Radical Loving Care: Journal of Sacred Work

Days 109-113 - When Water Falls

  We began life in Water's womb. Her waves, or lakes, her streams are poems. Especially when water falls. 

    The link below takes you to a brief meditation on waterfalls including a poem that I wrote & narrated in the hope it would bring some serenity to your life. 

   May you enjoy the peace that a marriage to the water can bring. 

   Click on the link below:

https://youtu.be/MJZx5eNThng

-Erie Chapman

Photograph by Erie from "When Water Falls" includes image of me with my mother.

Detoxifying Memories - Days 252-256

   Imagine three surgeons. Each makes a similar, health-changing mistake with a patient.

   Years later, they meet. One, shamed, suffers depression. "I still have nightmares about that case."

   The second, choosing craven indifference, says, "Not me. I stopped caring about that."

   The third picks the cowardly weapon of blame, "It was a nurse's fault."

   Each could learn from the inimitable David Whyte: "Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past..." It is,  "...a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now." 

   Shame, indifference & blaming are Ego's options. A veteran physician friend shared a different approach. "I inserted a needle an inch away from the right spot & caused suffering. I told the patient, took responsibility & will probably get sued. I regret my mistakes & learn form them. I love my patients and I'm a good doctor."  

   By applying a mature label, my friend created a then that makes him an even better doctor now.

   Mislabeling thens sends millions (including me) for psychological help.

   As a dedicated film artist, I study images every day. Fine photography is an art but its apparent reality also makes it one of Memory's messengers of feeling.  

   Artists name their pictures. Occasionally, I rename some of mine. How many of your mind's uglier portraits & events would be detoxified by renaming?  

   It is a giant mistake to think of memories as fixed facts. Two things that change memory are new information & new thinking. 

   Forgiveness is a remarkable way to dilute poisonous thinking, not only for yourself but for anyone else you have demonized as someone who "ruined" your life.

   How many other ways can we interpret thens that would add quality to our remaining nows? Starting with this one?

-Erie Chapman

Photoart by Erie "Emerald Memories" (2022)

 

How You React to your Act: Days 245-249

 One quote my dad loved was, "For every one person that fails because of ability, nine fail because of  a character mistake."* The first time I heard this, a chill went through me. I knew I had many character flaws. Would one leak out, destroy my career & even my life?

   Every caregiver is haunted by such worries. Even though everyone has character flaws, most professionals can minimize or correct mistakes. Sometimes, just one can cause ruination.

   The single ruination mistakes always baffles me. How can Will Smith turn from long-admired to outcast in seconds? One outrageous mistake: The slap of Chris Rock. Smith's apology has not healed the slap to his reputation. 

   Quotes can seem to clash: Successful people always say: "Make mistakes. That's how you grow." I tell clients: It's how you react to your act.

   Sure, we must befriend our difficult partner, Courage . What about his powerful opponent, Unfairness?

   You have likely never heard of Gary Hart. A successful, handsome, Colorado Senator, Hart was a leading candidate for the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination when he was caught in an affair. Although separated, Hart was pilloried & quit his campaign. 

    Only four years later another candidate was hit with sequential worse charges: Bill Clinton. Why did Hart's error kill his campaign while Clinton not only won but served twice as President & survived impeachment? 

   The reasons do not matter because our core point is different. We are told that failures of career, marriage, or character do not define our worth. Lucky for Donald Trump. 

   How can we best react to our acts? By remembering we are all children of God. Grinding loss can shake that memory. God's Love is our salvation. 

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photo of Gary Hart by Kenneth Zirkel, 1987

*author unknown

How to Chew Out the Boss...or Not - Days 233-237

  Seinfeld's second season features a delicious skit in which George does what millions consider & few try: He chews out his boss. 

"You think you’re an important man?," George shouts. "You are a laughing stock. a joke...You have no brains, no ability, nothing."

 The source of George's courage? He is quitting. Soon regretful, he sneaks back into a staff meeting the following Monday and tries for mercy.

 "I was just kidding," he tells the boss. No dice.

   This scenario is so endemic to relationships that it is happening right now with millions. Half of a couple explodes...for the 'nth time. The other half takes it for the 'nth time until one day they don't.

   Soon, the angry one regrets it, seeks mercy but makes George's mistake: Pretends for the 'nth time it was "nothing." 

   Should mercy requests always be granted? The Christian answer is often yes. The human answer is often otherwise.

