Radical Loving Care: Journal of Sacred Work

Days 300-304 - Creativity: Where Does It Come From?

If you have followed the Journal for long you will know that our regular co-writers, Liz Wessel & Terry Chapman, & I are endlessly interested in the role that creativity plays in caregiver's lives. You will also know that, as a photoartist, I am forever encouraging people to do more than just split-second looking at pictures.

Of course, I think my youngest granddaughter is cute as can be &, like most grandparents, take the chance to show pictures whether requested or not. The picture inside this picture holds magic.

Could any adult have come up with the idea of painting a caterpillar's body as a row of lollypops?

One reason I love hanging around with them is that little kids are creative geniuses. Listen carefully & they will open the window to the fantastical world you once occupied yourself. 

Caregiving is meaningful & is also grim work. Beauty can become foreign amid the ugliness you see every day. I have been immersed in hospitals for so long I thought for a moment that the word "Journey" on Caroline's tee shirt was "Gurney."

Discovering beauty in caregiving enriches our ability to heal & elevates life's journey. 

Imagination has been my salvation since I was Caroline's age. It may become hers twenty years from now after she has seen the suffering you & I know.

When she has reached that age, may she still see lollipops in unexpected places. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph by Tyler Chapman

 

Days 293-297 - One of Your Angels*

Amid her life's coda my angelic mother-in-law, Marian Lokvam (pictured with my wife on our wedding day), water-colored an image (below) that I imagine as her soul flying towards eternity. Her angel greets you with the gift of her art.

We need such gifts. Your daily work, with all its security, can batter your heart. The more you merge your self-worth into your job the more you fear losing that security.

Our individual souls require nurturing. 

Fear blocks love.The flood of troubles this year put spirits at risk of drowning.

David Whyte writes that the arts are not a past-time. They are vital to maintaining your soul's balance.

You & I need a guide. That is why poet Whyte is a caregiver. He is the only being I know who has dedicated his career to helping you bridge the land of your workplace with the landscape of the arts.

That is why he is one of your angels. He is what one friend calls "a compassionate genius."

Invite Whyte into your world. Read his seminal book, The Heart Aroused. Listen to his voice soothe you with his poems.

In one poem, "This Life," Whyte alludes to one overpowered by work: "He has left the life/ he once tried to love/ now it is only a shadow/ calling for another shadow/ and this shadow/ wants to become real again."

Have you fallen out of love with caregiving? Whyte's subject wants to live anew "before the specter haunts me to my/ grave."

There is a milligram of fear here: Watch out or you will reach your life's end aboard a regret-flooded gurney haunted by angels you ignored.

Although, Whyte wrote or me in reviewing my book, Radical Loving Care that I was a "beacon of light in American healthcare" HE is the beacon - your beacon.

Let David Whyte's light shine into your life & you will experience the soul-refreshing presence of one of your angels.

-Erie Chapman

Painting by Marian Lokvam, 1993

*Column based on piece I posted October, 2014

Days 286-290 - Mirrors & Windows

It rained earlier.

The mirror is our only proof.

Its prior presence salts the silvered glass & creates illusions: that I am shedding tears & that rain is falling across the Minton Sparks' face & into her blue eyes.

If mirrors are windows, are windows mirrors through which we see our truth?

I made this picture to create a second mirror, the one into which you look right now.

There is a mystery in this picture I cannot describe. It has to do with the different energy in pieces of glass we call windows & other shapes called mirrors. We rely on what is unreliable - how do we look? In the answer lies the biggest reason we use mirrors: to help us look "Just right." But the mirror, like the one is Sleeping Beauty, never yields a universal truth. 

Decades ago I was fascinated to learn that Intensive Care Units are required to have windows. Without them, intubated patients, already disoriented, become more so. Unable to distinguish day from night they thrash about in a phenomenon called ICU psychosis.

Windows are crucial for caregivers as well. Dwelling in florescent light instead of daylight affects energy.

Ultimately, we use windows & mirrors to help us answer the greatest trick question of all: What is real?

The only "truth" is that every reality lives behind our eyes, not in front of them. 

People posit, "If these walls could talk." What if mirrors could talk? 

Inside this mirror and behind every window in the building across the street live stories. 

