Journal of Sacred Work

Days 119-123 - Hard Beauty

   Because it is a hybrid the stargazer lily appeared recently on this earth. In 1974 lily-breeder Leslie Woodriff named her oriental combination "stargazer" because of the way the new flower faced the sky. 

   The scent of the stargazer changes us. It shows how flowers - their sight, scent and touch - can perfume your soul providing crucial relief, especially if your work immerses you in blood.

   Only Beauty's strength, both hard and soft, can heal a heart scarred by caregiving.

   Caregivers, particularly male executives, sometimes ask me what Beauty has to do with medical care. I say that Beauty heals because it is Love's expression. They often shake their head, perhaps wondering how you heal a broken leg with a plant.

   You know better.

   For the first seven years of my career I was a trial lawyer - first handling auto accidents and worker's compensation claims and the last three years as a federal prosecutor. After that I worked eight more years as a part time night court judge while running a hospital. 

   Whether it is the setting for a divorce, a criminal prosecution or the resolution of a malpractice case courtrooms host ugliness. When I entered the caregiving world (the year after the first stargazer bloomed) I naively imagined a world populated with kind souls ministering to the sick and wounded. I had not thought enough about the blood, the torn bodies, the horror that inhabits hospitals. 

   Over the next thirty years I saw more violence in hospitals than I had ever seen in courtrooms. Some was unexpected - especially in my role as a CEO removed from direct caregiving.

   For example, on December 30, 1983, I was the third person on the scene (after the criminal and a doctor) to see the lifeless body of research technician Joyce McFadden lying on the floor of our hospital's research laboratory. She was bound up. Fourteen stab wounds had drained her life.

   In the next room her fellow technician Patricia Matix lay dead from the same kind of wounds. Her husband accused me of not protecting his wife (He turned out to be the murderer.) 

   I had promised to "take care of the caregivers." Two lay dead. There was no avoiding the heartbreak we all  felt at the violence that occurred amid a place dedicated to curing. 

   Abnormality is normal in hospitals. It takes a strong soul to invade a woman's body to deliver her newborn and later to be the one that may cut from that woman the ovaries that enabled conception.

   Heart surgeons splay open chests to replace blocked arteries.  To oncology nurses cleaning chemotherapy-caused vomit may look as ugly as the cancer.

   The brutality in caregiving begs for Beauty's hand.

   But, "You have to be tough," many caregivers instruct. They are right unless "tough" means building a hard shell that blocks the beauty our souls need. 

   The most frequent gift visitors bring to patients is flowers. You need them too. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph - Stargazer 1 - copyright erie chapman 2013

Days 117-118 In Our Brokenness

Life’s poignancies are what make it so crashingly beautiful. On my drive home from work tonight I was thinking about the twists and turns of life. Every day we are faced with the split second decisions. Some of our experiences call forth the best in us, others the worst. My week has held a bit of each.

We often do not know how we will react. In an encounter with a teammate this week, I found myself suddenly immersed in a crucial conversation that did not go well. The situation seemed so blown out of proportion to the circumstance (a clue that something was triggered from the dregs). I am still sorting through the dynamics of the changing landscape of our relationship to better understand its meaning. What holds true ... is that there are so many different endings to this one sentence; to the story of how our affinity might unfold.

How we respond in the moment can be affected by the perceived pressures we experience especially if we feel pushed to the hilt. Today a colleague stopped by looking for the support of her supervisor. She shared part of her dilemma related to a patient care situation. I tracked down her supervisor but just as she turned to leave, I inquired further. Next, moment we were calling this distraught family member together and offering the support that was needed. The moment shimmered golden.

The phenomenal PBS series, “Call the Midwife” is based on the memoirs of the late Jennifer Worth and takes place in 1950’s, England. The most recent episode tells the story of a young couple who are struggling to accept and bond with their newborn son who suffers with spinal bifida. They came close to placing him in an institutionalized setting. Yet, love shone triumphant in the smoldering ambivalence of their lives. In that final moment, in a split second decision, they mustered the courage to say yes to life despite its brokenness. I was so moved by their ability to rise above the conflict and to eventualy find the courage that helped them come to terms with their personal dilemma.  

