Radical Loving Care: Journal of Sacred Work

Days 224-227 - Ancestral Gifts

   It is our family's good fortune that both my children honor their ancestors & are experts on our history. Through them, I honor some who came before and whose trail leads into today.

   My daughter sent this image of my maternal great grandmother, Mary Lees Davies Whitehouse. Bright and beautiful in this 1880 picture she does not resemble the woman I saw in 1953 shortly before she passed away at 93. And yet she is the same.

  It was a once-only twenty minute visit. But the 140-year-old picture startles. The contrast of this bright & beautiful young lady with the woman I saw in 1953 is the difference between sunrise & the gloaming gray in her life's last room.It is a surprise what I remember

Great Grandma, 1953

...I walk the ramp to her room, uncomfortable aromas seep from the nursing home kitchen.

Her room lit by Miss Havesham. A white gowned ghost reclines
as if never to rise.

Ever after she defined the word "wan." From her wan face, a wan voice spoke my nickname, "Hello, Chip."

Her boney hand, wrapped in parchment that might crumble if I touched it was  smooth when I did. More veins than skin.

The slightest of smiles as she watched us recede.

I eased back down the rubber-ribbed ramp, out, away, freed of those smells of life's last, glad to return to the eternity of youth
looking now at my own hand, more veins than skin.

What childhood memories of relatives are tucked in the attic of your memory? Which of your ancestors were caregivers? 

-Erie Chapman

Days 216-220 - The Truth Tellers & The Rule Breakers

    If truth matters why does expressing it often require exceptional courage?

   “I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest,” Ralph Ellison wrote in Invisible Man. The truth of his statement describes why everyone lies. We want to be loved, not hated. We want to be praised, not punished. We want to please the boss, not get fired. 

   We learn lying early. Truths can bring punishment - especially for a group in which I claim life membership - the rule-breakers. 

   Truth is problematic because it is never black & white. A million nuances create a wide range from near-truth to flat out falsehood. 

   Shockingly, Kindness can be Truth's biggest enemy. We lie to protect other's feelings. Caregivers can feel trapped when a family member warns, "Do not tell mom she is dying."

   Ellison describes the searing cost of one of life's compromises when his title character mourns, "What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?” 

   Truth-telling kills heroes: Socrates. Jesus. Galileo. Joan of Arc.

   Picasso was attacked for painting "too much truth" in his classic painting "Guernica." Artists (including me) use aliases to protect themselves & their work. 

   I was punished as an artist for hanging the pictured nude in my office &  fired as a CEO for refusing to lay off staff. However, I have often given false compliments to power brokers to win their support & kept silent in the face of lies. 

   Lying can become such a skill that one friend confessed, "I wish I were not such a good liar."

   The usual defense? "You have to pick your battles." But, this can lead to chronic retreat. Former FBI Director James Comey warned White House staff to watch out or "Trump will gradually eat your soul." 

   If we became better truth tellers would we discover the best of who we truly are?

-Erie Chapman

Nude Study #3 - Dane Dakota aka Erie

Days 209-213 - A Vaccine for Racism?

[ https://vimeo.com/441148851/7cc3aa300b PLEASE WATCH THIS 2-minute VIDEO FIRST. It is a brilliant creation by Chris York's team at Baylor's Grapevine Hospital.] 

   Listen carefully, my fellow European-Americans, to the late John Lewis, "Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

   The Journal's wonderful weekend essay by Liz Wessel included part of this quote. She also referenced James Baldwin, someone too few Americans know. "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced," Baldwin wrote. His context was racism. 

   Lewis spoke of everyone. I address white Americans because we are the ones that most need to listen, to face anew the searing truth of racial inequality caused by whites who fabricated the lie of superiority. 

   At dinner four years ago a new next door neighbor, Ginny, suddenly said to me, "Erie, black people are tearing us down."

   After that, it got even worse. Obviously, she did not know me. Aghast, I quickly got into some "good trouble." Although later I was chastised for arguing (a frequent criticism) consider the situation. Ginny told me her truth because she assumed I was part of her white conspiracy to demean minorities. If people who look like me do not speak up than I am tacitly encouraging her.  

