacred connection and intimacy with others. The people of Guatemala taught me what it means to be in a real relationship with my brothers and sisters. May I never forget.

It can be difficult to express in words our experience so I thought I would share with you this mandala I drew and these two passages from Genesis 1 .

"In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. 2. But the earth was empty and unoccupied, and darknesses were over the face of the abyss; and so the Spirit of God was brought over the waters. 3. And God said, “Let there be light.” And light became. 4. And God saw the light, that it was good; and so he divided the light from the darknesses. 5. And he called the light, ‘Day,’ and the darknesses, ‘Night.’ And it became evening and morning, one day
Then God said: “Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven. And let them divide day from night, and let them become signs, both of the seasons, and of the days and years. 15. Let them shine in the firmament of heaven and illuminate the earth.” And so it became. 16. And God made two great lights: a greater light, to rule over the day, and a lesser light, to rule over the night, along with the stars. 17. And he set them in the firmament of heaven, to give light over all the earth, 18. and to rule over the day as well as the night, and to divide light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19. And it became evening and morning, the fourth day."

With Love,

~liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 48-49 - Human-Made & Nature-Made

    Bob was a high school art teacher for more than thirty years. At eighty-two, he continues to create.

   "Isn't it interesting to notice the difference between things we make and the things nature offers?" he told me recently.     "Humans try to make things perfect - straight lines, exact circles," he said. "Nature doesn't bother with that."

   Nature offers soft flowers and hard rocks and smooth ocean waves. Sometimes we try to mimic her. The shell I photographed is real. You may notice imperfections. Humans might try to make a "perfect" version of this same shell - clearing away as many "imperfections" as possible.

   Human-made objects have the chance to appear sharply geometric. Sometimes nature-made and human-made objects compliment each other, as in the image of nature's sun reshaped into stripes in the second set of pictures (below).

   This is about noticing. What is the chance we will notice the remarkable patterns that stripe our lives every day? The combinations in the photo are endless and endlessly fascinating to people like me.

   As a five-year-old still consigned to take naps, I remember the California sun sneaking through the closed blinds to rest next to me on my pillow. The warmth of those moments has left with me with an enduring appreciation of line, shape, texture and color.

   Some caregivers suffer compassion fatigue to the point that they may see patients as all the same. "Here comes another gall bladder," a veteran nurse may grumble, as if all gall bladder patients were assembly-line vehicles in need of adjustment.

     It's difficult to keep seeing each case as new just as it  
is difficult for many to see that the color image (at left) is a different artistic experience from the black & white image, even though they are the identical scene. 

   Take a moment to click on these images. What is the difference between nature's lines and human-made objects?    

   As you encounter patients and your fellow caregivers, perhaps it would be interesting to ask yourself about what is similar and what is unique about each person. Look in the mirror and ask yourself the same thing. Would any of us want to be treated as if we were exactly the same as everybody else?

   It is part of Love's gift that although each of us may share similar problems, we are all unique. Each of us is entitled to be cared for by people who know our disease and recognize that we are created by the hand of God, not by the hand of man.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

p.s. Wandering with my camera during vacation, I found other examples of what the sun does when it encounters human-made structures.

     

Days 45-47 - "Point of View"

   My friend Mary, a career nursing leader, will never draw a full breath again. A smoker for more than forty years, she is tethered to an oxygen tank twenty-four hours a day. "Well, she was such a smoker," one of her caregivers told me. "I guess that's what you get," she continued, as if it was hard for her to empathize.    

   In my work as a filmmaker, I encounter a triplet of letters on every script: POV. There is also a PBS television series that uses the same combination.

   You may well know that POV, in these contexts, means "Point of View." When things are seen from one character's POV, the camera sees what that character sees. This means that the camera cannot see the point of view of the other character and must change locations to have that perspective.

   Because of the proximity of Valentine's day, you may imagine heart shapes in the photo above left. If you spent your time as a sculptor, you might wonder if this image is made of clay.

    The mind will always ask two questions when seeing any image:: 1) What is it? and 2) From what angle of view was it taken? But, from what POV did I make the image?

     Only by staying with a complex subject can viewers appreciate what the artist may be trying to say - or what the viewer would like the image to communicate.

   The first picture is a kind of orchid. It was made from directly overhead.    

   Because black and white and drains the orchid of color, the eye has a better chance to focus on what black and white is all about including light, line, shadow, texture, depth of field, angle and POV - both yours and mine. 

   If you spent your life in prison then the second photo may bring bars to mind. But, this is only a chair. Angle of view and editing highlight contrast. There is no sharper contrast than pure white and hard-edged black.    

   What can orchids and chairs have to do with caregiving? We are all inclined to our particular point of view. Yet, the magic in our hearts enables us to shift our point of view without moving.

   We connect with a patient's pain when we connect it to something we have experienced. The moment we do, our point of view swings towards the patient.

   Immediately, our compassion rises. Only now can we begin the work of healing beyond curing.

   Jesus grounded his healing in profound empathy. He was so much in touch with our suffering that he offered his life for us. He took our point of view. 

   There are only two tiny slices of color in the picture below - two glances of blue amid black and white curves. 

   Every person in need hopes we see the nuanced colors of their need. We can only do this by climbing into the cave of their pain so that we may lead them toward the light.

-Rev. Erie Chapman  
  

Days 41-44 - "...calling it a life?"

  "Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?" - Mary Oliver (at left)

   Awhile back I asked a physician I know if he chose obstetrics because he loved the work. "No," he said. I chose it because I can do it pretty well," he answered.

   For thirty years, this doctor has been traveling a career pathway not because he loves his work but only because he "can do it pretty well." Has he been "breathing just a little, and calling it a life?"

