Radical Loving Care: Journal of Sacred Work

Days 271-273: 4-Year-Old Busts Dance Moves

  Yes. I know most people LOVE the fall to the point where everyone calls the weather "crisp." Autumn often puts me in a grumpy mood - all those dying leaves & early darkness.

   Then I got this video from my daughter-in-law showing my 4-year-old grandson performing his fall dance celebration. My guess is that he is still dancing. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 269-273 - Part 1: Pushing Back the Dark - A Bearable Lightness of Being

 That is how one writer described the impact of Thomas Edison's illumination of Lower Manhattan which had occurred when Edison threw the switch on September 4, 1882. His light bulbs were "pushing back the dark." Through his invention light could enter "the dark corners" of American nights.

   What a metaphor for what spiritual illumination can mean in our lives. Light & dark are the ultimate analogues for hope & despair, good & bad, love & hate, or love & its even deadlier opposite, grey indifference. 

   We are not born fearing darkness. Why do we begin, as children, to fear the night? Why do so many still carry these fears as adults?

   We know the answer & we forget. Entering the night offers the promise of healing sleep. We need darkness to rest & thus close our eyes. 

   But what if you have profound anxieties that block sleep? The medical names are nyctophobia & somniphobia.

   One sleep study of 93 students at Ryerson University supported a predictable premise: Most poor sleepers harbored fears of the dark. In most cases, the fears began in childhood. The study yielded more research & some success in helping sufferers sleep better using anti-phobia psychology. 

   Spiritual darkness is far more pervasive. When we are at peace spiritually it improves our chances of finding peace at night.    

   There are no pills for such peace except faith & trust. No medical doctors. Just ministers & therapists.

   Billions turn to Jesus, Buddha, Hindu gods & Jewish prophets. These spiritual guides urge us to look within and to take them with us. Some say they sleep with Jesus. Others enter their beds with statues of the Buddha or Vishnu on the night stand. 

   We seek a bearable lightness of being not the frenetic energy of a sleepless grave. 

   May God be with you caregivers & caring people who suffer sleeplessness & deliver rest that enriches your days & pushes back the dark.  

Reverend Erie Chapman

Part II will further address the challenge of sleep

Photograph: "Angels of Light & Dark" by Erie, 2017 & 2021

Days 267-268 - What is Your Mission in Life?

[Regular weekend columnist Liz Wessel is away. Special thanks to my cousin, Dr. Terry Chapman, for this excellent post!] 

Mission is your most important task in life! Without a strong purpose, all your emotional pursuit of a meaningful life will find you flailing, rather than using your unique gifts and attributes to assist others. Your mission becomes your life’s priority, and all else is relatively unimportant. And your life satisfaction level will increase too.

But how decide what your gifts are? First, identify what you like doing and do very well, based primarily on your opinion but also those of others. These are your God given gifts. Then add your attributes such as honesty, candor, physical strength, or artistic appreciation of the arts. Only you will know what these are.

Focusing on these unique gifts and attributes will help you decide where to spend your life’s energies, both in career settings but also and often in personal, family, and community settings as a voluntary caregiver. One’s primary gift could be their uplifting sense of humor; for another it is an uncanny ability to arrange family reunions. The next person easily plans financial affairs; and another can make older people feel safe and loved. Still another has strong coaching abilities. What is your Gift?

Then, consider how you could best utilize your primary Gift to help others. Which setting would work best for you: your family, your friends, your job, or somewhere in your community. This plan of action becomes your Purpose and life's Mission. Productive caregivers have a mission unmatched by any other calling. Your ministry of help to others makes a huge difference in improving the lives of all you help.

Dr. Terry Chapman, Guest Columnist

Photo of Dr. Chapman: Facebook

Days 262-266 - How Old Are You?... Why Chronological Age is Least Accurate Measure

   Five months from her 60th birthday, my friend, Beth, began lying about her age. She tells others she is fifty-eight, not fifty-nine. 

   Her physical age is probably fifty. But the calendar scares her so much she has vetoed her birth certificate. 

   Too bad.  Wisdom flowing from out of body experiences includes the knowing that chronological age is our least important metric & useless for your soul's age. But, Beth is also the friend that told me, "When you turn 80 you're out of the game" feeding fears that she was leading the charge to marginalize me & my contemporaries. 

   What about a more innovative age model? One that focuses on a spiritual "age" that is free of numbers? Time for a party celebrating the fact that our soul is eternal! 