I think this is where Beauty lies, in the complexities of life when in our brokenness we respond with the courage to say yes to  love on its terms. Each of us is confronted by the struggles and poignancy of daily life. A moment can define us; call upon us to be our better selves. Sometimes we lapse and miss the opportunity to reflect Love’s radiance. Other times we meet the challenge spot on, whether to face our fear , or  lean into pain and sorrow  as we affirm our essence; our hope.

Just think how bland and one dimensional life would be if all was sugary sweet. Instead, life offers us the chance to discover Beauty in the most unexpected places.

~liz Sorensen Wessel

mandala by ~liz

Days 115-116 - Gentle Things

   During their stay in this world, artists feel compelled to express their experience of this earth. When you see Liz Wessel's art in the Journal you know that she has applied her gifts to share something that will touch our hearts.

   When you hear an aria from Madame Butterfly, you know that Puccini expressed something so exquisite that it thrills us to this day. When you see the one surviving photo of Emily Dickinson, you sense a gentle woman. Her poetry reflects a rich spirt both gentle and strong. 

   In music, photographs, film and poetry, we can share together things we may encounter separately. Amid the brutality of the world that stains this spring we can open our hearts to gentle things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Erie Chapman

Photographs by Erie Chapman

Days 112-114 - Caught on the Bridge: The Mystery of Liminal States

   Illuminated as if on stage, the dogwood blossoms sing to us of spring. The solstice long past, they find it safe to bloom full and glorious. 

   Solstices mark the bridge between one season and another. What if you were caught on that bridge as precariously as if you had one foot on a dock and the other on a boat?  

   Every season is sacred. But spring reigns supreme here in the south where it lasts a full three months (instead of being truncated on the front end by the long winters in the north.)

   The only way you can miss spring's searing beauty is if your looking is fastened on her function instead of open to her mystery. 

   Radical Loving Care offers a way to awaken us to a new season of seeing. Look at the dogwood petals overlapping each other - as if mimicking the intersecting circles of love and need.

   How can it be that a single Sacred Encounter can change everything? A patient utters a simple four-word statement: “I am in pain.” You ask, simply, "Where does it hurt?"

   But sacred encounters are never simple because suffering is always complex. 

   Do you remember your worst pain? Do you recall how hard it was for you to experience that pain and to know that nobody else, in that moment, could understand?

   This is the agony that isolation can produce. When your life struggles from breath to breath you may even believe it is not worth living.  Why breathe again if such profound discomfort is to continue?

   Pain is complex because illness casts you into a liminal state – an earthly purgatory. When you are ill you are, by definition, not well but you are also not dead. You are caught on the bridge. Like a pilgrim asea you lack the comfort of your homeland and you have not yet arrived in the new world.

   The thunder of liminal states can feel deafening. There is a particular desperation, a desire to be in one place or the other but not in between. It is an indescribable fear whose only antidote comes when Love arrives.

   In this state of illness you remember the safe harbor of your homeland. You want the new land of healing to be better. Meanwhile you are gasp for air amid the roiling ocean.

   Who will help you? Your only lifeline is the caregiver. Your eyes beseech.

   What will you as that caregiver bring to that suffering soul?

   This is the reason we invite you to sail into the waters of Radical Loving Care. When we are suffering we need more than medicine. We need what only Love can provide – water from the wellspring of healing. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 110-111 The Door of Possibilities

The Door of Possibilities - Commentary for the Journal by Maria Doglio

 Sometimes, when we get knocked off our path by others, we lose sight of profound moments of synchronicity that once gave you clarity and direction.   Such was my state, when dear Liz Wessel, asked me to share the “The Door of Possibilities” with the Journal audience. And once again, the synchronicity of her asking was perfect.