   It takes time for children to learn remorse. Some adults never do. They beg for mercy & are outraged when it is withheld. Like George, they claim, "I didn't mean it."

   Remorse makes healing possible. When Remorse leaves the room, he takes Mercy with him.

   We need jobs. We need relationships. 

   Yet, caregivers dealing with a hard bosses & leaders dealing with difficult staff think in binary terms: explode or stuff their feelings.

   We sell off pieces of our soul at work & home stuck in a dangerous mindset: "I'm right. You are wrong. That's it."

   The idea of offering the benefit of a doubt is foreign to these beings. 

   Among the most important things I learned from dear friend Tracy Wimberly is the concept of "Both/And". There are always additional choices. 

  How much of America's internal strife is rooted in thinking there are only two answers, one right, one wrong? Is that why the chorus of people who say "Our country is so divided" keeps growing louder?  

-Erie Chapman

   [The Journal was born (& lives) as a voluntary effort. All columns are from me, weekender Liz Wessel, or others . If you believe we support caregiver's lives, please contribute (tax deductible.) Click "Donate" at: www.eriechapmanfoundation.net. ANYTHING! We have always been free & ad-free in serving 250,000 readers. For the first time, we seek your contributions. Let us show our board your support. Profound thanks! - Erie]

What Do You See? Days 213-217

  There are four art works in the photo, taken in 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art (re-edited for this essay.)

   If all four were $100 each & you had to buy one, which would it be?

   One was valued in 2019 at 1.2 billion dollars. The others? Not so much.  

   As someone who now spends most of his life on film art, I am endlessly fascinated by how people see. 

   The average museum goer spends 7 seconds before a masterpiece. Consider the nine people in that room. Seven have lost interest. Only two (one barely visible) attend to the masterpiece.

   How rapidly do we scroll cell phone photos? A quarter second per picture?

   When anyone looks at a painting the brain asks first: What or who is it? Next! Scrolling is faster than page turning.

   How many caregivers see patients as people first & diagnosis second?

   Want to see with sacred eyes? Look at this picture, or any, for a full minute. Better yet, try ten. Share what you see & how you feel.

   The billion dollar masterpiece is the Picasso at top right. I made the other three, available for a bargain price. Maybe a donation to the foundation that sponsors this Journal?*

-Erie Chapman

*In the Journal's 16 year history (supported by volunteers) we have never asked for contributions to support Radical Loving Care^®. If you wish, go to www.eriechapmanfoundation.net  Click the "Donate" button. $1 is fine. Thank you:-) 

**All photographs by Erie.

Riverside Memories for ALL Caregivers - Days 206-210

There is a reason hospitals and courtrooms are the stages for so many movies and t.v. shows. Drama. Drama built from memories of childhood and from careers of caregiving for those in deep need.   

I. SLICES OF SUNLIGHT

From early childhood on, memories illuminate the present. David Whyte wrote, “…memory [determines] how we live the story we have inherited.”

What childhood recollections help you today? Here is one of my earliest: 

At age 3 I drowsed through naps who’s light, smells & sounds flicker today. Because those and other memories are sweet they are hand-painted films that play to the rhythmic clicking of my father’s 16 mm film projector, the thrum of single engine WWII planes soloing toward the Pacific, the splash of Mr. Scott’s garden hose washing his driveway.

But it is the light of those childhood naps, not the sounds, that shine my life 75 years later. And memory always seeks sunnier rooms when meaner moments appear.

Today, my soul dwells in a long ago bedroom where the floor is lines with neatly cut slices of light carved by Venetian blinds, angles toss dust motes, my mother turns the pages of books in which she colored dreams for me.

I was lucky...and still am. But memories can, obviously, trouble the present. Often, the hardest memories can trigger changes that create better lives for others.

This is not a rehash of old news. It is a call to communities to recognize that hospitals need leaders that celebrate caregivers, not the bottom line. When it is the other way around, many suffer. 

The RMH Alum Facebook page has been life-changing in awakening memories that matter. It triggered recollections of moments that mattered

Whyte says, “…memory creates and influences what is about to happen…” Regardless of where you work, remember to pay attention when leadership changes

II. A FORSHADOWING

One day in 1990, the late Jack Chester and I had a chilling discussion in the lobby that welcomed people to Riverside Hospital (A display honors him in the current lobby.) Jack was a prominent divorce lawyer and key board member at Riverside and OhioHealth while I was CEO of one & founding President of the other.