   The minority of which to which I belong is that one percent of the over-privileged. When it comes to leadership I instantly lose my minority status. Whites, particularly white men, dominate too many leadership positions - including in health care. 

   Speaking up is not enough. As Baldwin suggests: Most white people deny they harbor racist feelings. Many (including the President, who claims to the "the least racist person in the world") imply there is no race problem.

   Would he trade his skin color for black or brown? Would you?

   Whether we are each more racist than we realize is a question being re-asked by millions as racial strife again grips our country. 

   Why is it that so many whites still fail to understand the phrase "Black Lives Matter"? That the slogan means "Black Lives Matter TOO."

   After four decades as a healthcare CEO a painful truth emerges. With rare exceptions (Baylor's Chris York, of course) white men do not get it! As a result, racism in hospitals remains unresolved. 

   Where are America's change agents? In board rooms? In doctor's dining rooms?

   Now, more than ever, American healthcare needs what we have never had, our own versions of James Baldwin & John Lewis & Martin Luther King. 

   As science seeks a vaccine for the COVID 19 a parallel crisis begs for a cure. American healthcare needs a vaccine for racism.

   We need leaders with passions for justice as big as their paychecks. The vaccine for racism is Love.

   And if you wonder what Love looks like, watch the brilliant video created by Chris York's team at Baylor Scott & White's Grapevine Hospital again.* 

   Remember Baldwin's words: "nothing can be changed until it is faced." Then "make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

-Erie Chapman

I also created a YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmZ8AfVOQQ

   

Days 195-199 - The Quiet Heart of Humility

   Everyone admires it. Few find it.

   Childhood's ears heard humility as simply, "not bragging." Then, ministers imply, "We are nothing."

   Adulthood hears tones that staccato less nihilism. They hymn, "You are a child of God & you are not God."

  Humility is essential to Peace. It appears each time we forgive, admit, "I was wrong," quiet the compulsion to claim credit (replacing that by celebrating that we are one.) And when we release the suffocating belief that we "own" things or people. 

  Andrew Murray explained it in a column quoted by Dr. Clay Stauffer:

   "Humility is perfect quietness of heart. ...It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to [God] in secret and be at peace as in a deep sea of calmness when all around is trouble."

   Humility runs against the grain of western thinking. It requires daily practices to weave it into living love. Thus easing closer to peace.

-Erie Chapman

photoart: "Atlantic Sunrise" - from "Peace Series, by Erie 2016 & 2020

   

Days 188-191 - Changing Bitter Harvests To Blessings

   Farmers know that different crops ripen in different season. Fisherman know this idea too.

   What about your harvest in this season? Whatever your age you have endured hardship & plenty, sorrow & joy, disappointment & gratitude. And...?

   Farmers question quantity, quality, salability, what can be stored or shared. Underneath lie hard work & meaning. 

   We ask the same.

   What astounds is the manifold ways that two people with similar riches can celebrate or curse their yields. Rich seventy-year olds complain it is not enough. Others with small fractions of that feel grateful.    

   Frequently, when a career or relationship ends in betrayal the "victim" is traumatized & devalues their life. I have experienced both. What magnified my losses was that the other was so anxious to rush on to their next chapter that they failed to honor their scarred partner. Disrespect wounds Humanity.* 

   Two comments expose hurt, not truth: Demonization of the once-loved job or person or, "I don't care."

   "Victims" feel the frustration of the wronged & the bitterness of the humiliated. Thus, they lose not only job or spouse but, worse, they face a crisis of meaning. The question "All that commitment for nothing?" repeats itself.

   I often struggle to do what I recommend: Find worth in my commitments independently. It hurts to be fired unjustly. It hurts to be divorced & ignored.  It is hard to prioritize my ordination vows above my lawyer's training. 

  Still, I recommend to CEO's: Celebrate the departing. Show caring not indifference.

   Choosing love not fear means reviewing shared history with gratitude.    The same for both parties in broken relationships: Thoroughly honor history with something more than a flippant, "It's over but thanks," or the deadly, "I will always love you" (implying "But not enough to stay with you.") 

   So, instead of blocking memories grieve & celebrate. Thank your lucky stars for how they shined on you for awhile.

