Journal of Sacred Work

Days 221-225 M.I.T. Scientists: Distance Prayer Can Work!

   A ray of sun travels millions of miles & lands on a single magnolia leaf. Presto: photosynthesis enables the leaf to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide & oxygen.

   What if "Thoughts & Prayers," (a now-trite phrase) are not distance dependent?  Could regular reader, Sister Maureen McDermott, aim a healing prayer from her Australian home towards Liz Wessel in California & affect Liz's body chemistry?

   "No!" Scientists always said. Now, new evidence from scientists suggests what the faithful believe. "Yes!" Our prayers can help heal...& distance is irrelevant! 

   There is no area where spirituality & science intersect more tantalizingly than in quantum physics. 

   But, if you are a poet, musician or science-hater you probably missed news from the world-renown Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Starting back in 2013 MIT Technology Review wrote: "The ability to control one quantum particle by manipulating another somewhere else sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Now physicists say they know how to do it."

   So can you. Since our thoughts, as brain waves, are quantum particles (including photons or electrons) their travels are not restricted by distance.  Scientists call the transport process "teleportation" & describe it in the article as "one of the more extraordinary phenomena in the quantum world. It, [teleportation] allows a quantum object, such as a photon or electron, to travel from one location to another without passing through the space in between." (Italics added)

   Distance prayers may have been working for millennia!

   Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, told me this thirty years ago on my international t.v. show, Life Choices with Erie Chapman. But, I was doubtful & rarely read science journals. My son-in-law, Alberto Pierotti, does & led me to the latest research.  

   The faithful have always used distance prayer. Now faith-doubting scientists may join ministers in weaponizing thoughts to help defeat disease.  

   Perhaps, your prayers will gain new energy. Someone across the ocean will experience new healing...& wonder why. 

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Magnolia" - Erie Chapman

   

Day 348-352 - A Difference-Maker Named Shannon Ripani

Everyone at the restaurant where he worked loved "Joe" & appreciated his hard work & charm. After work each day he returned to his tiny duplex apartment alone. He felt agonizingly alone when he received the diagnosis that his cancer was terminal.

Who steps into help when a dying patient with no family is suffering through his last days? Joe needed an angel on earth; one of those rare caregivers who goes above & beyond her job description to deliver Radical Loving Care™.

Nashville's Alive Hospice, one of America's finest, not only reached out to Joe but they sent him a special angel. Her name is Shannon Ripani & she, along with Alive, are the latest winners of a 2020 Servant's Heart Award from Erie Chapman Foundation. 

When Shannon visited Joe with the nurse the day after admission he was barely responsive. There was no family to help. But there was Shannon. She stopped everything to care for her new patient.

Most caregivers might have stopped there, written up the case & moved on. After futile efforts to reach distant family, she called Joe's good-hearted employer who supported Joe's transfer to a skilled nursing facility. It is tough to find a bed for a poor patient. Shannon got Joe in the next day!

Once again, like the Good Samaritan, she treated this stranger like family. She worked with the employer to secure Joe's home, kept in close touch & made it possible for her patient to die in a warm bed surrounded by caregivers.

End of story. Nope.

There was no one to pay for a funeral so Angel Shannon stepped forward once again. She contacted the employer who paid cremation costs. The restaurant not only held a gathering to remember Joe but announced the naming of their porch in his honor. But the real honoree was an invited angel named Shannon Ripani.

Alive Hospice is known for its culture of kindness. When we asked CEO Kimberly Goessele for nominations she had several. But when I asked her who she would pick she said, "Shannon. Hands down."

We agree.

Erie Chapman

Postscript: Shannon is about to be another kind of caregiver. On Friday she took maternity leave to prepare for the birth of what is sure to be a very lucky baby. 

Days 46-50 Culture-Changing Stories - Raising The Light

.  For thirty years the night staff exiting towards The Toledo Hospital parking lot could count on a morning ray of love.  In summer light or snowy darkness they regularly received a cheerful greeting from a unique fellow caregiver with a short body & a tall spirit.  

   As Martha Chapman walked towards the information desk to begin her day she would say a bright, "Good morning!" to every departing night-shifter.

   "It seemed to help," Martha told me. "But, one person always walked by with her head down. I greeted her anyway."

   Why send rays of kindness into indifferent shadows?

   "One cold morning the silent woman handed me a note & kept walking," my sister shared. "It said, 'I am so shy that I could never answer your greeting. You kindness every day always meant so much. Thank you.'"

   We underestimate our potential impact. For decades, Martha changed her hospital's culture by raising the light - not by being a doctor injecting 50 cubic centimeters of medicine but by improving everyone's brain chemistry with her thousand-megawatt smile (on display in this picture) & her loving presence. 