This wonderful “Door of Possibilities” was created by Elizabeth Gibbons, a visionary artist who lives in San Francisco.  It stood at the end of a large exhibition hall during a creative women’s expo last November.  It is huge and ornate, covered beautifully in paintings and glitter and messages.  The center of the door states “Choose Creation”. Beside it was an invitation to “set your intention” and walk through the door.  What she was presenting was a wonderful invitation to participate in creative manifestation and to re-envision our world!  How could one resist!  I asked for help to see clearly what my next steps should be.  I took a deep breath and walked through.  Just at that moment a little white tug boat was pulling out of the neighboring peer (this was Ft. Mason, SF) and on it’s side in huge red letters was the word PILOT.  Immediately, this sentence popped into my mind:  “I am the Pilot of my own life!”  I love how spirit works when you ask for help.  This was a definite experience in a rise of consciousness in an AHA! moment.

 Amid stress and changes, I am once again reminded of the message, and encouraged to “pilot” my way back to my personal path, determined to dance through spring toward new possibilities.  I invite you all to walk through that virtual “door of possibilities” and set your intentions.

 

Flame-dancing Spirit, come

Sweep us off our feet and

Dance with us through our days.

Surprise us with your rythms;

Dare to try new steps, explore

New Patterns and new partnerships;

Release us from old routines

To swing in abandoned joy

And fearful adventure,

And in the intervals,

Rest us

In your still center

-Ann Lewin

 

Door Artist:  Elizabeth Gibbons, www.enchantedeye.net

Photo by artist Kate Langlois, www.katelangloisart.com

Specail thanks to Maria Doglio for contributing this wonderful essay!

Days 105-109 - "Do You Love Me?"

   The earliest spring flowers are pioneers. Each April, they are the first to expose their vulnerable blossoms.

   Sometimes, like the new forsythia in the photograph, they they are seared by a winter not ready to retreat. This may burn them but it never daunts them.     

   Love is the gold we seek - enduring love. The pioneers among us take the highest risks to find it. When they succeed they are rewarded with life's richest gift. But, in the risking, they are always subject, like the forsythia, to pain.

   We all want to love and be loved. We all hope to create life's finest union.

   When two souls unite - whether for a few moments in a caregiving encounter or in a longer sacred relationship, can their love withstand winter's certain assault? Only when lovers survive storms can they know that God has crowned their union.   

   "...do you love me?" the resurrected Christ asked Peter  (John 21:15-17) When Peter replied that he did, Jesus said, simply, "feed my sheep."  Then Jesus asked him a second time and again a third. Each time Peter, with increasing irritation, protested that of course he loved Jesus.

   Why did Christ persist? Of course, Peter had denied him three times before Jesus' death on the cross.

   Why did Jesus tell Peter, "feed my sheep"?

   Herein lies your injunction. If you love God, you will Love those in need as well as those you desire.

   This is the essence of a sacred encounter. When you help with holy intention you bless yourself and the other. Sympathy means to suffer another's pain. Only Love can empower survival.

   If you think you love another ask yourself how you feel when trouble comes. If your love fades was it ever love?   

   There is no harder experience for caregivers than to love patients that spit at them, co-workers who betray them, and supervisors who punish instead of affirm.  

   Perhaps, this is why Love seems to be in hiding when, in the middle of spring, a beautiful bloom is suddenly struck by snow. Look again, the blossom is unbowed.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Snow-Capped Forsythia" copyright erie chapman 2013 

 

Days 103 -104- Begin to Notice

 

The May Moon

The May moon
goes around like an inspector in a white jacket.

The visitors will soon be here.
Is everything in its place? This tapestry
must be brushed, green rugs everywhere
and candles on the tables.

A little music, half muffled,
—one thrush, a little lark, that’s better—
and violins. Bring up some more small rivers!

-Rolf Jacobsen, The Roads have Come to an End: Selected and Last Poems

                                                                    *¨*•.¸¸  ¸¸.•*¨*

[E]veryday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical.

—John Cage

Begin to notice...

Contributed by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 101-102 - Love in THIS Moment

   "I'm planning to give loving care today," a caregiver told me recently. It's a noble thought and exactly the kind of thing everyone of her patients wants to experience.

   There's a related thought. It's not about what we're planning to do but what we are doing right now.

   Frequently, I find myself plotting new ways to live Love instead of noticing what I'm doing right now.   Sitting at my computer (imagining you at yours) I just now paused to send up a prayer for a man who, now age eighty, is ill and tired of life, and another prayer for a woman who, in this moment, is suffering with cancer knowing that it may soon take her life. 