   If you can do that magic trick bitter harvests will become food that will bless the rest of your days. 

Erie Chapman

*This story is told searingly in "About Schmidt." After retirement, Jack Nicholson's character walks by a storage area where all his carefully kept files are being discarded. 

Photograph, "Southern Harvest" by erie, 2016

  

Day 187 - Friday's Featured Art!

As an experiment, we decided to add a new feature to the Journal of Sacred Work. Whether or not you love poetry we are offer, here, short poems for your enjoyment & enrichment. We hope you will support this effort.

Our choice to launch this initiative is a lovely poem by my cousin, Dr. Terry Chapman. Terry has been an enthusiastic & dedicated supporter of poetry most of his life. It turns out he is also good at writing it himself!

Turning West

Turning West and towards the wind,

My ship sails toward the treasure,

Its sails are set by my intent

and not by stormy measure.

Small and green, my little Jade,

A Bonsai by description.

But locked inside is nature’s might

by only God’s encryption.

Climbing, climbing, up the slope,

toward a higher vision;

When seen afar, we all are one,

And not in lost division!

My spirit longs for better times,

When all of us are one;

And none of us is lost at all

And none of us is none.

(c) Terry Chapman, 2017

Days 183-186 - We Hear with Our Ears, Listen with Our Eyes

 A woman I am coaching asked me, "Why are men such terrible listeners?"

   Agreeing with her I said, "We hear with our ears, listen with our eyes. Men are anxious to impress women & get the edge on other men by hijacking the podium." 

   She liked that & I thought I had coined a new saying. Quick research revealed only one other speaker of that line, a fellow named Alfred Benjamin who wrote, “Genuine listening is hard work; there is little about it that is mechanical… We hear with our ears, but we listen with our eyes and mind and heart and skin and guts as well."* 

   His statement is richer by describing listening as a whole body experience. 

   How often have you asked a man, "Did you hear what I said?" as he, restless, waits to speak himself? I plead guilty to to repeated offenses. 

   Women are better at relationships & thus learn to listen with their eyes. Men, as boys, are kicked into competition where talking is one way of "winning" women as well as defeating men.

   Radical Loving caregivers are always good at listening with their eyes. That is why, to this day, nearly ninety percent of nurses are women & fifty percent of doctors. 

   Computers can improve curing. They also drive a wedge between caregiver & patient.

   Women are our last hope of preserving the healing art of compassionate listening. When the majority of CEOs are women (or men who balance compassion with toughness) healing will truly dominate caregiving.

  And eyes will become organs of hearing as well as seeing. 

-Erie Chapman, President Emeritus, Riverside Methodist Hospital

*The only Alfred Benjamin I could find was a German communist activist (b. 1911-d.1942)

Days 176-180 - How Humanity is Won

 

Ralph Ellison, the brilliant author, said more in forty words from his transcendent book, The Invisible Man,  than have I in all the words I have ever used.

"I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me," Ellison's character says...

"Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

"When I discover who I am, I'll be free." 

It is easy to see why this is my son Tyler's favorite quote.

Thank you, Mr. Ellison.

-Erie Chapman

Uncredited photo from Wikipedia

Days 169-173 - Meaningful Relationships

These sweet siblings already know their sister & brother relationship is meaningful. And also know very little of the pain that comes when life's relationships deepen. Caroline foreshadowed early awareness when she was 4 & her brother was disrupting her life. She told her dad, "Remember when Reed was in Mommy's tummy & I could not wait until he was born? Now, I can't stand the sight of him." 

Loss is integral to meaning. For 27 years Nurse JoAnn Parker dedicated her life to caregiving. Frequently recognized for her caring heart & flooded with letters of affirmation from patients, co-workers & supervisors she was a model of Radical Loving Care.

Then her supervisor called her in. "JoAnn, we're letting you go. Nothing personal. We've got to cut costs & we're closing your Neuro unit. You'll get severance."  

That was it. 

There is nothing more life-affirming than meaningful relationships & nothing more crushing than their sudden end - especially for the innocent. This is true whether it is a job, a marriage, a dog or other sacred bond. Some people cry over the death of a tree or loss of a painting or destruction of a memory-drenched home. 