Importantly, board members like Mr. Chester, not doctors or first line caregivers, choose and remove CEOs.

“Things are going great here,” Jack told me on that fateful day. “Why?”

“Our culture. It’s based on love,” I answered.

“You can’t measure that!” he pronounced in his naturally argumentative lawyer’s voice. “What can’t be measured doesn’t matter.”

“How much do you love your kids?” I asked.

“A lot, of course.”

“But how much? Can you measure that?”

“Of course not,” he laughed. He did not agree or did not understand. As one myself, I know how hard it is to convince lawyers.

“What cannot be measured matters most,” I told Jack.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Well, whatever you’re doing keep it up.”

“Thanks,” I said.

But as I walked away, a shiver ran through me. A key leader did not accept love’s meaning in "the caregiving business." Was the shiver from an Old Testament prophet whispering: “Beware”?

In 1995 Jack Chester, the one who's image decorates the entrance to a special hospital, the one who dismissed Love as unmeasurable, measured out the plank for me and got others to make me walk it. His action caused others to walk it as well. 

Or did he? Maybe I was at fault, a victim of naiveté or vanity. Maybe, after twelve years, it really was time for a change. Anyway, many other lives changed after that day.

III. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CAREGIVERS

Those negatively affected by the leadership change did not deserve the fallout. This includes leaders pushed to leave, those laid off and those who, in staying, faced a sharp culture change in their workplace. 

That is because the removal of any key leader jars an organization more than most foresee.

As people bid me goodbye in 1995 I could tell some thought; "It's not me that has to leave," or "This change won't matter."

I knew they were mistaken.

The successors took a different path. I did not agree but that does not mean it was wrong.  

Once again, this is not about me. I was simply a catalyst for a certain kind of success. New leaders caused new changes with other results. 

Good leaders hire good people that create cultures of caring. Bad leaders do the opposite. The vast group in between is colored gray. 

People go to hospitals out of deep need. That is why hospital leadership matters.

Who matters most to patients? No patient entering the ER ever asks, "Have you got enough executives here?"

Because Riverside can be a proxy for how any organization is led, this series will continue.  Bless you who continue to enrich the legacy of loving care regardless of your leader.

Meanwhile, I'm an old man now and get to take naps. The kind where I can drowse through a summer afternoon the way I did as a child: watching the way Venetian blinds carve sunlight into slices that paint beauty on the floor. And I can savor the memory of the privilege of having helped lead, nurture & create a better life for thousands of the world's best caregivers...and the patients we served. 

-Erie Chapman 

The WORTH of Self Worth - Days 199-203

   Value yourself so you can to value others.   

   "You've done a brilliant job," the board chair told me on a black sunny day in 1995. "Because of your leadership we have far exceeded expectations in every area." 

  We were sitting in the bright living room of my Columbus. Before me was the person upon whom my career depended most. As often happens, the chair's endorsement presaged a nightmare. My joyful career was dissolving in the air like a tablet of sunshine

   Lurking in the chair's eyes was the ghost of bad news. He was the doctor who shocks you with: "You're in perfect health. In a moment you will die."

   "Erie, it's been a fabulous 12 years," he said in the past tense. "You're an innovator, have led us to the top & the best leader I've ever met."

   His eyes fell to the floor. My heart went with them. "It's time for a change," he pronounced.

   "This is unfair," he confessed, "but you've been ambushed. Nothing to be done." 

   Unbeknown to him, he would also be ambushed; pushed out soon by another member.  

   Such injustices are so endemic to organizations & relationships that the cliche is, "Life is unfair."

   Because this is about self worth, another chapter awaits. 

   As foretold in Beowulf, a worse fate came. Until that Sunday, I subconsciously thought self worth & career success were intertwined. I had forgotten the obvious: I did not "own" my job anymore then I owned my family (pictured.)

   Hospitals are "kingdoms" & CEOs have royal powers. Every leader should appreciate that "firing" is a violent word. Termination can resemble homicide: Careers killed, homes lost, families destroyed, bankruptcies filed. Obviously, with over 11,000 staff & 2000 doctors at OhioHealth, the system I founded, I was responsible for firing as well as hiring. 

   The key question is not career loss. It is spiritual failure. Success had blessed me & would again. Yet, on that Sunday, a piece of my soul broke off & floated away. It took years to heal by discovering that core truth we know but I could not absorb: We are not our jobs. 

   Again, the problem is not in knowing that. It is finding humility before God & the graceful appreciation of life. 