   We can always do more tomorrow. But, what can how can we live Love right now?

   A patient hits the call button and waits for half an hour. How can the late-arriving caregiver deal with his anger? A frequent response is, "I was busy taking care of other patients" or, worse, "We're short staffed today."

   The problem with this answer is that the patient can do nothing about these excuses and may well be made more uncomfortable knowing there are not enough people to care for patients. 

   The better response has to do with giving love NOW: "I'm so sorry to be slow responding. That must have been hard. I'm here now. How may I help you?"

   The love we give now is more important and any we plan for tomorrow. Tomorrow, of course, will simply be another set of "nows." 

-Erie Chapman

Days 98-100 - Our Way of Seeing

   He dropped from the spring sky a page torn from Beauty's bible. His butterfly wings were stained glass windows opening the sacred. The "glass" framed in his flutter was as bright as the yellow post in the photograph (left.)

   My vision is enhanced when I give an image before me a life beyond its function. To see a simple electrical box (below) as a cathedral door or to experience an evergreen tree as someone waving to me unearths the layers of Beauty that live beneath the crust. 

   It can soften stifled hostility if you can see past  the anger in a patient's eyes and into the kind light in his heart. Compassion rises when you look at the long life wrapped beneath your patient's wrinkles.

   If you're approaching burn-out after a long career in obstetrics it  can re-energize your work if you imagine the story that may unfold for the baby you welcome this very day. Your touch may be the first one he feels in this world. 

   Our way of seeing determines our way of being. The life chapters we share and how we describe them signals what matters in our lives. 

   Our legacy is our book of stories. Our tales are also what we leave behind when we die. 

   When you hear the patient's history beyond their current cancer diagnosis, when you listen to the music of their lives singing past the data about weight, height, blood pressure and temperature you see your patient's humanity.

   When caregivers ask me how to develop more compassion, that is what I say. See the patient as more than their diagnosis. Listen to their story. Remember your own pain when you listen to theirs.

   It can be exhausting work. And it is also what ennobles the sacred work of caregiving. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Electrical Box" erie chapman 2013

 

Days 96-97 Radical Loving Care

 

(Note:  This is the third essay in a three part series. Part I, Days 55-56: The Pearl of Great Price and Part II, Days 68-69: Standing with Paradox).

For those of you who frequent these pages you most likely are familiar with the mandala, or sacred circle, which is symbolic of an all inclusive Love. Recently, I discovered the mandorla, which is an ancient Christian symbol for wholeness. A mandorla is formed as two emerging circles overlap until an almond shape forms in the center (Jensen, 2006).These intersecting circles represent "the interactions and interdependence of opposing worlds or forces". The significance of this sacred image denotes heaven and earth; spirit and form (Baldock, 1990).

Mandorla is the Italian word for almond. According to Biedermann (1994), the almond shape is likened to the closing over of a precious core within a hardened, sealed shell. It represents the mysterious inner Light of Christ’s radiance that is the true essence of every human being.

Early Christians had a tradition to “ make themselves known to one another by scrapping into the walls two lines indicating a stylized fish-which is the mandorla. One would scratch a small circle in the wall, and another would come by and make another circle slightly overlapping, thus completing a Mandorla” (Jensen, 2006).

Often the banished aspects of our shadow side show up in midlife (Johnson, 1991). Much of our triggered 'flight or fight' behavior is conditioned and below conscious awareness. It is important to remember that it is not our fault; a lot is handed down to us through the generations as well as through cultural norms. However, we can begin to notice our experience without judgment. 

The mandorla offers a means of reconciliation with our human struggle between the light and shadow sides of our being (Jensen, 2006). When we tire of running from the tensions of opposites, we may decide to finally confront some of life’s painful paradoxes. Perhaps, this is because we have become strong enough and courageous enough to face our soul’s inner work.

Our pricless time here on earth passes by so quickly. We may not get another chance to speak Love's truth. Can we unseal the innermost chamber of our Holiness to forgive others our grievances? Can we release the pain of perceived separation in the knowledge that Love never dies? In the ever changing patterns of life, when we must let go, can we do so with an open heart of gratitude? Can we honor the light and the shadow to receive Love’s mutual blessing in acceptance?

