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.

Take Care of the People Who Take Care of People - May 13-17

  His 6'5" frame embraced me with the power of someone who makes you feel safe. And that is exactly what Jeff Dysart has been doing for staff at Riverside Methodist Hospital for more than 30 years.

   It was a thrill to see him still doing that since back when I was CEO there. His greeting and gratitude were among the most meaningful things I experienced during my pilgrimage to Riverside on May 2. "You're a legend around here," he said several times in ways that affirmed the team back then more than it did me. 

   Why do Jeff and his partners matter so much? It is so obvious it is often forgotten. The success of care depends heavily on first line caregivers like him. 

   That is why the most quotable thing I've ever shared is: the number one job of leaders is to take care of the people who take care of people. 

   No one comes into an ER and asks, "Have you got enough executives here?" They need first line caregivers!

   Leaders can do something VERY important. Their "patients" are not the sick but those caring for them. It is axiomatic that the better job leaders do supporting first line staff the likelier patients will receive great care.

   There are the same number staff at RMH now as then, 6000, plus another 30,000 at OhioHealth, the system I am grateful to have founded exactly 40 years ago. Dr. Steve Markovich, Rob Circek, Kanesha Moss, R.N,, and other top leaders are trying hard to support them. Wonderful!

Thank you Jeff. You are lookin' good!

-Erie Chapman

Are We Still Alive? - May 6, 2024

    It has been three decades since I visited the stage at the place I once led, Riverside Methodist Hospital/OhioHealth in Columbus, still Ohio's largest hospital. When I was introduced as the featured speaker to a magical group of nurse-scholarship recipients there was a murmur during which I overheard someone whisper, "Erie Chapman...Is he still alive?" 

   The question makes sense. In important ways, we marry our job. Fellow staff members become family. No matter how long someone works anywhere, when they depart, they "vanish"...as if dead.

   We are three dimensional. Our personhood loses a dimension for those who remain. We slip from 3D to 2D pictures and memories.

   My return tossed me into "The Rip Van Winkle Syndrome" (the character who fell asleep for twenty years reawakening in a new world.) Faces have changed, parts of the buildings rearranged, added to, or subtracted. Technology? Wow! 

   Consciously, I knew that. Subconsciously, I may have thought the same cast would remain...and wish they had.

   Does that explain why at school reunions, former boy and girl friends reunite and sometimes marry? Do they see the lover they knew or the real being before them?

   It was deeply moving to return. Of all the places I worked before or since, none meant more than Riverside and the OhioHealth system I founded from that flagship in 1984. It was exceptionally affirming to see how well the place had thrived. And a big part of me wished I could have stayed for that ride.

-Erie Chapman

(Special thanks to Joanne Ingledue, R.N., for the photo of me taken at the event)

   

   

Healthcare's Strange New War - April 22-26

After he became a patient himself, famous Neurosurgeon Allan Hamilton echoed what millions already knew: “All the way through residency, I thought it was about efficiency, speed and accuracy when it was really about compassion.”

That was fifteen years ago. Now comes news you have heard but is more frightening. Our healthcare and our humanity are entangled in a strange war.

The value of human hands and hearts is threatened. Artificial Intelligence robots threaten to rip the Golden Thread of loving care from human hands.

Yes Ai is a great but what about the threat? Robots are revolutionizing care for the elderly in Japan and Korea. Big companies are bringing them this way fast.
They don’t just do task work. Ai now includes Artificial compassion (Ac?). They fake compassion by mimicking what we thought only we could do. 

Corporate structures increasingly frustrate kindness on the altars of efficiency and money. They LOVE efficiency, speed and accuracy. Compassion? They do not see money there. They win unless we increasingly demonstrate the unique power of humanity's most profound healing gift: loving care.

Here's the thing: Neither robots nor humans can always cure. But humans can always deliver something robots cannot: healing. 

Humans can keep Ai in its place. But only by drawing down the Golden Thread of compassion from the hem of God’s grace to sew up the wounded spirits of patients. 

This is our most important healing power. Soon, it may be the only one we have left.

-Erie Chapman 

Image: Brian Stauffer - Scientific American

What to Say to Grievers April 18-20

Because of six decades spent in hospitals, courtrooms & prison ministry I am asked, "What do I say to grieving friends." My response is, "Nothing. Presence is everything."

