Journal of Sacred Work

Days 180-181 - "Your Love Has An Eloquent Tone"

   You may have seen the following lines from one of the many gorgeous poems that have come down to us through the centuries from the beautiful heart of Hafiz: "Your love has an eloquent tone./ The sky and I want to hear it."

   So few of us have enough confidence in the eloquence of our tone to be truly willing to share it. Instead, we often feel we have to adopt the voice of someone else - to offer the world what we think they want to hear rather than to sing with our truest song. Worse, we may choose a kind of silence that blocks others from receiving our gifts.   

   Hafiz, of course, is not referring to the tone of our actual voices but to our ability to express any of our gifts in any way we might choose. This is the opportunity caregivers have each day and night.

   Every time you decide to listen to the pain of another, you have spoken with the voice of your sacred presence. Every time you choose to reach beyond your own needs to meet the needs of another,  your love has found its most"eloquent tone." Every moment you spend singing the truest song in your heart  you are expressing the voice of God.

   Love has the pitch and timbre of truth, faith and compassion. When we live this Love, we are always in tune.  

   Search today for your most eloquent voice. Live this Love and the world will be glad for it.

-Reverend Erie Chapman  

Days 177-179 - The Funny Front Desk

   A hospital front desk is a place for greetings and the provision of information, but it can also be a place where unusual questions arise. My younger sister, Martha, has been dealing with these encounters for more than thirty years. 

   Most entertaining for her have been some of the funny questions and comments that have arisen from those understandbly confused with the bewildering range of hospital terminology.

   A woman appeared at the desk one day, her husband in tow. "How may I help you," my sister asked. "My husband is here for his autopsy," the woman answered. It took awhile for Martha to discern that he was actually there for an endoscopy.

   "Can you tell me the way to the paternity unit?" a man asked one day.

   A prospective employee appeared at the front desk to ask where "the human remains" department was located. Another woman looking for the Infertility Center asked Martha the location of "The Infidelity Department"

   Visitors have frequently asked my sister to help identify a patient they want to visit whose name they can't recall. "I think her name is Sue," one woman said one day. "Could you just look up all the patients named Sue and read them to me?"

   After a patient finished filling out paperwork for an admission, her doctor told her to be sure and bring in the pink sheets. Sure enough, the patient showed up at the front desk with pink sheets for her bed.

   One morning Martha gave the usual instructions on how to find the Emergency department to two young men. "Walk down this hall to my left, go down the ten steps and the ER will be on your right," she advised. She learned later that the two men were seen counting out ten paces in the hall.

   "I have pancreatitis," a patient told Martha. "That must be hard," she answered. "Well, it only hurts in my knees and elbows," the patient said.

   A woman called to ask about visiting hours. "They are from 9:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.," Martha informed her. "Oh, honey, I can't visit that long," the caller said.

   Amid all the hard situations caregivers handle at the front desks of America's hospitals, veterans are bound to have come across situations that brings smiles. Perhaps, absent that, the repetitive nature of the work might become intolerable.

   What counts in the case of my younger sister is that she never once laughed at anyone for their odd questions. Instead, she has always treated each visitor with a dignity grounded in Love.

   This is why Martha, just a month from retirement, can look back on her thirty years of caregiving with a sense of joy and appreciation. She is grateful for the opportunity she has had to bring moments of light into the lives of people trying to navigate the bewildering world of health care in general and hospitals in particular.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Days 175-176 Looking Up

  There are times when I am so absorbed in thought that my eyes are fixed on the pavement as I walk along. Then perhaps a gentle breeze stirs and I look up.

 Have you ever been there?

 In that small act of looking up something within us shifts. Suddenly, we find ourselves gazing into a majestic expansiveness of sky. When I consider all the treasures in nature, my favorite are clouds. Ever changing, shape shifting or sailing by on sea of blue, clouds entice our imagination. Depending on the day, they might even invite us into a favorite game of make believe. Do you remember that magical day, lying in a field of tall grass, in love, staring skyward, daydreaming? What did you see? Is it an eagle, a dragon, angel’s wings, a sign?  Can you see the hand of God in this photo?

