[Note: For our Second Annual International Caregiver's Day, Liz Wessel created some lovely images - one at left and the other is below. Today is a special time to honor caregivers everywhere.]
On a recent family vacation a friend became irritated with something I said and (uncharacteristically) exploded into anger. I couldn't think how to respond. From my startled defenses, I glimpsed beneath his rage and saw the loving adult within.
Instead of standing there feeling hurt, I needed to realize what some call "the grief beneath the grievance." To have a loving exchange, I needed to address his highest self, not the briefly fearful-sounding man before me.
None of us can engage the divine in each other if we engage in combat using courtroom rules.
A parallel truth lives in illness care settings. A caregiver cannot engage healing energy by quoting policies and rules to a patient in pain.
Some of the people who entered my office during my decades as a hospital CEO were angry. Doctors arrived offended by some injustice. Family members complained of mistreatment. Employees felt unfairly judged.
I was often more effective with them than with my family. I never began by arguing.
No distressed person wants to hear about the rules or be crushed by authority. Like anyone, they first want to be heard.
"I'm so sorry for your trouble," I would sometimes say. It was surprising to see how often this diffused initial anger. After that, constructive solutions could emerge.
I know the Divine lives within you and me. We know the divine lives in the other person.
How do we address the highest self of the other when they are throwing their "lowest" self in our face? In spite of years of training and praying, I still find that I fail too often.
I mistakenly think that the angry face before me IS that person. My Vanderbilt Divinity School friend, Diana Gallaher, taught me years ago that the person shouting at you is always "more than" that.
It was another divinity school friend who expressed this idea in another way to me recently. "What if we speak to the "highest self" in the other? A great notion I lose when I am self-focused on hurt.
We are certain to experience frustration with others again and again. It is part of the nature of relationships.
That irritation may rise up as soon as today or tonight. Will we attack from our "lowest" self or will we be able to catch a shaft of light from the Divine and illuminate the highest self of the fearful person before us?
-Reverend Erie Chapman
Further Note: On August 26, 2009, we at the Journal created International Caregivers Day. Liz Wessel has created three beautiful paintings to celebrate our second anniversary. Below is the one of these. Thank you, Liz, for once again conjuring beauty for our readers.
Painting by Liz Wessel, 2011