Of course, there is no such thing as a meaningful relationship that is pain-free. To think otherwise is fantasy. Still, for those who love the a relationship's death is a killing. 

Healthy relationships turn on love not fear. Pain is endurable if love is present. When fear wins pain becomes an agony that can feel life-threatening.

Is it better to have "loved & lost than never to have loved at all?"  A sufferer may say no. Some never open their hearts again. Others vibrate with the coda of Emily Dickinson's words at the end of "After Great Pain":

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go 

 

Will Hope rise in Letting-go's wake?

 

The radical thing about Radical Loving Care is that the heart's sensitivity, newly tuned to Joy, becomes exquisitely vulnerable to suffering.

 

What about JoAnn? Her work was her calling. When that vanished so did she & only recently returned.

Will she ever open her heart again? I do not know. Would you?

I sent her the Dickinson that begins:

Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -...

 

Erie Chapman

Days 160-164 - The Only Path to Compassion

   Long ago I shared with an acquaintance the agonies of my Crohn's disease. "I know exactly how you feel," he said, "my brother has that."

   He had no idea "exactly" how I felt. He simply knew about being a brother to a sufferer. But, compassion can be learned. 

   The road to compassion runs through the city of pain. Pain burns unique brands into each of us. We experience agony differently so none of us ever knows another's experience.

   Have you ever experienced the superiority of feeling healthy while another is ill? "I'm well & strong & he's sick & flawed," my acquaintance may have thought.  

   "Pain is the first proper step to real compassion," David Whyte writes. "It can be a foundation for understanding all those who struggle with their existence."

   Compassion can birth deep listening, It can turn your heart to what lies beneath the suffering of another & deter jumping to judgment.

   In a Facebook post, Chris York (left), recent recipient of the CEO of the Year award from Erie Chapman Foundation, showed one reason why he is America's finest healthcare leader.

   "My apologies to [former 49ers quarterback] Colin Kaepernick," Chris wrote, "I was critical of his approach [4 years ago] to protesting police brutality and I was wrong...Today, I can’t help but wonder how much better off we’d be as a country had we listened to his message."

   How much better would hospital care be if we listened?

   Staying open-minded. Humility in recognizing a mistake. The courage to publicly apologize. All characteristics of great leaders (& never demonstrated by our President.) 

   Compassion lives at the core as Radical Loving Caregiving: To honor another's pain by remembering your own. To bravely live love to help another. These mark the pathway to healing. 

   Yes. It is easier to advise then to follow my own counsel. Perhaps that is why I often write this Journal to myself as well as to you.

   Thank you giving love whether or not it is reciprocated. 

-Erie Chapman 

Days 139-143 - Healing Water

   A city kid, I only experienced farms when I worked on one in the summer. In my first encounter with a real well I saw the farmer sweat as pulled up the water-freighted pail. The next well I encountered that same summer yielded water by pumping a handle. 

   Some of today's public bathrooms are equipped with electric eyes. Break the beam & out comes the water. No sweat!

   Electric beams celebrate science. Old time wells offer easier metaphors for spiritual growth. Thus, Jesus' parable of  the woman at the well teaches that if she drank Love's waters she would never be thirsty again. 

   Actual wells can run dry. Love's never does. But, as life's demands scare us from living love we grow thirstier & forget how to water our souls. Or shun the work it takes. 

   Love lives in us. No technology can its water to out lips. Hard to raise Love's pail if it is barnacled with selfishness.

   Fear generates its own sweat as it threatens that Love can never meet our needs. 

   At the risk of straining the analogy, it takes huge strength to lift Love's water to our lips each day. Our bodies favor how Fear's electric eye opens the door to short satisfaction rather than lasting hope.   

   It is easier for a caregiver to bring a patient a glass of water than it is to heal the same patient's fear of surgery with the waters of Radical Loving Care. 

   In truth, Radical Loving Care offers both. The difference is that Love's soft rains brings Spring's healing touch. Whether the patient's body is cured or not new flowers bloom for both patient & healer. 

• Rev. Erie Chapman

Picture: "Tears" a short film by Erie, 2020

 

 

 

Days 132-136 - The Enemies of Presence

E    Last summer, my then 18-month-old grandson looked into the mirror. His father asked, "Who is that?" "Reed," he answered as if he had discovered gold. And my son said to his son, "That's right!"