 I live in a densely populated metropolitan area with lots of building structures, cars, and concrete. Yet, no matter where we are, we can look heavenward and instantly connect with the Source of our being. In the midst of a busy day, we can take a moment to look out a window or step out the door for Beauty to envelop us.

When traveling in an airplane we may catch a glimpse from on high to see oceans and rivers of clouds magnificence. Clouds refresh our earth with life giving water for our fields and crops to grow, as birds sing their song of renewed blessing. Ah, but clouds give so much more.  

  Have you noticed the way clouds mirror our spirits; sometimes light as a feather, other times tumultuous, angry, grey, even sullen; maybe completely absent from us? As we watch, clouds perform the great dance of life; in a mixture of translucent opalescence, gorgeous of hues all at once burning passionate then naturally giving way into a calm starry night.   

                                                 
    ~liz Sorensen Wessel

Photos and watercolors by ~liz  

Days 173-174 - "God Says: I don't have anyone else but you."

"God says, I don't have anyone else but you." Bishop Desmond Tutu

   There are millions of movies out there - not just in theaters but on television and, if you prefer, on your computer or i-Pad. There is one film out now that is more likely to change your life for the better than any other I've seen in recent years. It is called "I Am."

   As Tom Shadyac, the creator, says, "We started out by making a movie about what was wrong with the world and ended up making a movie about what was right."

   For caregivers, faced with tragedy every day, it may have become hard to focus on the good that is not only around us, but in us. I am among those who have often thought more about the horrors in the world than its joys.  After seeing this film, I feel different.

   The movie trailer doesn't do this film justice. But, perhaps it will trigger enough interest in you so that you will take a couple hours out of your life to watch a film about the magic of God's Love. As Bishop Tutu reminds us God has no one else but each of us - and us together.

The link to the trailer is below (NOTE that the clip may begin with a five second commercial) 

I Am Movie Trailer Official (HD)

www.youtube.com

 -Erie Chapman

 

Days 170-172 - The Voice of the Flower

   "The forest hums his story, the brook sings the history of her journey, the treetops whisper what they see, the flowers speak to us of love. We fail to hear only because they are not using our language." - Dane Dakota

   "Well, he can't even talk, the poor little man," I heard a nurse say once about a stroke-ridden college professor, retired from decades of work as, of all things, an English teacher.

   She spoke of him, unintentionally but harmfully, with a tone of pity rather than of compassion. Pity damages the ability of caregivers to give loving care. Compassion is the gift of the true healer.

   The voices of many of us are stolen each year - by strokes, by cancer, by injury or for a myriad of other reasons including trauma and death itself. The moment we lose our ability to speak, much of the world tunes out all the other ways we have of communicating. We may become objects of condescension rather than people with new ways of telling our stories.

   Although most of our finest artists can use words, they usually speak more eloquently with their paint brushes than with their mouths. Musicians present us with language more eloquent than words can describe. Great storytellers give voice to those who can't find the words to tell their own tales.

   The world speaks to us in many languages. When we seek to understand only in terms of the language we use, we miss some of life's richest music. 

  Can a flower speak? Of course. We can hear her if we forget about our learned language and listen instead with our sacred ears. Lean close to the rose and she will tell you the meaning of her sweet scent. Touch her petals and you will hear her texture. Sit before her beauty and she will talk to you about the meaning of a curve, a swirl, the way a shadow changes her mind and her mood across the afternoon, how the low slant of light can bring sadness, how she watches the moon while you sleep.

   The person struck silent by a stroke has a new eloquence. Sit with him and you will learn the story of his life in the wrinkles of his age, in the fatigue in his limbs, in the depth of his eyes. 

   Patients always have stories to tell us. When they can't use words, Love opens us to the stories in their hearts and reveals a pathway to healing.