Behind every hospital window dwells a patient cut off from health & home. The mirror tells them what we must always remember: they are more than a diagnosis. 

If we look with love through the windows of our eyes into the mirrors of theirs we enable the compassion that helps us help them heal. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph "Windows of Consciousness" by Erie, 2018

 

 

Days 278-282 - Praying for our enemies?

   It was a natural reaction from Trump's enemies to the news he had tested positive for COVID 19: "Serves him right," one said. "Is it okay for me to say I'm ecstatic?" another asked. 

   Since human nature drives us to fight perceived enemies is it not okay for us to rejoice when they suffer? 

   The Radical Loving Care philosophy tracks Jesus' command to "pray for our enemies..." It is the Christian Messiah's toughest command. Yet, to claim belief in God as Love means accepting Love's challenge that we transcend our baser instincts: That we reject revenge & choose forgiveness. What a crucial teaching for caregivers.

   Enter Kristin Urquiza (pictured) whose father died this summer from Covid. ““My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” she said. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump — and for that he paid with his life." 

   What if Ms. Urquiza was a professional caregiver assigned to Mr. Trump? Professionalism calls her to give her best. Beneath that, could hatred impact her ability to deliver the healing called for by Radical Loving Care?

   Every hospital, especially those offering care beneath the cross, promises every patient the best. We know that mission is violated every day by well-meaning caregivers that find Radical Loving Care too hard.

   It is hard. Perhaps more difficult than practicing curative medicine. And it is the calling of all who claim the title of caregiver.

Rev. Erie Chapman

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Days 257-261 - Good Leaders Pick Good Leaders

 Healthcare leaders can learn huge amounts from watching others lead. 

   ABC's Barbara Walters interviewed Jimmy Carter a year after Ronald Reagan became President. The country was optimistic, the economy was strengthening & Reagan's popularity was rocketing.

   "Why is Reagan succeeding?" she asked. Carter said plaintively, "Well, I don't know."

   We did. Carter was smart, humble, kind & high principled. But he was so smart he got tangled in details & paralyzed by analysis. Thus, he had trouble delegating, picking the best people & focusing on the big picture. I disagreed with many of Reagan's policies but he had those crucial indefinable gifts: intuition & a genius for communicating contagious optimism. 

   Reagan projected the tough & tender leadership people love. When he made mistakes, including a couple big ones, he admitted them & moved on. He  surrounded himself with good leaders including James Baker, the wonderful Howard Baker, David Gergen & many others. 

   President Dwight Eisenhower (pictured) had the same gifts. 

   Good leaders pick good leaders. That obvious truth struck me decades ago & I have wondered why it is so often ignored. Bad leaders pick big bad leaders & demand one thing above all - blind loyalty. That is one of many reasons Donald Trump's Presidency is doomed. As a bad leader, he has surrounded himself with some of the worst leaders in history.

   As we have seen with the coronavirus crisis, Trump lied & people died. 

   Health leaders can learn by leading the opposite of Trump. But, it is also true that resume-only hiring is a mistake. Hospital organization charts are filled with people who have professional licenses but no leadership training. Many won leadership jobs via length of service.

   Nursing & Doctoring require sharply different skills than leading. Leaders must focus on the big picture, inspire with high purpose & pick the best teams. This is true of people whether you lead two or three or are a President with 330,000,000 "patients." S/he can bring them healing strength through the Radical Loving Leadership of wisdom, compassion, humor, humility & integrity. 

   We need loving leadership in our hospitals & in our country. Right now.

-Erie Chapman

   

Days 244-248 - Leaders MUST Have Compassion

   Whether you are running a hospital, a city, a nursing unit or a country you must be able to empathize & have the strength to act on that empathy to solve problems. That is why one of the three great characteristic common to every great leader is compassion. 

   Without it, leaders are deaf to human need. They cannot select good team members or execute an inspiring vision. Without compassion, Lincoln, Reagan, Obama & others would have failed. 

   Forget politics. The current Presidential election is now about our health & well-being in a country divided as it has not been since the Civil War. 

   Yet, too many of my fellow white males dismiss compassion as irrelevant. "What I want is a tough leader," one told me recently. In fact, what America needs right now is a President who is what Martin Luther King called "tough-minded & tender-hearted."