My dear Divinity school friend and world class minister, Rev. Kaye Harvey (pictured), sent a poem by Patricia McKernon Reynolds, that is far more eloquent: 

When You Meet Someone Deep in Grief.

Slip off your needs
and set them by the door.

Enter barefoot
this darkened chapel

hollowed by loss
hallowed by sorrow

its gray stone walls
and floor.

You, congregation
of one

Are here to listen
not to sing.

Kneel in the back pew.
Make no sound,

let the candles
speak.

What do you say to Grief? "Let the 'candles' speak." 

-Erie Chapman

The Real Power of Fantasy - April 1-5

  The license to fool people is expanded every April 1st.   My son was 4 when he saw "The Wizard of Oz." Later that week, high winds rattled our aluminum-sided home. 

   "A tornado will hit our house," our little boy shuddered. "I can't sleep."

   "This is not like "Oz," I said, "That won't happen." 

   "But it's possible," he insisted.

   I tried an April-Fools-type joke. "There's a pink elephant in our garage," I said. 

   "That's silly," he laughed.

   "But it's possible," I responded.

   Gladly, he got it and went off to sleep. 

   "Our lives are driven by fantasy," says film Professor Howard Suber. "It's a word derived from 'phantom.' It isn't there."

  Classifying a tornado-strike's likelihood as a pink elephant healed my son's anxiety. Yet, because of how our brains work, "fantasy" is often more powerful than measurable realities.

   Non-Christians view Easter as fantastical. For Christians, the resurrection fuels a vital energy: hope. 

  Radical Loving Care leaders understand that curing relies on concrete medical treatments whereas healing depends on belief. Those same leaders enable caregivers to use the most magical power they have: the administration of daily doses of love to enable the healing power of hope. 

-Erie Chapman

Image: adambarronphoto

Is Your Job a "Calling"?

   The week begins. We clamber out of bed with news Americans hate: "Oh NO! It's Monday!"

   For caregivers energized by their work's meaning it is different. They relieve fatigue using spiritual as well as material sight knowing that science's goal is curing while healing requires Love's sacred eyes.

   When Jack Chester, Esq., was Vice Chair of Riverside Methodist's board he cross-examined me once in a way that made me glad for my trial lawyer training:

   "Erie, Riverside's doing great in every area. How do you do it?"

   "Leaders practice loving care," I said. "Our work is a calling, not just a job. We take care of the people who take care of people."*(see photo)

   "THAT is what I don't understand," he challenged. "How do you lead with a theory you can't measure?"

   "You mean, if you can't measure it, it doesn't matter??

   "Right!" he said.

   "How much do you love your kids?" I asked.

   "More than anything!" he answered."

   "Can you measure that?"

   He appeared to get the point yet as a concrete thinker seemed unable to absorb it. To him, hospitals were medical worlds where measurement was "everything."

   Issac Newton was a science genius. His one mistake? That science could explain everything. His belief that science held all answers was like preachers who believe religion solves everything. 

   In this material world, Jack wins. It is his memorial that sits in the Riverside lobby honoring his good gifts of time and money.

   The memorial for loving leadership is invisible. It is etched into the hearts of caregivers who know that Love's energy brought out their best in those years. 

   What matters most cannot be measured.

-Erie Chapman

*Photo of announcement of EMPLOYEE CONVENIENCE CENTER at Riverside, launched when the great Mark Evans was SVP for HR. Circa 1989

Important Water Magic

   The announcement came July, 2008. Now, of course, it is old news. There is, by golly, water UP THERE on the surface of Mars! "Water ice" anyway. 

   Why does Mars water matter? If there is water, maybe there is life? And water is magic.   We may go from "dust to dust" but we start in the womb's water. Water is so essential that it is the first thing caregivers know patients must have to survive. 

   Jesus-as-teacher understood water-as-metaphor so well that the parable of the "Woman at the Well" became famous. From it flows the beautiful image of "living water." John 4:13-14 quotes Jesus, “Everyone who drinks this [real] water will be thirsty again, (14) but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst." 