   Reed had entered a "reality" that governs our lives: That the person in the mirror is us.

   We know there is not just one of us. The self portrait from 1977 has been updated with images of different "me's" at different ages being watched over by a guardian angel. All of those people are within me now accompanied by a crowd of others. 

   The importance of our multiple personas is a fact routinely & tragically overlooked by many caregivers. The doctor or nurse that sees the wrinkled skin of an elderly patient & brands them as old & less relevant misses the complex humanity of the many people that person has been...and is. Loving caregivers give better care because they understand the many lives inside the one before them

   So many personas lurk within: The brilliant you, the angry you. The you who grieves, laughs, lies, plays childlike with a child, treats your dog as a person, speaks rudely to a clerk. 

   And there is the you who wants to escape the present. To run from the fear of being trapped by constantly scanning for the nearest exit.

   This helps when threats are as real as an attacking Grizzly.  But for many running away is a strategy to escape not just headaches or an angry boss but fear of abandonment, loss of hope or simple ennui.

    Fear is the enemy of presence. Fear blocks adventure & discovery, can destroy relationships & defeat meaningful experiences.

   Fear does not just make us run from tigers. If you routinely choose flight it can deaden your life.

   Strangely, one of the most effective ways to deal with most threats is to stand still. Embrace your fear & thus weaken its power over you. 

   The most soul-enriching path is the hardest to choose: To sit with Fear. Watch it. Befriend it as a teacher that will illuminate truth. To listen to it as a guide to the Love we were meant to live.

-Erie Chapman

Days 125-129 From Whom Did You Learn Love?

   Whether we remember her consciously or not we all "know" the first teacher from whom we learned love. I had a great one & consider myself incredibly lucky.

  It was through her that I entered this earth & from this earth that she departed two years ago (May 5, 2018, at age 105) a few days after I made this picture. It is odd that by taking a picture of my own mom I ended up creating what other artists now consider fine art.*

   Mom's exit was as soft as was she, so pleasant that my son said, "Dad, I want to sign up for that kind of death."

   Obviously, I had nothing to do with her longevity (105). But great as were her genes it was her gifts of love that mattered. 

   In the course of teaching Radical Loving Care it is often my father whose words I recall. Like me, he used a lot of them. Not mom. Her love spoke through presence.

   Some see hands as healing pathways. The ancient ones in the photograph, when they were those of a young mom, were rarely used to swat me in the rear.

   Instead, it was those hands that held me to nurse at her breast, those hands that hugged me when I cried & that stroked my face when I was sick. It was those hands that she used to conduct the Rachmaninoff & Beethoven she listened to & those hands that reached out to me in her final days to hold mine & say, "Oh Chip, I hate to see you leave."

   Long as we had her, I hated to see her leave & am grateful for her every moment. 

   Our mom's are our first caregivers. Yet, many great caregivers had bad luck. Moms who were indifferent, unkind or absent. Somehow they found others to teach them Radical Loving Care. 

   This Journal can help you reflect on your teachers, not just with words like, "My mom was great," or "My minister was terrific." But, to write specifics & stories that illustrate them. Through that exercise you may learn things forgotten or never recognized & thus teach love in new & richer ways.

-Erie "Chip" Chapman

*The great photoartist Imogen Cunningham did a similar thing with her famous image "My Father At Ninety." Prints of it are $20,000!

"Final Days," this image of my mom, hung in the Vanderbilt University Art gallery this past year. 

Days 111-115 - The New Two Dimensional Relationships

  Portraits are windows offering another way to "see" each other. If there is anything unusual about this self portrait it is that the subject is not smiling the way adults typically do when aware their picture is being made.

   The half-shadowed, serious face suggests something. But, your experience of it depends on you. 

   Although there are four physical dimensions we typically experience the world in three. We even think of three dimensions as the "real" world.

   What is happening to our relationships during the current widespread isolation? 

   When I FaceTime my grandchildren, quarantined in Italy, I have the illusion of a three dimensional encounter. I see & hear them. But, the experience remains two dimensional. I cannot hug them as full physical beings. 