-Erie Chapman 

Days 168-169 Dare to Live Your Dreams

Sometimes years float by before we fully realize the impact someone has had on our life. Then one day we discover the connections between who we are and how profoundly others have influenced us. A conscious awareness arises from our depths, just as a flower pushes through soil to  blossom in the light of day.  Recently, I experienced this kind of epiphany in relationship to my father and my evolving spirituality.

Although my dad died in December of 1995, I am still discovering the pearls that he placed in my heart. Maybe it is because so much of what we learn and internalize is not about what people say but more about how they live.  I am grateful to my dad in countless ways; however, today I wish to share this insight with you as we celebrate our fathers on their day of special blessings.

As I reflect I think it is helpful to offer a little context. My Irish mother raised us kids in the Catholic tradition. My Swedish grandmother raised her only son in her Lutheran faith. When my parents married, sadly my paternal grandfather did not attend the wedding due to the perceived religious differences between our merging families.

 I recall mom accompanying us to mass on Sundays and dad always staying home. Often he teased us about leaving him with his unique sense of humor. After church, we’d stop by to visit my grandmother Kate, Aunt Mary and Uncle John. My father adored  Kate and mom's family visited our home often.  Occasionally, I might have questioned our family dichotomy but more often I just accepted life as it was.

During my teens and early twenties I drifted away from organized religion but God never left me. Instead, God has been a constant presence of guiding Love and a source of  strength amidst the challenges in life. I returned to church when I became a mother and desired  that our children might experience a foundation of faith.

Through the years, I’ve enjoyed being part of a faith community, singing joyful praise, and practicing in the tradition in which I was raised.  Yet, I see a unifying thread joining us one to another regardless of beliefs. Although some might find this objectionable, I am grateful and attribute this openness to my father. He offered me a window to see that there is more than one path that leads us to Love.

My father also taught me the meaning of hospitality. Perhaps, it was during WWII when he embraced as best friend a soldier of Japanese heritage when others were quick to shun.  Or the many people throughout life that were drawn into the circle of his friendship and fellowship in the grand celebration of life.

 I’ve learned that all of life is sacred. That one can worship as deeply in a cathedral of God’s trees, hear God's voice whispering on  the wind,  receive an affirmation of hope with each new day, experience Holy Communion in the breaking of bread when all are welcome at our table.  God is with us in the stillness,  chaos and confusion, the times of doubt and failures, moments of awakening love and forgiveness,  in every heart beat, and in each breath.

My dad had dreams that he lived and some that he passed on to us to live into our future. My wish for all fathers is that you dare to live your dreams. Whether you have fathered children or not, you are someone who has significantly influenced our lives more than you can ever know.  As father, son, brother, teacher, friend, lover, parent, child, mother, and more. We thank you as we  say,  God bless us all!  

 

~liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 166-167 - Everywhere We Were, We Are - Our Spiritual Footprints

   I look at the 1981 image of myself, below, and then at the one on this weblog (above right) and wonder. What happened to that thirty-seven year old man?

    Have we left our spiritual footprints in every place we have ever been? If so, everywhere we were, some essence of us remains.

   A friend asked me if I thought that the more present we are, the greater the impact we make on the energy around us. If we have truly been present to another in their time of need, that presence of ours continues far beyond the passing of that moment. 

   This kind of thinking can bring comfort. As I mourn the vanished days of my children's childhood, it is good to imagine that some part of them, and me, remains in the home where they grew up. As I think of happier times in mid-career, I like knowing that, perhaps, the the air holds some kind of good energy my presence may have contributed.

   The poet Collette Inez evokes the poignancy of our imminent disappearence from the world: "Before you read the farthest wave,/  before our shadows disappear/ in a starry blur, call out your name/ to say where we are."

   But, perhaps we truly are everyplace we have ever been.

   Does the window remember when you looked through his clear eye waiting for your once-small child to come home? Does the steering wheel remember the way your hands wrapped themselves around it on the way to work and how tired those same hands were on the way home? Does your bed remember your times of sleep and love and dreams amid her sheets?

   These notions may sound strange and even foolish. Yet, I believe we, through the quality of our presence, leave a greater legacy than we may imagine. 