   The neurosurgeon, Ebon Alexander, whom I have quoted recently writes heaven's water "...is closer to the source...like the water higher up on the meandering river is closer to the springs that emerge." And it exists, he says, in the heaven he saw, as incredibly comforting. 

   A sacred gift my mother received at the end of her 105-year earth journey was being bathed daily by hospice staff. Afterwards she always returned with a glow as if baptized again.

   Caregivers become healers when they understand how waters can comfort suffering. The question is not whether there is water on Mars but do we understand water's transcendent power on earth. 

   Water is magic. With "living water" we never thirst again. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: Erie Chapman "Ghost Falls Impression" 2018

Is "Okay" Okay?

   "How is our patient satisfaction?" I asked a Vice President a week after I began as CEO of Riverside Methodist (pictured*), still Ohio's largest hospital, in 1983.

   "It's okay," he said proudly. "...slightly above average around the 70th percentile." Then adding a deadly line, "In other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?"

   "Why would it be 'okay' to be just slightly above average, Bob?" I asked. "Would you want to tell anyone, 'Come to Riverside. Our patients say we're slightly above average?'"

   My goal was not to shame but to send this message: "Okay" cannot be the standard for any caregiving organization. Caregivers do not have the luxury of offering care that just slightly tops average. 

   Gladly, Riverside became way better than average. Within a couple years we had reached the 90th percentile in patient satisfaction and sustained it for the next decade. By then, I had also founded OhioHealth and soon we acquired (or rescued) Grant Medical Center. Today, OhioHealth's RMH is a gleaming example of not just okay but high level excellence. What a privilege it was to lead that organization for 12 years.  

   Not everyone, especially the suffering, views life as a privilege. If you do, consider the daily question Chris York, President of CEO of Dallas Presbyterian, poses: "Why get out of bed to be average?"

   This is just one reason why Chris is such a great leader: "Okay" is not okay and must not be the status quo. He likes to quote Vince Lombardi: "If you strive for perfect you'll catch excellence along the way."

-Erie Chapman 

*Photo of Riverside includes proposed new women's health center.

 

Secret Memories

 What does it take to radically change our life view? You as a caregiver know that trauma can do it. Can a book?

  After recovering from his near death experience (NDE) neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, M.D. wrote, "...there is a secret part of ourselves that is recording every last aspect of our earthly lives, and it...commences at the very very beginning."

  I don't like the title, Proof of Heaven because of its religious implications. I had heard so much about NDE's I doubted this book had anything new. I was wrong. 

  This book is different. It changed my life and will enrich yours beyond measure.

   Two earthshaking things I now know. Brain and spirit are related but separate. One mortal, the other unaffected by our body's death. Dr. Alexander's neocortex was disabled during his coma freeing his spirit to roam what he calls heaven. When his brain recovered, he could describe what his spirit had experienced because of that "secret memory" we all have.  

   Second, no afterlife skeptic can explain a common NDE phenomenon: the number of people who SEE things they could not know while they were "dead." Millions of similar stories abound beyond the thousands reported.    

   Dr. Alexander's story is the most convincing on record. Only our five senses can "prove" the existence of the material world. During an NDE, another "sense" emerges. 

   After transcendent experiences, we say "I have no words to describe it." There are words to describe art* or falling in love. They never match the feelings.  As a scientist, not a cleric or poet, Dr. Alexander finds the words for us. 

   As a caregiver you may have heard NDE stories. After reading the book, you will be able to honor such stories in ways that can be healing for your patient and yourself.

-Erie Chapman

*Experiencing difficulty communicating with an artist in Spain, I realized we need a new word for the wordless language of art: "Artish". Not just Spanish or English but Artish.

Photograph By Brian Stauffer for Scientific American

Proof of Love After Death - February 19-23

  The moment Shirley entered Hartford Hospital's ER in August, 1994, she flatlined. The team did their drill. Nothing.

   They repeated the process and were about to surrender when the patient revived. 

   "I floated up and saw your team working on me," Shirley reported. "A doctor wearing a brown cardigan came in."

   "You're right," a nurse said. "We hear those stories often."

    "But, I floated above the hospital (a 10-story building), the patient continued, "There's a red tennis shoe on the roof."

    When security unlocked the roof door there it was. Not a pair of red tennis shoes. Just one.