   Harried caregivers often say, "I haven't got time to give loving care." Help them by sharing this story.

   Martha's daily kindnesses illustrate what Radical Loving Care is all about. In precious moments each day her rays of love ignited hope in others - including one shy & grateful being. 

-Erie Chapman

Note: Martha just celebrated her birthday on February 15. 

Days 337-341 - Your Childhood Bedroom

My plan was to write about letting go of goals - how goals can become obsessions & how obsessions can crowd out the sweeter side of life. 

   When a friend asked what I remembered about my childhood bedroom I fell into such a reverie that I let go of my goal to advise you about goals.

   Sandwiched in age between two sisters I shared a bedroom with my younger one until age nine. Upon our little brother's birth the dining room became my sleeping quarters.

   But the bedroom I shared with Martha housed the sweetest memories. During afternoon naps the walls were California sunlight. Venetian blinds striped my bedspread with gold bars. Always-open windows bore scents from the lemon tree just feet away.

   Nighttime sometimes hosted ghosts dressed as the teachers that regularly dispatched my restless self either to a hallway chair or to the principle's office for another tongue lashing for not holding mine.

   A lifetime of remembering my dreams began in that first bedroom - a nightmare that my father had died & everything was up to me. Another one that I was seventy-five & felt relieved to wake to the news that I was five.

  Now I am seventy-five & grateful for it. In spite of those childhood nightmares I felt safe & happy in that sunny place. 

   As you return to your own first room I hope you rediscover a place made safe by a mother who was like mine - one that tucked me in, read me stories & listened to my prayers.

   This will be my first Christmas without her. I miss her. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman 

Snapshot with mom - 1946

Days 194-198 - Sensitivity Plants: Releasing Old Pain

(20 second video) 

   Stroke the leaf of a Sensitivity Plant (Mimosa Pudica) & witness one of nature's vivid miracles. The insulted leaf shrivels. Often, the plant sheds it. 

   At seven, during an argument with my four-year-old sister, I slapped her on the rear & shouted, "I hate you." Taking me by the arm, mom showed me the red mark I'd left & said, "You don't hate her, you love her. She's your sister!"

   We love our siblings, right? We share the same blood. So why is sibling rivalry the stuff of tragic dramas from ancient Greece, through Shakespeare to soap operas. One psychologist told me, "Guns don't kill. Family insults do."

   The struggle for parental approval is inborn. Your parents can say they love you all equally but kids wonder: Do Mom & Dad love my sibling more?

   If that is kid's stuff why do countless adults harbor the same resentment anxieties they had as toddlers?

   Dr. Eckhart Tolle says we store hurt feelings in our "pain body." Every insult we ever experienced is trapped there. The more "sensitive" we are the more our pain body poisons us. 

   Tolle advises releasing old slights by recognizing that it is our ego that is hurt & we are not our ego. Step back. Observe your pain body, how it is fed by self pity & starves without it. You can empty it using Jesus' solution: Love every person who ever wronged you - starting with yourself! 

   Tough work - especially if Forgiveness is gift-wrapped with Condescension. Arrogance is a sword I have carried too often - always unlawfully - by not practicing the love I preach.

   Of course, Love does not shirk responsibility. In fact, be accountable for harm you caused - real or imagined. Resentment is a hundred pound back pack. Revenge adds two hundred pounds. Free pain from the other & your weight also eases.    

   A tough truth remains. Some agonies are beyond our reach. That cure is harder because hate is easier than love. Live love, not fear. Start by finding self-love. 

   My younger sister & I nurture deep love. The same goes for our other two siblings. We love through common blood shed in pain & shared in joy. Yes, we still joke about who's number one. But, neither Love nor our parents care about that. 

   Sensitivity plants release leaves insulted by clumsy human touches. Then they grow new ones. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 139-143 - America's Newest Healing Hospital - Bingham Memorial

   Every patient wants to be treated in a healing hospital and every hospital wants to be a place of healing as well as curing. But, very few hospitals are successful in achieving both distinctions: to be places of high competency AND high compassion. 

   The foundation I run has recently revived the national Healing Hospital certification program. Through a process of intense analysis, consulting & onsite visits we evaluate whether a given hospital has created a culture of Radical Loving Care™. Those who are deemed to have succeeded are designated Healing Hospital Certified™ by the foundation.

   The following press release reveals the latest hospital to have achieved certification. A big congratulations to Bingham Memorial Hospital and special thanks to Mark Baker and Michael Harris for guiding this process under the direction of BMH's CEO & COO. 

Press Release

         Erie Chapman Foundation, Nashville, Tennessee, is pleased to announce that it has officially certified Bingham Memorial Hospital, Blackfoot, Idaho, as a Healing Hospital for the calendar year 2017.