   Society insists on making age a problem. Any doctor will tell you about eighty-year old patients who seem sixty & vice versa. But most "young" 80 year olds remain victimized by calendar news. People like Beth aggravate that.

   Thus, the thriving cosmetics world & photo apps that enable softening age's attack. For example, vanity caused me to use the new "Portrait" lens on my iPhone for the attached picture. It smoothes wrinkles to suggest youth.

   But, there's no hiding that the the white haired guy is not a young adult. Kindly, my middle-aged children say I seem "younger than ever."

   Why? I asked my son. "It's your agility, voice & your energy, dad," he said, "You take after your mom." (who died at 105.) 

    Why do I allow myself to be trapped in the age game? Because, like all biases, I hate agism & fear nursing home imprisonment. 

    Forty years ago a nurse said, "Mr. Chapman, come meet this nice little old man in room 507." I walked in expecting a tiny creature smiling his way to Death's door. Instead, the six foot patient rose from his bed & shook my hand. 

   "How are we today, Mr. Jones?" the nurse asked in the tone of a nursery school teacher to a four-year old. 

   "Doin' great," Mr. Jones answered energetically. "Remember, I'm just in for gall bladder surgery not for last rites."

  Where was the "little old man" the nurse referenced? To the young nurse, everyone over fifty was old, especially in a patient gown.   

   I heard so many caregivers reference "little old" people that, at age forty-five, I launched a retraining initiative designed to generate respectful treatment of older patients at Riverside Methodist Hospital where I was CEO. 

   How helpful is a spiritual age calculation? It works if we drop numbers & shift to eternity thinking. This is one way I have been changed by the other-consciousness experiences I have been reporting.  

   Begin today to think spiritual not physical age & you will feel a new lightness of being. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 260-261 Dreaming of Angels

We've all been following Erie's epic journey into different realms of consciousness and we have been encouraged to share stories that touch upon these realities. The following story was written by Dayna Ayala RN and shared with me in 2013. 

"My great grandma was diagnosed with lung cancer and shortly after was admitted to hospice. Most of the time she didn’t have any pain and  after a few weeks she would tell my grandma that she could see my great grandpa standing by the window watching her, even though he had passed away about 10 years earlier. She said that he called her by name, and sometimes too, told her to come with him".

 "One morning my great grandma shared that she had dreamed of beautiful angels flying above her bed and she wanted to reach up and grab one but couldn’t because she wasn’t strong enough. Her daughter (my grandma) told her that the next time she saw the angels, to reach up and hold on as hard as she could, that it was okay to go with them."      

"The next morning my great grandma was found lying in bed with her hands clenched tight. She had held on to an angel and passed away in her sleep."

This  phenomenon is often described and experienced when a loved one is transitioning from this earthly life as angels and loved ones come to greet and accompany us.

Have you ever witnessed a transcendent moment such as this?  How did it change you?

Watercolor by ~Liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 255-259 - Comfortable Consciousnesses

My dad lay next to me on my single bed. He was laughing that I was laughing.

His strong voice told another story built from the timber of his childhood on a 19th century farm. I was with him in my bedroom, not on his farm.

His body pressed my child's frame against the wall causing me to say, "Scoot over, dad." We laughed again as he pretended to fall out of bed.

The incandescence of the hallway light, the breeze-born scent of honeysuckle through the screen-less windows of our Westwood Village home, his sighs as he fell asleep before I did, all of it was as real as yesterday. 

Instead, it was last night. A dream I did not want interrupted by what we name reality.

Renown Professor Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) wrote, “We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.” 

This is the sixth essay on alternative consciousnesses & how we can benefit from it. Why, for example, is the reality of dream consciousness dismissed & everyday life the only truth we trust? 

Why insist on saying, "It was just a dream" rather then, "It was a different reality."

Let go of literal thinking for a moment. Are not both true? Are not I the little boy comforted by my dad as well as the father & grandfather that offers that to his children & grandchildren? 

To honor each "reality" is too enrich our lives & others. 

A friend blasted me on Facebook for sharing too much information in my death essays. Perhaps. Or, maybe she has difficulties dealing with her awarenesses? Wittgenstein warned, “Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense!...pay attention to your nonsense.”

I invite you to explore other rooms in the house of your awareness. To celebrate your more unusual thought patterns. To share, here, what you see in your "other minds."

Whether you do or not, let your soul visit other awarenesses. Travel journal what you see. Writing it deepens the experience. 