    Scientists regularly study these Near-Death Experiences (NDE's)

   In Proof of Heaven (2012) neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander describes his NDE after contracting meningitis and entering a 7-day coma. His coma's length allowed deeper travels through the death experience including an angel-like orb of light who mediated with a higher power he interpreted as God. 

   Alexander had no neocortex function. He was "brain-dead." Was it time to discontinue life support?

   “During my coma my brain wasn’t working improperly,” Alexander writes. “It wasn’t working at all.”

  Later, he reached a shattering conclusion: post death thoughts exist separate from our brain.*

  Dr. Alexander's credentials are impeccable as his best selling story. Yet, he drew the usual firestorm of critics.

  But cynics have never been able to answer how some patients (e.g. the "red shoe" women) see things they could not know!

   A recent LA accident victim recovered from his coma and asked ER staff for his briefcase. 

   "It's gone," they said. 

   "No. It's halfway down the hill near my crash," he reported. And so it was.

   There will always be skeptics. I am one who believes something Alexander and numerous others confirm: In the afterlife love reigns supreme. 

-Erie Chapman

*A massive number of credible NDE stories exist - many from doctors. Robin Kelly, M.D, writes “Our brain may not be the seat of consciousness, but merely a vessel through which consciousness is realized.” After his NDE (2020), orthopedic surgeon Tony Cicoria, M.D. reported: "I was able to verify details of my near-death and out-of-body experience that I would have no conceivable way of knowing except through conscious travel of my spiritual self outside of my body."

Photo "Afterlife Angel" ^©Erie Chapman 2024

Nursing's True Beginning - Days 43-47

 You have seen videos of mom's nursing. But you have never seen one like this (click on link): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UFX5zafn60

   It portrays the first intimate experience we have. Yet we do not recall it. Or do we?

   Is there some aspect of us that remembers our first moments? How the world's blasts startled us? Whether the shocks were softened when we were skin-to-skin with our mothers?

   Whether or not you were nursed or were a nursing mom, psychologists now believe that our first encounters with the world matter. Particular comfort for male babies eases the potential alienation of different-bodied males from their mothers.* 

   Caregiving starts at birth. Millennia passed before Ms. Nightingale professionalized it.

   Longing begins at birth. We flail for balance and quickly search for food and comfort!

   In 2013, as part of my film, "Alex Dreaming", we filmed actor Julie Baber-Brooks nursing her baby, Ryder. More than 10 years later, I found discarded film.

   9 minutes seems long if you think it is repetitive. Here, with your sacred eyes, you can experience things you never noticed and feel, as did I, the presence of the feminine divine.

   Ryder is now ten. How did he turn out?

-Erie Chapman

*HE - Understanding Masculine Psychology - Robert A. Johnson

   

   

How Chaos Helps - Days 35-39

   No patient ever wants a confused caregiver. No caregivers wants a confused leader. How could confusion ever be helpful?

   Can chaos provoke creativity? When I became President and CEO of Nashville's Baptist Hospital System in 1998 the board was unaware that disaster was lurking in the balance sheets. Outside accountants shared the shocking truth: The hospital, originally projected to make $10 million, would report a $73 million loss!    

   Fortunately, as a former trial lawyer and CEO of two previous systems I was accustomed to emergencies. In three years we went from minus $73 million to plus $1 million by using contradictory as well as conventional solutions. One example was my immediate public announcement (to the horror of our CFO) that "We plan to hire a hundred new nurses." Another was our decision to dominate women's health services. Within two years, two thirds of Nashville's babies were being born at Baptist.* 

   Real life mocks theory. Beyond rote practical solutions lie unexpected events that require creative as well as conventional answers. Chaos triggered praxis, the process of putting ideas into practice. In three years Baptist's nightmare was transformed into a triumphant success story of patient satisfaction in the 90th percentile, high quality scores and a $74 million turnaround.

   Surrealist painter Salvador Dali (photo) wrote, "You have to systematically create confusion. It sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life."

   Because contradictory thinking creates discomfort most hate practicing it. Great performers practice chaos thinking so well that create solutions status quo thinkers cannot imagine. 

-Erie Chapman

*Other examples appear in Radical Loving Care™, Sacred Work and Inside Radical Loving Care™ at http://www.eriechapmanfoundation.net or from online sellers.  