   Yes. There is a much more to encounters than physical presence. I may experience greater depth in a letter than in a direct encounter.

   Yet, our isolation behind screens is worrisome. The phenomenon was in full sway before the pandemic struck & will continue afterwards. 

   Does this widening phenomenon of two-dimensional encounters threaten our humanity?

   Electronic devices fascinate. Why do we obsessively engage our cell phones? We have much more control that world than the one beyond it!

   Does electronic communication subconsciously convert the other being into an abstraction? Does it make it easier for soldiers to launch missiles that kill thousands? After all those are not people just a group of pixels on a screen?  

   What happens to compassion when we fall ill & our caregivers know us only as electronic images that can be turned off & on like a television?

-Erie Chapman 

Days 103-107 - Illusions

  Why are those disembodied hands in this picture? It is not a photoshop trick.

   Those hands are actually there. The rest is a mirror-style illusion. 

   A clue? The street sign letters are backwards because everything except the hands (part of a dry cleaning shop mannequin) is a reflection (well almost everything.)

  We live with illusions. Things we think are "real" that are not. 

   The picture is harmless. Many illusions are not. Especially when they are perpetrated in ways that risk the health of millions of Americans & their caregivers. 

   When our President says, "I think [I] would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” (January 6, 2018) We wish that were true.

   But, on February 28, 2020, after the COVID-19 virus was full blown in China & spreading to the U.S., Trump's illusion became life-threatening. He claimed the virus was a "hoax perpetrated by Democrats."

  Accordingly, the President postponed action in ways that arguably costed  lives & still causes supply shortages that threaten caregiver safety.  

   The Journal is not a political site but a place to support & to advocate for caregivers. They deserve to be led by someone who traffics in truth. Someone who makes decisions on scientific facts not on illusions. 

Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Illusions" - Erie, 2016

 

      

 

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Days 96-100 - Celebrating Caregivers in Song

 

 As some yield naturally to the desire retreat emotionally as well as physically from the deafening noise that this crisis creates I know many others seek ways to serve as well as to thank those who serve. One choice is to sing - whether you are good at it or not.

   As someone vulnerable to depression, in part because I could help as a leader & have no direct option to do so due to age-related marginalization (now there's a phrase for you) I find music as one way to give back. 

   Please watch this video thank you & pass it along on your Facebook and/or Instagram page or via email. 

   Thank you caregivers everywhere - now & always. Hallelujah!

-Erie Chapman

www.eriechapmanfoundation.net

Days 89-93 How to Stir The Sky

   In the middle of a spring day a four-year old was shaking a tiny tree as hard as he could.

   "What are you doing?" his mother asked.

   "I'm stirring the sky," he exulted. 

   Small children are poets & geniuses. I have longed campaigned for us to listen to them, especially if we are trying create. They see & say things that almost no adult could think up.

   How do we dismiss them? More than fifty years ago I was leaving a grocery store when a three-year old beside me gazed into the spring sky & shouted, "Look, mom. A fairy!"

   "Oh, nonsense!" her mother scolded. "That's just a dandelion puff."

   All these years later I wonder if that sweet little girl was able to translate her childhood belief into an appreciation of adult magic. 

   After leaving Santa Claus behind enlightened adults realize their own miraculous powers. Look at the effect you have when you thank a caregiver, smile at a policemen or tell a doctor you are grateful for her work.

   The practice of Radical Loving Care is the practice of magic. Consider your impact when you meet a patient's eyes with love in yours.

-Erie Chapman

Photo: Reed, age two, my son's youngest child

Days 82-86 Two Reasons Why Some Crises Unite Us

   Quarantined, the gregarious citizens of Italy (including my daughter, her Italian husband & their children) found a way to unite by taking to their balconies & singing. Others gathered to cheer for doctors & nurses. 

   Music & cheering do not kill viruses. Instead,  they are hymns of hope that dilute Fear's poison. They are the solo chickadee singing his way through the shadows of Spring. 

   Every leader knows that crises galvanize people. They understand that power comes easily when people are united against a common fear.& they appreciate the second reason crises energize: emergencies fuel meaning. 