   God's Love holds for us the memory of every time and place we have been present. 

   This world is so hard for so many. Can we find a way to honor our life here in the way that Adam Zagajewski once urged: "...Praise the mutilated world/ and the gray feather a thrush lost,/ and the gentle light that strays and vanishes/ and returns.

 -Erie Chapman

Days 163-165 The Future of Loving Care

   Who do I want caring for my ninety-eight year old mother (below) a robot or a human being? These days, with robotic medical instruments, the answer can be both.

   The future may be different. It may be technology alone.

   Technology, by its nature, will always change. Love's energy, on the other hand, is constant. 

   But, what shape will Love take if the culture we have known is turned on its head?

   Take a look at the state of God's earthly institutions. On a recent trip to Boston, we passed numerous elegant buildings topped by crosses. Inside, many bear signs of a sea change in American religious expression. 

   In the wake of scandals, many Catholic churches and schools have emptied. The so-called mainstream Protestant churches are one-fourth filled, often with "grey-hairs" like me. Other church buildings have been turned into restaurants, theaters and, sometimes, private homes.

   Some expert observers believe that we are living in a "Post-Christian" era in which civilization is turning away from traditional faiths toward new pathways. When these pathways reflect indifference to the spiritual life, there is cause for concern.

   Love's expression depends upon all of us and each of us.  For who are the keepers of Love? Traditionally, civilization established churches, hospitals, hospices and charities as places where God's Love flows through caregivers to those in need.

   In recent decades, each of these agencies of Love's expression have undergone slow but radical changes.

   Hospitals, have gone from places of charity to high finance corporations with billion dollar budgets. High paid CEOs have replaced the mission-focused administrators of the past. In for profit health care companies the Wall Street ticker is more important than the EKG strip. 

  Some futurists, looking centuries down the road, doubt that humanity as we know it will endure. There are those who believe in the Apocalypse. More likely, humanity will decline because people will increasingly turn human tasks over to robots. 

   What form will human energy, and caregiving, take one hundred, five hundred or one thousand years for now?

   The biggest reason to care about that now is that so much change has already begun.

   In Japan, robot caregivers made their appearance more than five years ago. These "caregivers" were created to replace children who no longer visited their nursing home bound parents. Programmed to express kind words, warm reassurance and sweet expressions of affections they were so effective they are still in use.

   Frightening and demeaning as all of this may seem, these kinds of changes provoke useful questions. What is it that is unique about the human expression of God's Love?

  The answer, of course, centers around realtionship. We can program a computer to tell us what we want. But, God is absent from such a relationship because Love is absent.

   Those who have begun to devalue the role of Love in our technology-driven society may do well to recall that technology is not the reason for living. Love is.

-Reverend Erie Chapman. 

Days 161-162 It's A Simple One

“The peace of God is shining in us now. Let all things shine upon us in that peace, and let us bless them with the light in us.” ~Course in Miracles

 

Good intentions are not enough. Trust completely in

 

A

 Little

 Willingness

 

 and…

 

let it be

what it is.

 

                                            ~Amen

 

Teachings from A Course in Miracles

 Watercolor by ~liz

Days 159-160 - Thank You

"

"Happiness and vanity are incompatable." - line from the film, Dangerous Liasons

  Special thanks to each of you who sent congratulations to Liz and to me on the fifth anniversary of the Journal. We received more comments than we have ever had on a single post. 

   We hope you will stay with us and continue to tell others about the Journal - perhaps through your facebook account in which you could list the journal link: www.journalofsacredwork.typepad.com.

   We want the Journal to be as widely read as possible so that other caregivers can receive the same benefits you have been drawing. 

   And there are other kinds of "thank yous" each of us can celebrate this very day. After posting a sixty year old photo of myself in a baseball uniform on our fifth anniversary essay I found myself in Boston next to my grandson - who is the same age in the picture, above, as I was in the black and white photo (at right.)

   What he thinks about at age seven, as I did back then, is about how well he's playing and whether he wins. For me today, as it will be for him someday, it has almost nothing to do with that. Instead it is the experience of being out there near him, cheering from the stands, watching his face as he gets a hit or tags out a runner.