   John Baldoni wrote in last week's Forbes Magazine, "As our nation is riven by the twin viruses of Covid-19 and systemic racism, and the resulting economic fallout, people in need, or people in general, want to know that someone cares."

   Why? A President that genuinely appreciates suffering will not toss paper towels at a crowd of Puerto Ricans hungry for food, water & electricity & then refuse meaningful aid. He will not tolerate immigrant children being caged, will respond immediately to the pandemic instead of calling it "a hoax" & will empathize with both police & those suffering from racist treatment. 

   Baldoni suggests who can best lead America: "Biden feels empathetic because that is who he is. He acts on empathy because he feels he must. And therein lies the leadership lesson. Being and doing are different things."

   Yes. This Presidential election is now about our health. Leaders who lack compassionate are blind to the very human needs we elect them to address.

   That is why we need a President who is a Caregiver-in-Chief as well as a Commander in Chief. Someone who leads with love, not fear. 

 -Erie Chapman

Here is a 3 minute video I made to help you explain this issue to others: https://youtu.be/yeHMj9T1Ivg

 

Days 237-241 - That "Slant of Light" - Hope & Healing

   Here is one sentence never spoken by a depression sufferer: "I feel hopeful." Caregivers know a patient is recovering when they say, "I feel hopeful again."

   Having often been attacked by what Churchill called "the black dog of depression" it is astounding how effectively that beast can suck meaning from life.

   If you do not know what Churchill & I mean you are among the fortunate. We invite you, trained or not, to help others with the free (but expensive) gift of your compassion.

   It can be tricky. During one attack I sought out a dear friend because she had been a therapist. Instead of compassion, she worsened my state by saying dismissively, "I'm not good at dealing with that." 

   I hope she & you will understand better through Emily Dickinson's genius:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

   Have you ever danced with Darkness in the middle of the day? Seen that "certain slant" that chimes the news that darkness falls early in winter months?

   "Heavenly Hurt, it gives us," she wrote. "We can find no scar,/ But internal difference/ Where the meanings are."

  This references nothing momentary. Loss of meaning can cause loss of life.

   How do we help? When someone touches my shoulder, shows compassion through softened eyes or simply listens empathically it helps.

   When someone says, "You should be grateful" it hurts. I know I have no reason to be depressed & yet I am! That is even more depressing."

   It insults another's suffering to say, "We all have problems." It demeans personal uniqueness to say, "I understand."

   Depression is anger turned inward. Irritability causes the sufferer to drive away exactly those they need.

   Many avoid the depressed rather than offering the lifeline of their presence. 

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

   "Life is so difficult when darkness covers your heart," Tracy Wimberly, R.N., once told me. Those words & how she said them showed I had been heard. A fleck of light flickered. In the distance I saw not Death but Hope. 

   Tracy shows us a way we can help others heal from this illness that shows "no scar."

-Erie Chapman  

Photograph "In Shadow" Erie 2020   

Days 230-234 - The Most Important Uniform in the Hospital

   The overused line is that the eyes are the windows to the soul. But, what do eyes really tell us?

   Most do not look into the eyes of another long enough to discern much. As Ralph Ellison's protagonist says so bitterly, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."

   The horrors of racial bias have always been tragic. The recent emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement has challenged everyone. Ignorance from many white people blocked them from seeing the point: In a nation still dominated by whites, black lives have mattered less for centuries & remain minimized to this day. 

  The issue is far broader, of course. Every minority is degraded by either not being seen or viewed as "less than." A decade ago I discovered that younger people were looking through me because my white hair signaled I was irrelevant. All you have to do is visit a typical nursing home to see that old people matter less.

  If you have worn a patient gown you know that the moment healthy eyes caught sight of you, you felt marginalized. 

   During my twelve years a head of Riverside Methodist Hospital and OhioHealth we strove to redesign the gown until we finally discovered something. It was not the gown. It was what people's eyes told them when they saw it. 

   We needed to train caregivers & visitors that the most important uniform in a hospital is not a doctor's scrubs or an executive's suit. It is the patient gown.

   When I had the power to do so I should have hung a giant picture at each of our hospital's entrances entitled: "The Most Important Uniform in the Hospital." Inside the frame, a patient gown. 

-Erie Chapman

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 Davis 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