"...a few words" Days 28-32

  "The difference between the right word and the nearly right word," Twain wrote, "is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." We all have the same words from which to pick, but across the American centuries, a tiny number have selected the right ones.

    Stephen Dunn offers lightning in his poem, "Named":

   "He'd spent his life trying to control the names/ people gave him;/ oh the unfair and the accurate equally hurt." And later, "A man who was a sweetheart/ and a son-of-a-bitch/ was also more or less every name/he'd ever been called,..."

   And this thunderbolt, "...when you die, he thought,/ that's when it happens,/ you're collected forever into a few small words."

   We may rue that no Twain or Dunn will write our ode. But I hope my preacher reads a little Twain and these lines from Dunn, "But never to have been outrageous or exquisite,/ no grand mistake/ so utterly yours it causes whispers/ in the peripheries of your presence - that was/ his fear."

   The word for anyone describing me "never outrageous" is "Liar."

   Dunn's choice for himself? "'Reckless"; he wouldn't object to such a name/ if it came from the right voice with the right/ amount of reverence./ Someone nearby, of course, certain to add, "fool.'"

   If someone describes me as "Driven," and someone else adds "fool" that's fine. Just so long as they say it reverently...

-Erie Chapman

Author at Parthenon (Nashville)

#1 Attention-Getting Word? "Naked" - Days 15-19

"Sex." The word exploded from the road sign because the building behind it was a church. My church. In his sermon, the great Rev. Waldemar Argow admitted right away, "I named my sermon "Sex" to fill this place." Scanning the crowded pews he quipped, "It worked!"

   Except in a Polynesian Island or a doctor's exam room, the word "naked" still rivets attention.  Drop "naked" into a conversation, brand a juice drink with it, or add it to a music concert ad and you will catch eyes just as the brochure (left) stopped me from tossing it. 

   What if the ad said, "Nude Classics?" Same response because society still misses the difference.

   In his classic book, The Nude - A Study in Ideal Form, Professor Kenneth Clark describes the crucial distinction: "To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word "nude," on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone." (emphasis added.)

   My art gallery* is dominated by studies of "Ideal Form," the female nude. Only the educated appreciate it. 

   Similarly, another word shocks hospital leaders. My first culture-change recommendation to CEOs? "While rounding, ask a nurse, 'How do you give loving care?'" 

   The question works. Yet, about a third of the male leaders, even doctors, ask, "Do I have to use the 'love' word?"

   I answer with a question, "Isn't love at the center of mission?"

   To my profound disappointment, they say, "Yes, but...then dilute the question or never ask it. 

   Leaders asking caregivers "How they give loving care" signals love matters and can initiate a culture change: to Radical Loving Care. 

-Erie Chapman

*The mission of Erie Chapman Foundation is to advance Radical Loving Care^® in healthcare and the arts.  

Turnaround Leaders - Days 8-12

I. Leaders Determine Culture

   The call was from top notch search executive Cindy Chandler. She asked about an ideal leader-type for Nashville's largest hospice,"Alive," after their tumultuous year and the CEO's departure.

   "The new President needs to turnaround culture and financials simultaneously," I offered. "But, the numbers will not improve until the culture does."

   Sensible as this seems, anxious board members often default to a terrible mantra: "No money. No mission."

   What had demoralized hospice caregivers and enraged the Nashville community was the prior CEO's advocacy of selling to a for-profit! The best charity leaders see their work as a mission calling not a job. 

   My nomination for what Alive needs? Someone like Michelle Obama. Cindy instantly recognized this example was self-explanatory. Leaders like Ms. Obama bring out our best the moment they enter a room. 

II. Success Example for Alive

   Big turnarounds can happen. When I came to Nashville to head its largest hospital, Baptist, I was met with shocking news: a $73,000,000 loss! Any leader, would need to be not just  "tough-minded, and tender hearted"* but inspirational and innovative.

   Staff competence was there. Morale was not. The prior CEO left a legacy of fear and near-bankruptcy. 

   Like a great sports team, our staff got fired up and innovative. Over just three years, we cut the loss to $30 million, then $4 million then netted $1 million. That was because all 4,000 staff got on board, energy was restored, morale was sky high, patient satisfaction was 90th percentile, quality levels were superb.