   Author Roger Housden asks a provocative set of questions in the introduction to his book, Risking Everything: "Have you longed for a life in which every last part of you is entirely used up? Have you ever followed that longing? Taken a step back from the known in your life and found yourself falling, falling, yet with the irrational certainty that the world is more right with you than it has ever been?"

   During high school, I ran the mile on our track team. It's a four-lap race and I had a bad habit of loafing through the middle two laps and then running like crazy on the final lap. I managed to win fairly often with this approach but it drove my coach crazy. "Why don't you pour it on for all four laps," he said. "If you can run that fast at the end, then you could have run faster in between."

   He was right. Although I feel as though I've "poured it on" across most of my career, I simultaneously feel as though I haven't taken enough risks or tried hard enough. It's so much easier to rationalize breathing enough to get by rather than taking a full breath and then "risking everything."

   What is there to lose? If we make the leap, we will be ripped from the moorings that may have given us false comfort. Simultaneously, we are sure to discover new lands - places where we can live out so many of our unused gifts.

   Isn't this what Love wants from us - to give everything and trust that God's Love will be with us all the way? And this is what Love asks of caregivers as we confront the pain of another: to enter their agony knowing we will be burned along the way. Then to know that we have done everything we can to lift another into the arms of Love.

   This is our ultimate calling. Only the most courageous can live it out. It is only that small group who will be able to say to themselves, at the end: I have lived my life to the full."

-Reverend Erie Chapman    

Days 38-40 -Sacred Journeys

"A  journey can become a sacred thing..." John O'Donohue

   As our friend Liz Wessel travels a corner of Guatemala all of us who feel we know her understand that her journey will be sacred. This is because she is certain to send her light into the hearts of those who need Love and healing.

   Those in Guatemala who have never met her will feel better after they have. They will see in her eyes the compassion they seek.

   Liz will also be blessed by the experience of reaching out to those she has never met. As Rilke wrote, "All becoming has needed me." All becoming needs us to be prisms of Love.

   Imagine how true this is in your own life. Consider the impact you may have when your daily life journey takes you before the eyes of someone you have never met.

   When you carry Love to your encounters, God's light will illuminate those you meet, whether they choose to receive it or not. Light reflects off a rock whether the rock chooses to aborb it or not.  

   God's light does not judge. God's light does not demand that it be received. God's light is always present whether others open their hearts or not.

   Upon her return, Liz may share with us stories of her travels. But, she will not be able to communicate the way her energy will have affected the people she met.

   Is this not true for each of us? Love's light survives any darkness. Love's light always illuminates what it sees. And this is the power of what Liz and her colleagues will bring to the land of Guatemala - the Love of true caregivers.

   I know your prayers, as well as mine, will be with her. My prayers are also with you as you encounter those who need your loving care this very day and night.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Days 36-37 The Compass of Your Soul

Photo compliments pf : www.panhala.net/Archive/Index.html 

For the Traveler
 
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
 
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
 
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
 
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
 
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
 
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
 
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
 
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
 
~ John O'Donohue ~(To Bless the Space Between Us)

This Saturday morning  my colleagues and I  are about to embark on a weeklong journey.   We are heading to the town of Flores, which is in the Peten region of Guatemala.  As participants in this pilgrimage we have been encouraged to experience the world through the eyes of the people we go to meet.

I am filled with anticipation and I pray for an openness to receive whatever may come, to give fully of myself and allow God to work through me.   I hope to journey within the  "territories of the spirit."  If you are interested in following our blog where we will be sharing our eperiences go to  http://www.stjoeblogs.org/internationaloutreach

A traveler’s journey does not necessarily require that we venture off to far away places.  A worthwhile path is where "the compass of your soul can guide you to the hidden places."  As I write this to you, I wonder where your journey might be leading you?  May you awaken to the fullness of your inner Beauty.

~liz Sorensen Wessel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                 Unknown Photographer

Days 34-35 - The "Great" Life

    
     One of the gifts of my childhood came when my father signed me up for a Landmark biographies book-of-the-month club. When the mailman delivered those magic volumes in their brown cardboard boxes I would open them deliciously, letting the titles reveal themselves line by line..."The Life of....Thomas....Jefferson." or "Clara...Barton...Founder of the American Red Cross." 

   Excited, I would race to a quiet corner of the house, open the book, smell the fresh new pages, and start reading. The lives of the great would unfold before me in all their majesty. How wonderful to live the life of a great person, I thought. One day, I could live a big life also, just like one of those heroes!

   As I grew into adulthood I kept asking the question: What did it mean to be a "great" person. For a long time, I thought fame had a lot to do with it. Gradually, it became more clear that meaning mattered more than glory. But, what kind of life is "meaningful"?

   Recently, my wife and I hosted a brand new nurse for dinner. Fresh from passing his nursing exam, his face beamed with delight. "I'm so excited to think that starting in two weeks, I'm going to be taking care of patients with diabetes," he announced.

   Afflicted with epilepsy himself, this nurse knows what it means to suffer with a chronic illness. Now, he will have the chance to help others in ways that he has been helped. Each day that he does this, his life will emerge as more and more meaningful. He is on the verge of "A Great Life."

   In one of her most famous poems, Emily Dickinson answered one of life's most pressing questions with these lines:

"If I can stop one heart from breaking,/ I shall not live in vain;/ If I can ease one life the aching,/ Or cool one pain,/ Or help one fainting robin/ Unto his nest again,/ I shall not live in vain."

   Every day, caregivers live lives of greatness and wealth. They distribute life's most valuable currency - Love.

-Rev. Erie Chapman