         “Healing Hospital Certification means that our board recognizes that BMH has met the basic standards required of a culture that practices Radical Loving Care (RLC),” according to Erie Chapman, M.T.S., J.D, President of the Foundation.

         “Every hospital claims to be healing and caring,” Chapman said. “Radical Loving Care asks a harder question: ‘Is every single caregiver someone you would trust taking care of your mother? We call this The Mother Test and it is an extremely difficult standard to reach.”

         The Foundation advances the view that hospitals that can pass it’s Mother Test will deliver improved patient care (and thus patient satisfaction) in every area by enhancing the human experience for everyone facing a healthcare challenge. Employee morale goes up, physician satisfaction improves, clinical outcomes improve, even financial performance typically strengthens, the Foundation believes.

         The recognition of BMH also acknowledges the exceptional quality of the hospital considering its relatively small size. “You don’t have to be The Mayo Clinic to deliver great care,” Chapman says.

         The certification review process for BMH began in December, 2016. In addition, the Foundation sent a representative, Todd Meador, for an onsite visit May 10 & 11 of this year. “We are very impressed with the work that leaders, including outgoing President & CEO Jeff Daniels and has chosen successor, Jake Erickson, are doing in enriching workplace culture,” Meador said. “There was already a good culture in place. But, BMH has hundreds of employees and physicians so the big goal here was to develop a culture where everyone passed The Mother Test. The only way to do that is with a strong culture supported by exceptional leaders.”

         The Foundation review determined that leadership at BMH understood that loving care is not only about compassion but is also centered in competence. BMH recently adopted a vision statement emphasizing High Competence & High Compassion. “This is the kind of thing we like to see in healthcare organizations,” Meador said.

         The Foundation emphasized that the Healing Hospital Certification is issued for one year at a time and subsequent certifications turn on whether a given hospital continues to develop & sustain a culture of Radical Loving Care. “Organizational behavior change is never a “quick fix.” It takes a long time to build a culture that is deep enough to influence the actions & attitudes of every single caregiver.” Chapman said. “BMH has now met the basic standards. It is up to them to build from here.”

         Erie Chapman Foundation, based in Nashville, Tennessee, is a non-profit trust set up to advance and support the principles of loving care. The concept of the New Healing Hospital was launched at Nashville’s Baptist Hospital in 2001 during the time Mr. Chapman was President & CEO. High success their lead to the best selling book, Radical Loving Care, written by Mr. Chapman in 2003. The culture-focused philosophy has since been expanded and supplemented in four other books.

         Organizations previously recognized as “Healing Hospitals” include Parrish Medical Center, Titusville, Florida; Mercy Gilbert Hospital, Gilbert, Arizona & St. Vincent Hospital, Billings, Montana.

         The Foundation has also recognized The Mayo Clinic, The Cleveland Clinic, Riverside Methodist Hospital (OhioHealth) & Baylor Scott & White health systems as examples of peak performing organizations where Radical Loving Care is part of the culture."

-Erie Chapman

 

Days 361-365 - Becoming More Beautiful Through Your Best Self

"...as we begin to recognize...beauty, we become more beautiful ourselves." - Plotinus 

   When Laura Hillenbrand met Louis Zamperini (left) the hero of her book, Unbroken, she first studied his hands. There were the scars from a bird that pecked at him while he struggled to survive at sea & the mark where his wedding ring caught in the wreckage of his downed plane.

   Through those scars Hillebrand connected with the truth & beauty of Zamperini's suffering & survival. Perhaps she believes, as did Simone Signoret, that "individual courage is the only interesting thing in life " and its own ladder to Love.

   We seek Beauty - often through fairy tales or in magic. But, she is always near. She lives in your mirror & in every patient you see.  

   Does your soul seem enigmatic because you imagine it will materialize for examination? Plotinus wrote in the Ennead that "...because it has no size, the Soul's nature...contains the whole cosmic body in one and the same grasp."

   We enter our beauty's mystery by conversing with love at the deepest level. How do you talk with your scars? Which of your truths are too painful to touch? How do you experience a dying rose?

   Conversely, how do you befriend your most beautiful encounters? Each happened because you brought your best self to those engagements. Bring that self to each new encounter.

   Your scars begin to heal when you face them. Your heart strengthens when your pain allows you to ease another's. 

   Deep encounters happen only through radical persistence - rare because most of us sip only life's surface. Zamparini met torture with superhuman courage & survived to savor Beauty. Hillenbrand herself summoned uncommon strength to outlast Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

   Beauty is Love's finest prize. Every time you find her you become more beautiful.

   Invite your best self to every encounter: with friends or enemies, with sun or amid storms, and Beauty will always appear. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 115-119 - Creating the Sacred

    Wherever Love arrives, that place becomes sacred. 

     There is no such thing as sacred space (or a healing hospital) without Love.