This is free, though not cheap. It begins by closing your eyes. I keep mine closed even if shadows appear. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 253-254 Care of Creation Part II (Part one shared Sept 4th)

What vision do you hold in your heart for a better world? For inspiration, Pope Francis looks to Francis of Assisi who saw the world and everything in it, the sun, moon, all the creatures, the elements of the earth, and all people as one family.

In Laudato Si' he writes, “In Saint Francis' vision, creation appears as a "magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness." (par. 12).

Can we embrace a new vision, one that is united in a belief that health is a human right?  Health in mind, body and spirit? As we recognize the interconnectedness of all life, let us care for our people and our earth.

Beyond political motivation for power in a fear-based world, people of good will are working to create health globally through collaborative partnerships regardless of national boundaries. Dr. Tetsu Nakamura is one such person. He left his home in Japan in the 1980s to treat leprosy patients in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Overtime he began to see how a severe drought was claiming more lives than he could save through clinic care.

Dr. Makumara's view of health expanded beyond the clinic to the wider community. His passion to help heal, sparked creativity and innovative thought. In the 2000s, he adapted ancient Japanese irrigation techniques that required little technology, and helped the villagers displaced by drought to build a network of canals that has transformed an area of nearly a million residents.

“A doctor treats patients one by one, but this helps a whole village,” Dr. Nakamura had said. “I love seeing a village that’s been brought back to life.”

New Life

This spring, many of us began planting gardens. There is something healing in the tending of the earth. We are all called to help tend to our world, while cultivating and nurturing human dignity.

Something deep within responds to nature in a way that doesn't happen when we are surrounded by four walls indoors and artificial lighting. It can be difficult to integrate nature into our workday – but not impossible.

Take time to go outdoors for a breath of fresh air. Consider how you might be able to bring nature closer to your daily experience and that of others. There's far more at stake, as you're helping to cultivate a space more begetting of human dignity. 

Pope Frances shares, “All of us can cooperate as instruments of God/Love for the care of creation, each according to his or her own culture, experience, involvement and talents.”

In Remembrance

In remembrance of all the lives lost in 9/11 and the ripple effect of thousands of lives lost globally, we pray,

The One Universal Creator of all, our Divine Mother and Father

 In Your blessings we find true and lasting comfort and peace

Grant healing and solace to our wounded hearts

Grant us strength to bear the loss of loved ones and to live in Your Will

Grant us resilience in the face of hate, and the courage to face it with dignity

May we all unite and share one another's pain and tears

May the hatred in the world melt away in Your boundless and everlasting love

And living in Your Will, may all find peace, harmony and serenity.

Amen

                                                                                                                        By Dr. Satpal Singh

Liz Sorensen Wessel
St Francis watercolor by ~liz

Days 250-252 - Part V. Reverends Harvey & Thomas Give Healing's Best Drug

The Most Powerful Drug

   For decades, Reverend Kaye Harvey (left) has been dispensing a healing drug with extraordinary effectiveness. She administered this drug to her former congregation & to endless others. Many got better through her treatments. 

   Although she was specially ordained to inject this drug, you can give it too. The drug that has been changing our brain cells for millennia? Not ketamine or psilocybin (which also holds great promise). But, Love. 

   Chaplain Marcy Thomas (right) did the same during her long service as a chaplain at Vanderbilt Medical Center. Instead of a sharp syringe she used a soft hand. Instead of cubic centimeters of antibiotics she administered rich quantities of her loving presence.

   Many believe both these caregivers contributed as much to those in need as did prescription drugs. 

The Role of Consciousness in Healing

   Every year millions travel seeking excitement, discovery & change. Without moving an inch, I traveled further than I have ever gone. This time, ketamine was the guide. 

   Readers of the Journal often prefer spirituality over science. The wisest, like Reverends Harvey & Thomas, incorporate both in the life journey. 

   It is shocking how few appreciate the value of other consciousnesses. What happens every night? Sleep delivers other worlds.  

   Freud pioneered dream consciousness to heal.  Remembered or not, we dream. Like you, I dismiss night dreams to live in daytime's "reality." 

   But my mind also dismisses earth the moment sleep takes over! Which is "real?"

   One of my friends attacked this series as nonsense that contains, "too much personal information, Erie." She wrote, "We all have problems. Buck up!" & posted it on Facebook with other comments so inflammatory I removed them.

   Maybe I was wrong. Kathy represents the majority. But, the atypical minority pioneers new healing. 

   Consider the breakthrough work of M.I.T. scientists reported in 2019 by Simon Mankin in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: "The Food and Drug Administration’s approval in March of a depression treatment based on ketamine generated headlines...because the drug represents a completely new approach for dealing with a condition the World Health Organization has labeled the leading cause of disability worldwide." 