   Then, despite making timely payments to Bank of America on a $52 million loan BOA dropped a bomb: Pay now or face foreclosure. Unjustifiably, BOA became Scrooge. THAT is the little-known and only reason Baptist's success story became St. Thomas Midtown. 

   Once Alive turnsaround, public support and increased contributions will protect it from a BOA-type setback. 

III. Board

   Because board members do not run organizations, their biggest responsibility is CEO selection. The right choice means thriving, not just surviving.

   Hospices do not cure, they heal. Right now, "Alive" needs both. 

   Good luck to Cindy and the Alive board in finding a change-maker that will accomplish that. 

-Erie Chapman

*Martin Luther King  

 

The Enormous Power of "Mood Music" - Days 1-5

 Pete Handwork was the high school friend everyone wanted to have. Jovial, smart, and humble, he was a natural leader whose upbeat energy was contagious. His subsequent successful career as an appellate court judge was no surprise.

   Schoolmate, Howard, was the opposite. A good student, his almost genetic downbeat worldview doomed him. Sadly, I later heard that "Howdy" was homeless.   

   In kindergarten we notice if kids are upbeat, downbeat or "different drummers." My candidate for "different drummer" was Cindy, an early "hippie" marching to another beat. (I also worked to fit in but was, truly, a different drummer." 

   Shockingly, societies, in general, and hospitals in particular are dramatically impacted by a handful of "mood leaders." World energy was better under unifiers like Presidents Roosevelt, Reagan and Clinton and worse under Hoover and Trump. 

   Across fifty years I have seen the profound impact of a hospital CEO's "mood." The downbeat types drain energy. The upbeat energize culture.

   Examples are up-beaters like George Mikitarian (top picture) at Parrish Medical Center and Jake Erickson at Bingham Memorial. CEO Chris York has, in under a year, already energized the culture of Dallas' giant Presbyterian Hospital.

   Upbeat leaders attract upbeat staff. George's great team includes dynamic Vice President, Natalie Sellers (bottom picture), who has gotten so good she may, under George's guidance, rise to CEO-ship herself.

   What about "different drummer" leaders? These innovators attack the status quo (e.g., the RLC approach.) The Mayo Brothers  developed a different model for healthcare that became so effective that Mayo is routinely ranked tops.

   Culture determines behavior and leaders determine culture. No one wants a pollyanna. We all want upbeat or "different drummer" types. The problem? Both groups are rare. 

   If you are a leader, I offer a New Years's Invitation: If you raised your energy even higher how would it affect the mood music of thousands?

-Erie Chapman

Are Holiday Cards Dead? - Days 353-357

   For all 57 years of our marriage, my dear wife has labored to assemble and mail hundreds of Christmas cards including this year's, reproduced here.  

    She and millions are wondering: "Should I keep this up?" Beyond labor, there is the cost and paperless ease of free, digital alternatives.

   In 2014 a Global News story asked if Christmas cards were officially dead: "While some traditionalists continue to send annual holiday cards," it began, "the practice – which began some 170 years ago – continues to decline as well-wishers go digital." 

   The Golden Threads of tradition matter. But the card is only one symbol. Must we have the touchable form? Will cards mimic newspapers...not dead but yielding to computerized alternatives?

   A recent news blip reported on an artist who submitted a "mixed media" piece for copyright. It merged one of his photographs with an AI-generated Van Gogh. Our U.S. Copyright Office rejected it because the artwork lacked the "human authorship" required for protection. 

   Digital or not, holiday greetings are lovely human communications. What matters, of course, is not cards but how we honor rituals of loving care. 

   Happy Holidays from the Chapmans to caregivers everywhere.

-Erie Chapman

Photo by Tia Chapman

 

The Golden Thread to Unearthly Peace - Days 346-350

  Years ago a student approached me after a class I taught at Belmont University. "Do you know about the ancient Greeks' "thread concept?"

   I did not. She sketched a picture simpler than the one here (the only one I could find that suggests the concept.)  It showed a stick figure held to the earth by four ropes. Above the person's head ran a thread to the heavens.

   "We are tied to the earth," she said, "but the thread symbolizes our ability to reach peace while still on earth." 