    Whenever Love enters a relationship it brings with it the blessing of the sacred. 

    Love thrives when it encounters a receiving soul (symbolized at left as the woman honors the entry of the clouded sun.)

   The first appreciation of Beauty was the signal event in our higher evolution and laid the groundwork for our worship of God's Love. 

   This recognition probably came when the first people enjoyed flowers not for any "use" but as an expression of Beauty.

   The same epiphany occured when the classic female form was perceived not only as sexual but as Beauty speaking the language of the spirit (photograph below.)

   Sex is appetite. Beauty is spiritual. When joined they express true marriage in this world.  

   Great art only appears when an artist allows Love to move through him or her. An image of a nude is sacred or profane based on whether Love is present in both the creation and in the heart of the viewer. 

   There is no justice without Love. Love's presence makes the delivery of justice sacred. 

   Places classified as sacred: churches, temples, mosques, hospitals, courtrooms, museums lose their sacredness when Love's entry is blocked. For Jesus the money-changers in the temple were interferring with God's presence. 

   God does not live in a "holy" structure. God lives in our hearts.

   An excessive focus on "money-changing" crowds out the sacred. Such an obsessive "transaction focus" converts hospitals to little more than brothels where "love" is faked in exchange for money.

   Both settings are obscene because in both such places humanity is degraded. 

   No place becomes sacred merely by its physical location. Any place where Love meets need becomes clothed with holiness.

   When a housekeeper enters a room to comfort a man in pain, that space immediately glows with the holy. When a nurse ignores policy to stroke the back of a dying three-day-old being that bassinet becomes sacred.

   What about flowers, sky, forest, and sea? Nature wears Love's raiment. We encounter this sacredness the moment we extend our hand to meet God's.

   If we want our work to matter, if we want to bring quality into our encounters, compassion must be present.

   Shallow thinking causes us to believe that we can sustain quality care without Love - that only we can bring skill. God is excluded from this way of thinking.

   It is Love that transforms everyday caregiving into healing encounters. Quality care programs are doomed to failure when they are grounded in fear and rely on rote performance. 

   Caregivers are not called to fix widgets but to meet human need. 

   Their charge is to allow God to create sacred space through them in every encounter, in every place, all the time.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

*Photographs:

1. Madrid, 2012

2. "Figure Study - Afternoon Light" - copyright dane dakota 2009

Catching Tears

[Jesus] told him, "Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam" (Siloam means "sent"). So the man went and washed and came back seeing!  John 9:7

Compassion is not administered in cubic centimeters from a syringe but is found in a river of love that flows from the heart.  - Erie Chapman

   She crosses the threshold of the Siloam clinic in Nashville holding a wash cloth against the side of her face. She is from Guatemala and speaks no English. A caregiver sees her slumped in the waiting room. "Does she have a toothache?" he worries, because there are no dentists at the Clinic. "Has she received a blow to the face in an auto accident" he wonders next.
   He approaches her. Through a translater, the caregiver learns something stunning. Why the wash cloth?  "It is to catch my tears," the woman says in Spanish.
   Abused by her husband, this woman has no visible physical wounds, but her sadness is intense, deep, and beyond any translation that uses words. The Siloam Clinic does an exquisite job of caring for all kinds of health problems that afflict their largely immigrant patient population. How do they treat sadness, especially when there is the barrier of language?...

HCN: The Power of Peacemaking Circles - How They Make Oasis an oasis

   So many of the people I counsel come to me depressed because they feel unheard. - Mary Lynne Musgrove, Professional Counselor, Columbus, Ohio

  Peacemaking Circles have become a powerful way to help both the children we serve & many of their parents feel heard.  - Anne Pruett, Oasis Center

   How do we know we exist? Most of us look for cues from the people around us. Are we seen, heard, recognized by anyone else? So many people's lives are damaged because they grew up never feeling heard & therefore not valued. In Nashville, some teens seek help from a marvelous organization called Oasis Center. Why?... 

HCN: Alive Hospice - From Very Good to Great

What does it take to transform a charity that's already performing well into an organization that delivers Radical Loving Care consistently?

Over the past two years, in partnership with the Healing Trust, Alive Hospice has recognized this challenge and accepted it. What have been some of the keys to their success?...

Interfaith Dental Clinic

We are pleased that Dr.Rhonda Switzer-Nadasdi & Interfaith Dental Clinic have accepted the Trust's invitation to join the Healing Charities Network. Interfaith Dental is one of the finest and most caring charities in Middle Tennessee and we are grateful that Dr. Switzer will be lending her wisdom and experience to the group.

Healing Charity Network Announced

The Healing Trust is pleased to announce the Healing Charities Network (HCN), established to highlight some of the best practices among top charities in Middle Tennessee