   Note: "The FDA’s approval marks the first genuinely new type of psychiatric drug—for any condition—to be brought to market in more than 30 years."

   The reason to look beyond ketamine is the implications for you. Careful reading reveals scientists describing radical news: certain drugs do more than treat specific conditions. They offer tickets to 1) fundamental insights into our mind's function & 2) can change them permanently. 

   As NIMH scientist Carlos Zarate added,“'It’s a remarkable engineering feat, where they were able to visualize changes in neural circuits over time, corresponding with behavioral effects of ketamine.” Zarate is chief of the Experimental Therapeutics and Pathophysiology Branch at the Institute.

   Changing neural circuits means that new treatments may restore memory, change personality & enhance brain function in older people.

   As Mankin writes, "'ketamine [just one example] has researchers excited [because] it works differently than existing antidepressants."

   Doctors reference "monoamine neurotransmitters" (serotonin, norepinephrine & dopamine). These words describe current antidepressants that impact the most common chemical messenger in the brain, glutamate.

   Get this. Glutamate commands one of the biggest processes happening in our minds right now: the brain wiring that underlies learning & memory.

   More “neuroplasticity” means better brain function. Depression shrinks the brain's hippocampus. Ketamine’s may help restore that crucial region. 

   Other drugs may revolutionize how all humans think. This includes impressive results from Johns Hopkins studies on psilocybin (mushroom extract.)

   Fortunately, that drug of Love, especially Radical Loving Care^®, exceeds others in impacting well being. Reverends Harvey & Thomas are especially good at delivering it. 

  With thanks to them, & to help other caregivers & patients, this series will continue. 

  Please contribute your experiences & insights as the journey continues.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photos from Facebook

Days 248-250 - Part IV: Grace & Death - What Comes Down Must Go Up

As a deer longs for flowing streams, my soul longs for you, O God. Psalm 42

   Frozen into abandonment, isolation & suffering, a woman suddenly experiences the mystery of grace from the Magdalene. Delivered from some corner of eternity, the grace is real & invisible. 

   Famed writer Anne Lamott offers this: "I do not understand the mystery of grace," she writes, "only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us."

   Neither do I understand the mystery of death. But my visit to eternity has not left me where it found me. Nor will it you. Among life-changing experiences this one cuts deep. 

   Why explore eternity? Because it informs earthly existence.

A Spirit Visiting Earth

   Physics tells us what goes up must come down. Spirituality tells us what comes down must go up. 

   During eternity my body accomplished the first part, my spirit the second. Our spirits exist separate from our bodies & thus separate from the earth. 

   This is good because, as science teaches, not only the earth by all matter is finite. Infinity has no "material." 

  I was a naive earthling whose spirit has visited the edges of heaven through prayer, art & other ecstasies. My perspective is reversed. 

   Now, I am a spirit whose body is visiting the earth. You too? 

   The risk of hyperbole is significant. After all, this is not a cliff hanger. You know that I returned.

Surrender

   But I jumped off a cliff into an ocean where I was not sure I could swim; because there was the chance of discovering new meaning in yet another consciousness.  

   Ketamine has been legalized for treatment of depression. But I am now mostly free of that plague. My jump was about a different issue: Surrender.

   So none of this is about the drug. 

   Does peace comes through surrender?  My life taught victory, not retreat. I preach persistence & tell my offspring, "Chapman's don't give up."

   Surrender is foreign, unless it is the relief that ensues after hard work, the serenity that attends meditation or the peace in the trough below love-making's crest. 

   These kinds of "surrender" yield rewards. The rest of life is striving. Right? 

   People my age & stage are expected to ease up. Not me. 

   Yet, it feels crucial to cultivate that path of surrender. By money standards, my friend Greg Webb confesses limited career success. So what? He is successful because he understands surrender &, in line with Buddhist thinking, practices it. His aura of grace suggests that. 

   Back to the "fall of the sparrow" referenced in Part 1. Why does Hamlet's friend try to talk him out of a sword fight?

   Hamlet replies that no one can surrender to Providence.

   If Hamlet could choose, he chose wrong. His duel with Laertes leads to multiple deaths including his. Can we choose to surrender to peace & still live love by helping others? 

   Here was a learning: When I surrendered in the death experience I expected immediate joy. Instead, I was shocked into an odd nightmare. Peace did not come until after that nightmare evaporated. Only then did Love appear.

   Surrendering to pain eases it. Yield to pain as part of helping others. Accept suffering as part of the mystery of grace. Joy ensues later. 