   As you move through your career as a caregiver, I hope you will increasingly savor those "in-between" moments with your colleagues and patients. Not just the times you are giving medications or adjust naso-gastric tubes or offering a drink of water, but the times when you are standing there at the nurse's station enjoying the company of your co-workers or the families of a sick patient. And there are the special times when you are caregiving in a different way - looking after the needs of a family member of friend.

   As I look at myself sixty years ago and again at a photo of me with my grandson all these decades later, I can only feel gratitude for the chance I've had to be a caregiver for my son, daughter and grandchildren. 

   There are plenty of things to complain about in the hard world of caregiving. But "happiness and vanity are incompatable." Our complaining often comes from vanity - from our feeling that we have a right to more. Sometimes, that is true.

   How much wiser it is for us to follow a practice that is much more consistent with happiness - to make the choice, each day, to say a quiet "thank you" for God's Love. For we are blessed with the opportunity to live our most sacred calling - to be a caregiver.

-Reverend Erie Chapman 

Days 156-158 - Fitting In...and the Journal's 5th Anniversary

   From the time we are younger than I was in the photo at left, life sends us a barrage of mixed messages.

   We are to obey the rules, and yet the greatest among us always break them. We are to perform with perfection, but, when we do, we draw a crowd of those jealous of our success. Try to eat healthy and friends will constantly urge you to take an extra dessert.

   Peer pressure to "fit in" exerts enormous power. It's no wonder that our natural creativity wanes early. By age three our wildest creative ideas are generally tamped down by parents who want what? - for their children to fit in!

   In spite of wide-ranging success across my life, I've never felt I fitted in. In school, I was often punished for breaking rules. In work settings as a lawyer, judge, hospital CEO, television producer, minister and artist, I have always been viewed as a renegade.

   Where do "renegade" caregivers, ones who insist on living Love  while caught in a maelstrom of rules, turn for advice and comfort? 

   June 7 marks the fifth anniversary of the Journal as a "place of sharing for loving caregivers." Part of our goal has been to help you find balance amid the cross currents of your life.

   Your more radical efforts at loving care will often find resistance. Your patient's hope you you won't give up. We are here to support you.

   Over one thousand essays have been posted here over the past five years. I used to write them every day. Finally, I cut down to two a week and tried to focus more on the quality of each piece.

   Then, Liz Wessel joined the Journal as weekend writer. Her contributions are consistently fabulous. She brings us not only her prose but the poetry of her paintings and mandalas - great gifts of peace and Love.

   Substantially more than five thousand comments have been posted on the Journal by those who seek to share caring words with others. Your contributions are deeply appreciated.

   We are approaching nearly two hundred thousand visits to the Journal. Lovely as that is, more people visit the sites of stars like Justin Bieber in five minutes than have visited us in five years. 

   A journal about loving care has no chance of competing with sites like these. Yet, we remain grateful for those who choose to visit the Journal and who pass along the work we offer.    

   The teachings of God's Love are always more popular than the practice. "Love your enemies?" People who try to do that are often viewed as fools - as people who don't "fit in."

  Love, if it has a reward on earth, must always provide its own gift. Each day, we have the chance to decide whether we will choose to live Radical Loving Care against pressures to fit in.

  Right now, someone nearby needs you. God's gift is that whatever choice you make, you are loved.

-Reverend Erie Chapman   

Days 154-155 With A Little Willingness...

How we see creates our world.

  Born of Love, we enter life with a precious open receptivity. Very early, we communicate our most basic needs for nourishment, comfort and love. As inquisitive children, we are curious to test reality. In this wondrous time of discovery, we may stumble upon danger and get stung or find ourselves warmly wrapped in the exquisite intimacy of love.

Growing up we learn how to navigate in our world. Our minds like to categorize and make distinctions as we begin to form future assumptions based on our experiences. Inevitably, our fragile hearts will encounter hurt, pain and loss. This is our common human experience and bonds us one to another.