   Others will define us. It is foolish to live by their definition.

   Success lives in recognizing that no boss, spouse, friend, lover, patient, or company can take your self worth. Self-worth & self-love are feelings we truly own. 

   Here are words worth remembering from Maxime Lagacé: "Your self-worth grows when you fight for something you love."

-Erie Chapman 

The Greyhound & The Rabbit: What Brings Out Your Best? - Days 192-196

This morning, Reverend Dr. Clay Stauffer told one of his favorite stories:  Although a prize-winning greyhound was still in his prime, he suddenly decided to quit.

   "Why?" his owner asked. "Are you tired out? Do you need better food? Are you injured? Are you afraid of losing? Do I need to pet you more? Do you want more time off?"

  "None of those reasons," the greyhound said. "I'm quitting because I just discovered that the greyhound I was chasing is fake."

   Like any good parable, this one has layers of meanings. The greyhound had been giving his best self to something he discovered was meaningless.

   "It's all about the money," I have heard countless leaders say. 

   They are wrong. Such leaders never bring out the best in others because caregivers are just "units of expense" to them.

   As one top notch nurse told me, "Meaning brings out my best. That means helping others no matter what."

   Obviously, professional caregivers need to be paid. Yet, if a caregiver is only in it for that you are unlikely to experience their best. 

   No amount of money can fill the void created when a caregiver discovers "the rabbit is fake."

-Erie Chapman

"The Undressing" - Days 182 to 189

There is a brilliant poet out there unknown to me until Jill Webb shared his work. He is Li-Young Lee.

We count on love "prevailing." Yet, if we live life with passion, we are sure to entertain doubts just as Mother Teresa doubted God. 

For caregivers, the important thing is that no patient's body is simply "...a tree/ in which lived a bird." The beauty of Lee's writing saves our hearts from slowly turning to stone & our work shifting from momentous to meaningless. 

As I often write, far to many miss out on poetry's power for fear they "Won't get it" or "It's too confusing."

The final stanzas of "The Undressing", are a pearl necklace of words strung by a genius: 

If love doesn’t prevail,
who wants to live in this world?
Are you listening?

You thought my body was a tree
in which lived a bird. But now,
can’t you see flocks alive in this blazing foliage?
Blue throngs, gold multitudes, and pale congregations.
And each member flits from branch to living branch.
Each is singing at different amplitudes and frequencies.
Each is speaking secrets that will ripen into sentence.
And their voices fan my fragrant smoldering.
Disclosing the indestructible body of law.
Ratifying ancient covenants. Establishing new cities.
And their notes time the budding
of your own flowering.
Die now. And climb up into this burning.

Thank you, Mr. Lee.

-Erie Chapman

Still Learning - Days 164-168

   Our earliest "graduations" are clearly defined steps we climb.  Starting as early as nursery school adults hand out certificates authorizing our travel to the next stage. 

    What lives at the top of the staircase? The steps we climb & how we ascend them answer part of that question. 

   Of course, each level becomes increasingly challenging. No one can practice nursing without certifications. No one can practice medicine without degrees & licenses. 

   These transitions, like my oldest grandson's high school graduation, are products of civilization. Miles (pictured) has climbed this stage so well that he has been accepted into the country's most selective university. 

   Every time we reach a new height we find ourselves yearning for the next. Higher levels of competency forever beckon the ambitious. 

   Instant proof appeared while I was writing this. My youngest grandson, siting beside me on the sofa, began struggling with a toy. "I wanna be six so I can fix this," he said. He is four. 

   When do we know we have climbed enough stairs & it is time to rest? Michelangelo answered with his last words: "I am still learning."

-Erie Chapman

Photograph by Erie.

You Are Your Character - Days 157-161

   At 13, I joined millions in reading, Profiles in Courage, by John F. Kennedy & Ted Sorenson. The premise was universal & inspiring: Stick with your principles even if you offend others.

   Naively, I wondered why everyone would not d0 that. As Richard Bach wrote, “Reputation is what people think you are. Character is who you really are."

   Real life is reversed. Most choose popularity & promotion over character. Consider politicians who took logical positions to ban assault weapons & flipped because a crowd booed. 

   When Peter Drucker wrote: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast" he meant successful plans face tough going against cultural opposition. The best leaders persist. 

    Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi & Susan B. Anthony anchored their character to buck popular opinion. Each one suffered.

    Too few are the caregivers who paint portraits in courage by refusing doctor's orders they know are wrong & by staff brave enough to report bosses for illegal or unethical behavior.