   There is more. 

-Erie Chapman

   Part V (Wednesday) How other drugs other restore brain connections. 

Photograph: "Magdalene Graces A Suffering Woman" Erie Chapman, 2021

Days 246-247 The Season of Creation

 

The Season of  Creation is as annual Christian celebration and an invitation to all people from around the world to participate through prayer, sustainability projects and advocacy efforts.

Beginning September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation continues through October 4th, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology and beloved by many.

This year’s theme is “A Home for All? Renewing the “Oikos of God.” Oikos is the Greek word for “home” and rooted in the concept of oikos, we celebrate the integral web of relationships that sustains the well-being of the Earth.

During  this Season of Creation let us each renew our call to care for and sustain this ecological turning so that life, and all creatures may find their place to flourish once again in our common home.

Recognizing that life as we know it has changed significantly in recent times, we can join with the world in commemorating the 6^th Anniversary of Pope Francis' first encyclical, Laudato Si'. In this profoundly moving letter, Francis is addressing every person on this planet with an open an urgent appeal for a new dialogue and conversation about the future of our common home — a home we all share, regardless of faith or ideology.  The conversation needs to include everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all”. …

In Laudato Si', Pope Francis asks that we orient ourselves to hear the cry of the earth, which is inseparable from the cry of the poor. He writes, "a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor" (para. 49).

Our approach to "ecology" must include the poor and vulnerable just as much as the natural world we all share. “Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.” (Laudato Si’, 139)

Questions for Reflection: What parallels do you see between the neglect and exploitation of the earth and the neglect and exploitation of the poor?

How are the poor part of your understanding of the way we are to heal the world around us?

Liz Sorensen Wessel
Pencil drawing by ~liz
Christ painting-artist unknown

 

Days 244-246 Part III Eternity's Humanity

Eternity's Humanity

   When Humanity appeared in the next phrase of altered consciousness it brought with it overwhelming relief & joy. It was, "salvific" (salvation-bringing.) Without humanity I would have been left hopeless & body-less spinning in an eternity of color that lacked Love's beauty. 

   I saw no hell. No evil images appeared in those first rooms of eternity. Just those compelling abstractions 

   But an eternity of sound-intensified sight & vice versa, all "seen" with no eyes nor ears because I was body-less? Hellish to me. 

   I needed people. Thank you for appearing, dear mother. She was not the 105-year-old being I watched leaving this earth only a few years ago. Instead, she was the thirty-year old mother of my babyhood. 

   Regression often occurs in mind-altering experiences. The doctor reported that my adult persona periodically became child like. Or baby-like?

   In this room of eternity I was nursing at my mother's breast. Her skin comforted my cheek. An olfactory sensation evoked milk nearby.

   Along with this profound comfort came that ancient longing, more common among males than females, to return to the womb from which I had been ejected. Little boys quickly realize they are unlike their mothers. Was this male alienation part of what has drawn me to women in general?

Clouds of White Light

   As my particular experience unfolded it became gloriously flooded with Love. Loving beings appeared not so much as faces but as clouds of white light each identifiable to me without their identifiable figures. 

   There was my younger sister, my friends Tracy & Jill, a high school girlfriend, a stream of others, all female, including my wife, bathing in light. All came to me with the ease & beautify of heaven.

   During another caregiver-guided experience three years ago, that time with psilocybin, I was voluntarily able to manage some of the fascinating & beautiful imagery that vibrated before me. Ketamine was different.

The Biggest Remaining Question

   Something powerful lingered. It was the biggest reason I had chosen to take the risky leap by taking this drug.

   Two underpinnings of Christianity, as well as most other faiths, are the existence of a higher power & that we must surrender to that power. I always accepted the first truth. It is the second that has been a struggle. 

   How can you gain victory through surrender? I get the logic but the practice has been elusive.

   As I entered this strange journey I surrendered & immediately wondered why the expected calm failed to come.

   My answer came in a surprising revelation.

   You may find that answer, coming in Part IV, life-changing. 

   I am as glad for doing this as any climber that has summited Mount Everest. Everyone takes their trip with varying results.

   Clearly, the harder you work to process, not dismiss, what visits you from other consciousnesses the more fulfilling life becomes.

   Trying requires courage. Learning requires reflection. Growth requires trying again. 

   See you Monday with another revelation. 

-Erie Chapman

Part IV will appear Labor Day, September 6.

Photograph, "Rebecca & Child," 1978 & 2021 by Erie Chapman