   Just as we are warned to stay apart the virus draws us together - both emotionally & logically. We find meaning by sharing what we have in common in whatever way we can find. 

   As millions become instant caregivers for the un-hospitalized elderly their lives becoming more meaningful.  And the cared for feel more hopeful. 

   Beware of Crises' dark side. Millions concoct fear to make themselves feel better at the expense of others. The Ku Klux Klan united white racists. Nazi's did the same. In all such cases leaders distort truth to unite followers around hate instead of love.  

   Jesus called us to find Love against peer pressure to hate. Love your enemies. Love the lepers, those who look different & even those who betrayed you. Love the drug addict in the ER & the Death Row inmate headed for execution. 

   It is easy to join in when everyone is singing for good & hard to stand strong when the crowd is a mob. This standard is so difficult that we all fail sometimes & some flunk routinely. 

   Radical Loving Care calls us to love even when Fear says it makes no sense. Why? Because love is the heart of our highest humanity.

-Erie Chapman

Photograph - "Shadows of Spring" 2018 by Erie

   

Days 69-73 - A Surprising Way to Combat Viruses

   It is the best smilers & the easiest laughers that I search out before every serious speech I give. 

   A great smile (& terrific laugh) appeared immediately at Baylor Scott & White's Grapevine Medical Center*, Dallas. On March 5 the Erie Chapman Foundation awarded the first Healing Hospital GOLD LEVEL CERTIFICATION™  to this magical organization. 

   The surprise was not that several people showed humor there because "Healing Hospital CEO of the Year™" Chris York has created a culture where Radical Loving Care™ is a requirement, compassion is as essential as competence, & humor is integral to leadership.

   Yet, I do not often find humorists among those that wield financial spread sheets. Surprise! The first contagious laugh I heard was Vice President & Chief Financial Officer Olga Young's!** 

   Why is a sense of humor so important to successful leadership? Because medical researchers now know that laughter strengthens your immune system. Check this from a 2011 article by Dr. Paul McGhee: "...immunoglobulin A (IgA)...resides in the mucosal areas of the body and helps protect you against upper respiratory infections like colds and flu...these studies have shown significant increases in concentrations of IgA in response to comedy programs..."

   The Mayo Clinic Newsletter reports, "Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that...bring more stress...and decrease your immunity...positive thoughts...release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses." (April, 2019)

   Sure, we should wash our hands & use common sense against the coronavirus. But did you know laughter could also help vaccinate you against illness? Yep. Ms. Young may not know it but every time she delivers her sweet laugh people get healthier! 

   Meanwhile, as part of Chris York's A-Team of leaders Olga Young is doing her job brilliantly. She now brings smiles of another kind via spread sheets with great news: BSW Grapevine is having a banner financial year! 

-Erie Chapman

*More on BSW Grapevine in a future article.

**Olga is the youngest of thirteen children!

Days 62-66 - Live Love not fear

 John O'Donohue tells the old story about the man trapped in prison with a snake that haunts him all night long by hissing to him, "Beware. You are in danger." At dawn the man discovers the snake is merely a rope.

    A stunning number of our fears (O'Donohue says 90%) are "ropes." Yet, we spend much of our lives feeding such non-existent snakes.

   A successful life flows from living Love, not fear. Yet Fear makes it devilishly hard to live Love. 

    The mantra, Live Love not fear, has informed my life & fuels the philosophy of Radical Loving Care. For most, the last two words resonate more than do the first two. They trigger the piercing question, How much of your life is impacted by Fear in one of his forms?

   O'Donohue paraphrases the Bible phrase, "We have reaped much but sewn little." That is because so many, especially caregivers, are plagued with fears of never doing enough, worries that are aggravated by the fact that no caregiver is ever thanked enough.

   O'Donohue (who died unexpectedly at 52*) offers a beautiful alternative: Live a feast of delight. The very phrase brings a smile. Imagine sitting at a table flooded with your life's finest gifts.

   Live Love not fear. Whenever we do that we celebrate life's highest power; bring out the best in ourselves & others. 

-Erie Chapman

*It was touching to discover the above announcement that includes his gorgeous four-line poem, "I would love to live/ Like a river flows,/ Carried by the surprise/ Of its own unfolding"