We know our woundings can cut deep to our core. Pain, is viewed by the collective as an unattractive weakness. So we hide these feelings in our longing for acceptance and belonging. Scars form as we bury the hurt and move forward on our life journey. I believe  it is important to recognize how our past influences our response in new situations.  Personally, I think my past wounds color how I see and they unknowingly touch upon every interaction affecting  how I perceive. Yet,  I am forever grateful because as my heart cracked open outpoured empathy for others.

Hurts left unresolved never completely heal, rather they lurk beneath the surface and rear their ugly heads now and again, often with unexpected intensity. If we find ourselves overwhelmed or over reacting it helps to pause and step out of the situation. Over-reacting is a good clue that there is something deeper going on that needs our attention. It may help to ask oneself if there is...

  Our assumptions can create a narrow worldview that occludes the big picture. In attempts to feel safe and avoid future hurt we try to control life by creating neat and orderly little boxes to exist in. We create patterns of predictability, which leads to the numbing boredom that Erie so eloquently touched upon this week. We may feel stuck and attempt to anesthetize our pain and anxiety with various unhealthy life style choices. Ugh…are we destined to repeat the same mistakes over again and again? Perhaps so, at least until we are willing to learn to see differently or to learn our life lesson that Love is trying to teach us.

With a little willingness….

There is nothing I need do…  just trust in Love…and listen to the Holy Spirit's guidance as I let go of the story line to acknowledge what lies beneath it all. Listen and let go of the assumptions and preconceived notions we make about ourselves and others.

Just a little shift of my lens and my worldview expands with  new vistas  on the horizon.

 

With just a little willingness,  forgiveness shifts my focus into the light of compassion.

There is a bigger picture beyond my narrow self-absorbing thoughts that connects me to you and something greater than ourselves.

With just a little willingness…  my focus shifts from trying to mold my world into something else… and instead accept this moment in all its fullness and emptiness.  

 With a little willingness I might be able to offer friendship…to the rejected parts of me and you that remain  isolated in darkness just waiting to be invited into the full light of day.
  

With just a little willingness, how might we greet this day?

 

     ~liz Sorensen Wessel

Watercolor by ~liz

Days 152-153 - Adrift on the Same Raft

   There is a time when Time misplaces his watch. Life & Death, adrift on the same raft, marry the sea.

   This is about the healing we come to know when we realize that our life, like our death, is a part of eternity.

   We may think of death as the moment when we fall into eternity. But we are already there and life is merely a boat on which we sail for this part of our journey through forever.

   I was thinking about the mandalas that Liz Wessel creates - how, if we look carefully, there is something in her creations that illuminates some sacred part of us. 

   What part of eternity do we see in her gorgeous creations? Her art signals that she is either telling us something and also that she is passing on a message.

   We have so many ways to communicate beyond words and body language. A painting is a letter to us from the artist. Dance is a wordless way for the choreographer to speak to us of beauty.

   Music is a peculiar pathway along which composers and musicians catch sounds in the air and send them along to us. Photographers catch images and report to us what they have seen.

   We often think of touch as the caregiver's art because that is what we seem to need when we are wounded. We want a healer to touch us with the musical instruments of their hands, to cure the cuts in our bodies, to make us whole once again.

   This is the great power of the healing stories that suffuse the Gospels. Jesus touched the lepers and they were healed. Jesus touched the eyes of the blind and their vision was restored. Jesus touched Lazarus and raised him back to life.

   A woman reached out to Jesus and could touch only the hem of his garment. Immediately she, because of her belief, was healed - merely by a touching. 

   Yet, we know that healers use other instruments: their eyes, medicines, and surgeries that cut away darkness. 

   Most importantly, we know that healers live among us as one of our own. We are all adrift on the same raft and the sea on which we sail is a metaphor for God's eternity.

   In Love, we offer living water to each other. This is the gift Love gives: everlasting peace.

   When we live Love, we are no longer adrift. We are all all sick and we are all caregivers.

   We are at one with each other. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman 

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