   It is tough to practice Radical Loving Care^® in the face of certain policies. Awhile back a husband drove to a large-hospital ER. His RN wife was so stricken with chest pain he could not lift her through the door. A nurse grabbed a wheelchair.

   "No, wheelchairs outside the ER entrance!" a manager shouted. 

   Ignoring her, the nurse served the patient. Facing a write-up, the nurse said, "I did what I knew was right."

   We need to know where to draw the line & how to be diplomatic & firm. But how often have we gone along to get ahead & felt pieces of our souls breaking off & floating away?  

-Erie Chapman 

To support this Journal visit: www.eriechapmanfoundation.net . THANK YOU!

Days 150-154 - A Fascinating Comparison

[NOTE: The following essay is by my son Tyler, a Boston trial attorney, Harvard graduate, member of Erie Chapman Foundation Board, husband and father of three. His subject touches our health & safety & is appropriate for Memorial Day.]

“Jarts,” or lawn darts with sharp metal tips, have been banned in the US since 1988. People sometimes post pictures of Jarts (something so obviously dangerous as to be comical) under captions about how “we survived the 70’s.” We think we were lucky to survive such unregulated dangers. 

Question: How many children were killed by metal-tip lawn darts before they were banned?
Answer: One.

The father of that one victim – 7-year-old Michelle Snow – advocated so effectively for the outright ban of lawn darts that they became illegal only 18 months after Michelle’s death. 

Lawn darts are not guns. Guns are thousands of times worse. There was no “National Jarts Association,” either, to block progress.

I never worried once about mass school shootings as a kid in the 70’s. That’s because there were none – not a single mass murder of children in a primary or secondary school in the entire decade of the 1970’s.

Today my 7-year-old daughter is having an active shooter drill at her school.

-Tyler Chapman, M.Ed., J.D. 

"Be Stronger Than Your Strongest Excuse" - Days 143-147

 

EXCUSES vs. EXPLANATIONS

   It is a tee shirt quote I had never seen. Alan Maiccon's wrote, “Be stronger than your strongest excuse. Be greater than your most negative voice."

   Hospitals have a factual excuse for current staff shortages. But most complained before COVID hit.

   "Yes, I know Sarah makes mistakes but she's so compassionate,” one Chief Nursing Officer told me in 2018, ignoring Sarah was hurting patients.

   “But he's brilliant with a scalpel,” one OR director told me to excuse an instrument-throwing surgeon who terrorized nurses.   

   You may hear explanations but never excuses at The Mayo Clinic, arguably the best medical center in the world. Their success turns on their culture, "The Mayo Way. To remain employed you must deliver excellence. "Ordinary" is intolerable.

"SET THE STANDARD"

   No patient wants "average." Sadly, that is what most hospitals deliver.

   That is why every leader should order Chris York's new book, Set the Standard, The Antidote to Average (Amazon, etc.) Read it, learn a new take on excellence & forward this essay to leaders you know. It signals why Community Health Systems CEO, Tim Hingtgen, recruited Chris from Baylor to head their Northwest Health (Arkansas) group of five hospitals. 

   Check his opening sentence, "Why get out of bed to be average?" If the answer is obvious why do so many ignore it?

   Our family's culture starts impacting us in infancy. Yes, many peak performers have overcome terrible early influences. But, generally, culture determines behavior & leaders determine culture. Look to the leader. 

    If physical therapy, dietary, or nursing is underperforming look at leadership. They have the biggest influence on morale.

SOLUTION

   Want to improve organizational performance? Read Chris' book & look to Radical Loving Care^®, the approach Chris infused into the cultures of both Baylor hospitals he led. Apply our Mother Test™ because it asks leaders one core question: Do you have any team member you would not want caring for your Mom?

   If so, retrain or remove them. Simultaneously, make your stars the standard. Thus elite performance becomes the norm, not the exception.

   What could matter more? The path to excellence itself begins improving patient care in small ways immediately.

   When the wind changes direction so do the ships that depend on it. 

   Be the wind. Use The Mother Test™. Your patients are counting on you. 

-Erie Chapman

A Hero Ten Feet Tall - Days 122-126

 The woman pictured is my hero. Her smile says who she is but not what she has been through. Born three years after me Martha's life delivered profound questions.

   By fourteen I was six feet one. Why was my sister two feet shorter?

