Journal of Sacred Work

Days 118-122 - Anne Boyer Describes Why What You Do Matters Most

     On a day when the sky is the blue you want it to be & the air is fresher than new lilacs. In a late morning when anyone passionate about life would be rolling on the greening earth & shouting praises to a kind sun.

   Amid a spring so precious it ignites reflections on how many are left I come inside to write you about what matters most: how you spend your life caring for the ones that cannot go outside. The ones Disease holds hostage in hospitals.

   These are the fellow humans who seek your radical loving care.

   One of these, Anne Boyer, wrote a life changing article for The New Yorker (excerpt at left, April 15th edition). I read one paragraph & could not stop.

   It is more than an article about cancer. Ms. Boyer devotes her prodigious eloquence to describing illness universal. How the incessant florescence of its liminal state burns our eyes. How that netherworld is laced with longing. The familiar ground we knew in the mirror has been earthquaked into rubble we do not recognize.

   The severity of her disease means the severing of her breasts. Her plight evokes the stories of newly legless soldiers whose nerves feel limbs their eyes cannot see. Like them, Ms. Boyer is left with prosthetics.   

   This is a story of illness both chronic & acute. A tale embedded in the bodies of so many of the people in crisis for whom you care each day. The people we call patients.

   I read Anne's story amid health's arrogance & felt the pull of darker days I've spent on the other side of Wellbeing's fragile wall. Radical Loving Care's hymnal holds two songs. One thrills with notes of celebration. The other is limned with lyrics of longing.

   You know both songs by heart. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 116-117 Springtime

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

It was spring
and I finally heard him
among the first leaves––
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness––
and that's when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree––
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing––
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfect blue sky–––all of them

were singing.
And, of course, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

For more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then––open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

-Mary Oliver

 

For reflection: How has Spring greeted you? How have you responded?

Artwork by ~liz

 

Days 111-115 - Three Electric Words

    Why does Radical Loving Care matter?

    Each minute 250 people are born. During the three seconds it took to read that sentence twelve entered earth's orbit.

   During life's first minute a single procedure changes everything. That thin rope that connected us to our mothers, that lifeline through which nourishment traveled from her to us, is unceremoniously severed. 

   Set adrift into a sea of yearning we experience a passionate longing to return to the woman who sent us away. If we were lucky, our mother clutched us to her breasts. We drank her milk & reveled in her touch.

  Otherwise? Babies blocked from human contact fail to thrive, Neonatologist Elizabeth Krueger, M.D., says.  Our first cry casts a lifeline for food. Our new humanity also screams for Love's dual nourishments: compassion & competence.

   Even when we receive them, Life's umbilical also carries energy about which babies know nothing - hostility, rejection &, worst, indifference. 

   The womb is Love's first home. The umbilical represents the link to our heart's desire. Cutting it triggers life's cycle of longings.

   Patients are people in crisis. They seek Radical Loving Care, not just bandages & drugs.  Loving caregivers sense this when they attend the sick & the dying. 

   We long for healing. We long for love.

   In the past minute 105 of our fellow humans left this world. Since losses increase with age, aging can aggravate longing. The elderly often complain they are always being left.   

   Pair Longing's angst with his twin, Abandonment. The cut umbilical launches Act 1 of the human tragedy.   

   The only antidote to longing lies in a story that ends (& begins) with the three most electric words in Christianity: "He is risen." 

  If we still fear Longing's ocean Christ offers Love's ultimate umbilical, "Lo, I am with you always."

-Erie Chapman

Photoart: Rebecca & Baby 1979

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Days 109-110 Easter Mystery

 

 

 

"The dynamism of the Easter mystery is at the heart of Christian faith. True encounter with Christ liberates something in us,  a power that we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated,  a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation... the dynamism of Love.

Love comes out of God and gathers us to God in order to pour itself back into God through all of us...   we all become doors and windows through which God shines..."            Thomas Merton

 

 

Artwork by ~liz

Days 104-108 - The Leader's "Patients"

   Most doctors in the audience were older than I. They had never listened to a 33-year-old CEO before.