   William Stafford's life changing poem begins, "There’s a thread you follow. It goes among/ things that change. But it doesn’t change."

   Caregivers catch glimpses of unearthly peace. A suffering patient or a loving nurse suddenly gains a look of transcendent serenity. Is that unseen thread at work?

   "You have to explain about the thread./ But it is hard for others to see," Stafford's poem continues. /"While you hold it you can’t get lost."

    The poet speaks particularly to caregivers: "Tragedies happen; people get hurt/ or die; and you suffer and get old."

   His last line is a guidebook to peace: "Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding./ You don’t ever let go of the thread." 

   Our senses can show us a world in chaos. "The Golden Thread" is one part of the trinity of Radical Loving Care. 

   May Stafford's words help you find your golden thread and experience a new peace as you care for those in need. 

-Erie Chapman 

 

The Important Path To Grace - Days 339-343

   "What is your favorite feeling?" I asked family gathered for dinner. 

   My son answered first. "Relief."

   We nodded. No one asked, "Relief from what?"

  Pain demands relief. Gratitude requires grief. The crucial final step can lead to Grace.

   Emily Dickinson captured this best, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes/ The Nerves sit ceremonious.."

   "Formal" means, above earth's house of pain. 

  How do we reach such hallowed space? Pain is unavoidable, relief. a blessing,  Grace requires work. She is the life companion we seek, the friend who remains when Agony returns.

   We all admire those who, although un-drugged, appear serene in pain's darkest hours. "How do they do it?" caregivers wonder.

   Grace's face is Joan of Arc in the flames, Jesus on the cross, cancer sufferers, laboring moms. St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote, “Everything is grace.” 

   We are not saints. And I find nothing un-saintly in groans emerging from a tortured body. Agony, emotional or physical, seeks expression. 

   That is why I admire what I rarely practice: a grace that draws from the deepest well of courage. The refusal to be defeated by pain. The insistence on transcending it to precious, indefinable peace. 

   The three-stage path is clear and crooked: Grief to Gratitude to Grace. Although the prize is serenity it requires so much courage to achieve, must less sustain, that few reach it except in life's last moments. We envy those that find it earlier.  

   My very dear friend and leader, Tracy Wimberly, had a sign on her office door, a synonym for grace: Peace.  In my weekly talks with her she hands me that gift every time. Meet Liz Wessel and you will receive that gift as well, 

   May Grace visit you now and stay with you always. 

-Erie Chapman 

Photo by April Sand - "Bone Marrow Transplant Patient"

The Strange Way Grief Enriches Gratitude - Day 332-336

   Inside Thanksgiving joy another voices calls to me: "You better be grateful, buster, because you are incredibly lucky."

   That voice speaks truth...and can fuel guilt anytime I hear myself regretting, rather than grieving, a loss. It is good to take responsibility for failures like betraying a friend. It is foolish to wallow in that guilt rather than to let it teach you how to honor that same friend and the great times you shared.    

  Wisdom offers a strange truth: Grief, makes gratitude possible. Stripped of its low notes of grief incessant optimism can ring as dull as some Hallmark cards. 

   My best consultant is 19-year old grandson Miles. I have never encountered anyone who cultivates daily gratitude as richly as does he. 

   In his phone calls from college he routinely reports he is doing "GREAT." But he is no pollyanna. 

   "Why do you always sound like you just won the lottery?" I asked,

   "Because I am luckier than a lottery winner," he said. "And bad breaks can turn good. I was six and sad when my parents divorced. When they remarried I got great new step parents."

   When his other grandfather died, he cried his eyes out. Each tear signaled grief and gratitude.

   Positivity is power. Turning to it or jumping over it before grieving is a mistake. 

   Odd how I offer wisdom I rarely practice. My brand of sentimentality harbors fantasies of reclamation. And it is true that no mourning devalues what was there.

   Yet, wallowing in mourning or dismissing the loss, creates a self-made prison. Grief, makes gratitude possible. Honoring what once was creates meaning.

  The discovery, at 80, that without meaningful grief there is no meaningful gratitude has opened one of life's richest energies. I hope it will do the same for you.

-Erie Chapman 

Picture: Tyler & Miles Chapman