   None of us chooses to be born, much less who our parents will be. Why did life deliver a typically developing body to my older sister, our youngest sibling & me but not to Martha? 

   Why has she always been cheerful while I sometimes struggle with depression? How did she bring so much joy to thousands at The Toledo Hospital when her caregiver job was Information Desk clerk, not doctoring, nursing or leading?

   Starting early, Martha faced endless insults. My childhood fistfights were to defend her. She is a reason I exchanged words for punches & became a trial lawyer.

   Nevertheless, the tormented suffer alone. 

   Everyone loves Martha. That love poured forth when she hit a hard chapter. At seventy-five, walking & balance became unbearable. She confronted what many with Achondroplastic dwarfism face: spinal stenosis that compresses nerves & threatens mobility.

   On April 22, Martha endured major back surgery. Her condition made the process harrowing.

   The surgery lasted an hour longer, the neurosurgeon drilled into her spine & nicked it (a relatively common risk) triggering a spinal fluid leak & the awful sequelae of excruciating headaches. 

   Meanwhile, after decades of preaching Radical Loving Care^® but untrained at one on one physical care my bluff was called. At her request, I flew to Toledo to join her & stayed with her 24/7 including three nights in the hospital sleeping in a chair & three days at her home. Then my sister, Ann, took the baton.

   Gladly, Martha has a spectacular platoon of friends. Some bring food, some drive, others care for her dog, all, including her wonderful minister, pray with her & one couple includes an occupational therapist & her husband who are redesigning her home to accommodate her new restrictions.  

   Anyone who seeks empathy with professional caregivers must live through several shifts with them. Regardless, leaders must care for caregivers. Shockingly, none of the fifteen or twenty staff that worked with my sister knew of, or had seen, the hospital CEO!

   The rest of Martha's story proves that every leader must offer competent & compassionate presence or be removed. 

  Happily, our family's support for Martha shows in a line our dad often repeated: "Martha, you are ten feet tall." 

   And so she is to everyone who looks past her height & sees the depth of her gorgeous heart. 

-Erie Chapman

Photos: Martha, home & hospital by Erie

The Radiance of the Afterlife - Days 105-109

 Three decades ago I was sitting in an airport with John Stringer, then CEO of Hartford Hospital. Although he seemed a concrete thinker I took a chance: "What is the best near death story you've heard?" I asked

   You & I have heard dozens. John shared one that knocked me over.

   "One afternoon an out-of-state woman was brought into the ER following a turnpike crash. She 'flat-lined' & died," he said. "The doctors were about to give up when she opened her eyes.

   "I floated above my body & saw all of you working on me," the patient related to ER staff. Having heard such stories they just nodded. 

   "Wait," she said sensing their doubt. "A doctor came in wearing a brown cardigan sweater."

   In fact, a Dr. Johansen, dressed that way, had entered to help after the patient flat-lined. 

   "Then," she continued, "I floated up above the [ten story] hospital." Here's the clincher: "There is a single red tennis shoe up on the roof," she insisted. 

   Security was dispatched to the locked area. There it was. Not a pair of tennis shoes but a single red one lying on its side in the gravel.

   The woman added her report of "The dazzling white light" before returning to earth. 

   John verified that the woman had never been to Hartford much less to that hospital.    

   Does this account counter the idea that our dying brains simply concoct pictures? How could a body-based brain detach itself to witness something from far above itself?  

   We all want to believe that the sequel to body's death is our soul's arrival into the full energy of God's heavenly light. Many accept this on faith. This story shored up my occasionally wavering belief.

   God's otherworldly Light awaits us...and remains.

Rev. Erie Chapman

Photoart - The Light (c) Erie Chapman 2016

The Power of a Rare Word - Days 98-102

  In 2017, as he approached sixty, a dear friend decided to become a lawyer. In 2021 he emerged successful. One last "bar" remained between "lawyer" (one who knows law) & "attorney" (one who practices it.)

   Today, I learned a new word. "Anneal" means: "To heat metal or glass and allow it to cool slowly, ...to remove internal stresses and toughen it." The context was Mark Twain's Mississippi River training to become a steamboat captain. 

   Law school heats the "metal" of every student. Preparation for the dreaded bar examination supposedly provides "slow cooling" (or more heat) to toughen lawyers before licensing.

   On his first try at the the exam my friend fell six points short. Dismayed but not deterred he tried again. This time, he "missed" by two points.

   He can definitely pass this damnable exam. He will try again, right?

   His annealing may lead him the opposite way. 