    Too young to be daunted, my speech focused on the crucial role doctors played in the quality of life for patients. A misstep lay only few sentences ahead.

   "It is important to remember that many patients feel like hostages," I lectured them. "As a former federal prosecutor the difference between prisoners & patients looks small to me."

    The Chief of Staff raised his hand. "My patients are not prisoners. They have not committed any crimes." he said to appreciative laughter from his colleagues. 

    "Well, patient gowns don't seem much better than prison uniforms," I answered to a few chuckles.

    "How many patients have you cared for?" he asked with a smirk.

   Everyone laughed - including me.

   Across the years, my prisons & hospitals comparison gained traction & became part of a nationally known documentary on patient care. But, on that spring evening in 1977 I ran smack into my own ego. It was presumptuous for a young man in a suit to lecture those in white coats.

   What I learned is something every leader must appreciate. Leaders care for caregivers not patients. When they do that with love the human experience in hospitals becomes healing as well as curing.

-Erie Chapman

photo circa 1982

Days 102-103 We Are Meant for More

Our works

Everyone who seeks meaning in their life,
seeks meaning in their work.
And, yet, how far we are driven away
from that meaning at times
by what we feel are the pressures of the moment-
And the sense that we are not in control.
We diminish ourselves in that we abandon
the spiritual reality of who we are
and make deals with Life
that get us through, moment to moment.

Even so, we are meant I know, for more-
meant to give more to others and to ourselves.
In our business dealings,  just Work does not work.
The fun, the pleasure, the sense of creation,
and camaraderie of work are at best
a recreation of ourselves on a daily basis.

We cannot sustain ourselves
and others around us with less.
It is what we must cultivate to become or to stay
an organization able to exist in and deal with the future.
We can look back at where we have been for knowledge,
but the only ultimately viable perspective on our work
must be what we will become – what we can create together
standing on common ground, on higher ground –
“At play in the fields of the Lord.”

By Gary Mahan 

 

Reflection shared by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Watercolor by ~liz

 

Day 102 - A new invitation to inspiration

Hope this will inspire your heart as a new adjunct to the Journal:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-jbedx-adbffa

Days 98-102 Secret Heart of Spring

  One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
  One need not be a house;
  The brain has corridors surpassing
  Material place.

           -Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

   Traveling your heart's corridors do you spy your childhood springs? 

   Across decades ensconced in courtrooms or encased in hospitals it was often hard to embrace God's most splendrous season.

   Butterflies were screened off by office windows/ birds so hard to hear./ Difficult to smell a rose/ through boardroom wall veneers. 

   Childhood springs were vibrant with miracles collected from the backs of petals & the thighs of eucalyptus trees. I scribbled secrets on scraps & time-capsuled them into the slim space between the neighbor's garage & the stucco wall built too close behind it. 

   Today, I thrust a hand into the new earth & found them. "One day you will remember that your springs are limited, your body will re-enter this earth & your soul will soar free," they said. "That spring may bring a bitter taste. Open your heart to new secrets & be glad again." 

   And my friend Emily wrote this to me: "Two butterflies went out at noon/ And waltzed above a stream,/ Then stepped straight through the firmament/ And rested on a beam;..."

   Most men I know would dismiss all this as romantic nonsense. I hope it stirs a precious secret hidden in your heart & christens you with sacred eyes.

   No need to mourn missed springs. Embrace this one. 

-Erie Chapman

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Photoart: "Springs Hidden Heart" - by Erie

Days 96-97 Little Glimpses

I recently discovered a book, "Prayers for Healing  365 Blessings, Poems & Meditations from Around the World" that was shared by an esteemed colleague. I found a second hand copy as this edition is as no longer in print. This excerpt is from today's reflection: 

When each day 
is sacred

earth and you
space and you
bearing the sacred 
through time

you'll reach 
the fields of light.

-Guillevic

 

Shared by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Watercolor by ~liz