This is my prayer in these ever changing tides; the ebb and flow of life and relationships. The mandorla offers a healing of the split (Johnson, 1991). Life is fluid and this integration is a continual process and a movement towards, and away, and back again as we become reunited with our authentic being.

 

What a delight to discover mandorla symbolism in the visionary work of Healthcare leader, Erie Chapman’s Radical Loving Care. For "whenever need is met by a loving response" the Sacred enters, transforming our fear into Love. (Chapman, 2003).

Contributed by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandorla of Rev. Chapman’s Sacred Work Symbol by ~liz

References

Baldock, J. (1990). Glossary of Symbols. In Fairbrother, M. (Ed.), The elements of Christian symbols. Worcester: Element Books.

Bierdermann, H. (1994). Dictionary of symbolism: Cultural icons and the meanings behind.

Chapman, E. (2003). Radical loving care: Building the healing hospital in America. Nashville: Baptist Healing Trust.

Jensen, B. (1996). Art therapy through test anxiety, Senior thesis. Dominican College of San Rafael, Unpublished, 1(1), 13-14. Retrieved from, http://www.sandplay.org/symbols/mandorla.htm, April 4, 2013.

Johnson, R. (1991). Owning your own shadow. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Days 94-95 Woman With A Golden Thread

"In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do." - Dorothea Dix

   It is difficult for us to imagine the astounding cruelty with which the mentally ill were treated across most of the 18th and 19th centuries.

   "Lunatics" were, according to Dorothea Dix, "...confined...in cages, stalls pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience."

   Against the predictable tide of skepticism and resistance one woman, initially almost alone, led the effort to reform the treatment of "Insane Persons" in both America and Great Britain. It took her sixty years to make a dent.

   A bill passed by Congress in 1854  proposed to set aside millions of acres on which treatment facilities would be built. President Franklin Pierce vetoed it. It took an astonishing eight more decades before President Franklin Roosevelt implemented meaningful social welfare legislation.

   Meanwhile, Dix met with some success at the state level in North Carolina, Illinois and Pennsylvania. She stands as a shining example of caregivers who let Love travel through them to meet and heal the most appalling kinds of need. 

   At the moment they accept their calling, every caregiver is handed an invisible Golden Thread of healing. The Thead was created by the first caregiver and is passed along to us. We can carry the legacy of this thread or we can, by our apathy or hostility, break it.

   Dorothea Dix allowed all the power of the thread to pass through her across her long and powerful career. We need to remember her. And we need to reflect on the millions of the poor who, to this day, face persecution around the world simply because they are mentally ill.

-Erie Chapman

 

Days 91-93 The Marriage of Commitment & Providence

"...the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed would have come his way." - Goethe

   It's happened in my lifetime and I'm sure it's happened in yours - if you were listening. After, perhaps, some difficult reflection, you finally decide. You pick a course of action.

   Or maybe, like the "famous failures" (portrayed at left) you were dealt a setback and stayed strong. Maybe you didn't. Perhaps, you lost faith and hope and ignored the calling of your Providence.

   Don't discount the stories of these six people just because they are famous. The same energy that helped them is available to you.  

   Whenever you truly commit to a course of action, you may have noticed that something magical happens. A strange and beautiful energy blows in behind your decision and pushes you forward the way wind propels a sailboat.

   You may have shied away from commitments that could have transformed both your life and the lives of those around them. If so, you are wasting the free power that Providence offers.

   Countless organizations do the same. Drifting along sometimes becalmed by inertia and blind to their own mission, they wither. 

   Providence calls to you. But, it cannot help you unless you make a real decision and a meaningful commitment. 

   The commitment must be deep and lasting because headwinds are sure to push you back. The work of caregiving is so hard that caregivers are tempted to turn back every day. But if you turn away from the right course it means you were never truly committed in the first place.

   Goethe's was right. Make a commitment in your life and the energy of Providence is sure to appear.

   Choose Love. Love will reward you in ways that nothing else can.

-Erie Chapman