   A truth emerged after his two trips through fire. "I'm more poet than prosecutor," he wrote. "...despite years of classroom exposure [I] did not develop the desire [to work in courtrooms.]"

   My friend knows himself. His integrity, compassion & intelligence are profound. Yet, he ended his note quoting Ringo Starr, "Peace & Love."

   After a career in courtrooms as an attorney & in hospitals as leader I can verify that courtrooms foster conflict not peace & host revenge more often than love. 

   Both arenas need my friend's tough & tender heart. So I wrote to him,"Courtrooms need you. You do not need them." 

   So it is with hospitals. Healing needs, but often fails to attract, caregivers that practice Radical Loving Care^® so they can deliver that rare gift living beyond our struggles: Peace.

   The path to that lit serenity requires no licensing.

-Erie Chapman

"Serenity's Light" - Erie Chapman, 2021

In One Word, Who Are You? - Journal Days 91-95

   People say about their lives, "I could write a book..." But few do. 

   Instead of a book, how about one word or sentence about who you are?  Dr. Terry Chapman, my cousin & occasional weekend Journal contributor, posed that question to himself & we ask it to you.   

The first word he used is perfect: "Affable." Terry defines that trait. The moment you meet him you would agree. His kind presence instantly generates warmth.

   Only four years into this world, single words are often used to describe my youngest grandson. Covered with snow he is "Joyful." More commonly, he is labeled as was I at that age: "Wild."

   A group leader asked each member of my hospital leadership group to pick a personal trait as their last name. My choice was "Erie Laughter," the characteristic I often enjoy in others.

   One word is never enough. However, I do like referring to our regular Journal contributor, Liz Wessel, with one word that describes her life, presence & power: "Saint."

   Being one, she declines the title. Anyone who says, "I am a saint" is not. 

   Inadequate as it may be, others routinely label us with wrong words. Now you can imagine changing your last name using the trait that best describes you & to invite others to do the same.

-Erie Laughter

Photo: Reed Chapman at 4, by Jen Chapman

Memories of Work & Waves

[This updated post first appeared March, 2009 - Special thanks to the RMH Alum site for nurturing memories]

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,...
   -Walt Whitman (1819-1892) from "I Sing The Body Electric"

    I grew up, like some of our readers, near the Pacific, "throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves" and now have the great chance to do the same, once again. This time it is by the Atlantic, where I encounter the waves with my tiny granddaughter and wonder what storms she will meet.
   Most caregivers live their careers between the coasts, confronting and healing the waves of pain that wash over others. Along the way, I wonder how many of us pause to reflect upon our memories of work?
   Each of us lives so much of our lives in our jobs rather than at home. When our work reaches its end or reaches, what will you remember? Will you recall the joys of working alongside friends? Which patients will stand out in your recollection?
   When I was a little boy playing by the ocean, I dreamed of one day doing important things. What I think of as important now is different from what I conjured in my boyhood imagination. As Whitman writes:

   From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in
      the mist,
   From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,...
   From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
   From such as now they start the scene revisiting,..

   Behind closed eyes it was easy to revisit my first days as a hospital leader. I see the associate nursing director, Marian Hamm, greeting me in a hallway at Toledo's former Riverside Hospital in 1975.
   Now, in the blink of an eye, she retired, edged into illness & died at 82. What Marian and I discussed in her later years was not the daily census or staff morale. Instead, we reminisced  about characters who amazed us; about battles with doctors; about disputes and scandals; how we handled several emergencies, and, best, what made us laugh.
   Most of all, we revel in the fact that we took our power and used it to influence the lives of others for the better through cultures of loving care. I am so grateful we made that choice and changed the lives of thousands. 
   One day, if you are lucky, you will have the time to reflect on your confrontations with the waves that informed your work. 
   Meanwhile, as Whitman wrote,

   I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,... A reminiscence sing.

   What specifics will you remember most about your work life?

-Erie Chapman

Photo by Erie

The Less Romantic Body

   The body is a mystery to children. They fill in blanks with guesses, turn to adults for answers & often do not get any.

   My little kid notions of the body were romantic.  As a young man I knew what I wanted from my body: To be athletic, smart, a leader & able to appeal to the other sex.

   By college, I knew how my male body worked & little about my fascinating sexual counterparts. My body was prose. A woman's, to me, was poetry.

   Most romantics dislike body-as-machine thinking.  But at nineteen, my body literally turned against me. My doctor predicted that my auto-immune disease would destroy my body by forty. 

   Now nearly twice that age I am grateful for excellent health & his error. 

   My artist's belief in the female figure as the source of beauty remains. But age plus forty years in healthcare has demystified my romantic notions about my physical self. As age steals life's length the eternal spiritual takes center stage & the path to that through art appeals.   

   David Whyte is America's best ambassador between earth & soul. I hate that so many people, especially professional caregivers, ignore his work's (& other's) ability to heal.   

   Ironically, sister-in- law, Karen Updike, one of America's finest poets, is married to a different breed of healer. Stuart Updike, M.D. invented the famous, life-saving, Dexcom system for diabetics but ignores poetry. There is little chance you know Karen's work because even the best poets play bit parts. 

   Karen's book, Off Riding (1989 Fireweed Press), was her first. If you have ventured out alone on horse, boat or hike & wished you could find words to describe your experience here are some, presented without those crucial but scary-to-many line breaks:  

   "Gladly I live in the presence of things undone, or how could I see these fields, yellow more and more, or these hills, indigo blue? I would miss storm clouds roiling like this tangle of mane beneath my hand, the bright spurt of speed as we race toward the elm. Red baneberry would languish unseen; I would never have considered the possibilities of green."

   Poetry presides at the marriage of mortality to heaven by baptizing the soul of the body romantic. (Click below for my reading of Off Riding's 1st poem.)

KAREN'S POETRY - Off Riding #1 - from Chip

-Erie Chapman  

Alone - Days 66-70

   "We are alone," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said back on February 25th. Two weeks later over 2000 Ukrainians who were alive are dead. Countless others will join them.

   Millions are experiencing another kind of loneliness. Imagine yourself a single, 75 year old woman dragging your roller bag across rough terrain around a wrecked bridge. No family. No money. No food. Your enemy's presence felt with bombs that destroy your home & kill your sister.  

   Surrounded by thousands also fleeing, you may feel alone. You may also feel lonely. 

   The power responsible for your isolation & the massive suffering surrounding you is a single man, Vladimir Putin. He alone can stop the war he started.

   Who can halt this Goliath? The most unlikely of "David's"(a stand-up comic two and half years ago) has emerged from world anonymity. With Churchillian eloquence & an electrifying presence, Mr. Zelensky has not only eased his country's isolation but has rallied the entire world to his cause. 

   What could this have to do with caregiving? Everything.

   Sometimes we prefer to be alone. "Left alone" names a condition we dread.    

   Loneliness longs for healing. It is a a common symptom of illness. Agony, acute or chronic, casts sufferers into darkness. No one understands their pain.

   Caregivers hold Zelensky-like potential to counter the Goliath of pain. They can apply the bandage of their healing touch, the warmth of their smile, the relief provided by loving presence. 

   John Thompson M.D., a veteran doctor, found himself a patient for the first time. He was admitted to Nashville's Baptist Hospital when I was President.

   "How was your stay?" I asked him post discharge. 

   "Fine. Mostly because of a single caregiver." he said with a smile.

   "Which nurse?" I asked, withdrawing my pen.

   "Not a nurse, a housekeeper," he answered. "It was her presence. Every time she appeared I felt better...less lonely. I never would have guessed she would be my best caregiver."

-Erie Chapman

   

Days 59-63 Tedious Ambition vs. Ambition to Serve

   Leadership, whether of a country or of a nursing unit, can be healing. It becomes poisonous when infected with distorted ambition.

   Once again, the timeless wisdom of David Whyte (left) comforts & strengthens: "Ambition left to itself...always becomes tedious, its only object the creation of larger and larger empires of control..."

   Gladly, there is an antidote for this tedium. Whyte's teaches that our best energy arrives when we realize that "...a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that entices us in the first place."

   Ambition informed by compassion & justice is among humanity's finer energies. This version of ambition motivated Jesus to walk among enemies, love them & spread that very love by sacrificing his life for ours.  

   The best leaders in healthcare always appeal to the best in us. These are the people who show by word & example that caregiving is a calling, not a power grab. 

   The worst leaders wield Fear not Love. So much trouble is caused by males raised to value dominance over munificence.     

   That is why I often suggest that hospitals would be better served if more women were leaders, or if the men that are would balance toxic competitiveness with enlightened strength. 

   Whyte offers the best coda: "A true vocation always metamorphoses both ambition and failure into compassion and understanding for others."

-Erie Chapman