Journal of Sacred Work

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)

   

   

What Sparked Joy Today?

“Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore," the great John O'Donohue writes.

He adds a delightful challenge: "An interesting question to ask yourself at night is, What did I really see this day?”

Ever since, the energy in my always searching eyes has been even more alert to sudden moments that spark joy.

One struck today. A new friend fell from the sky into my eyes. He appeared first as a flame, acrobating the air as a tip of lightning. Then a flying leaf. Finally, a brilliant, solid yellow butterfly.

Botanists call them "yellow sulfur" butterflies. I call them sparks of joy.

Odd as it sounds coming from a tough, 80-year old former trial lawyer and hospital CEO who spent his career in florescent-lit battlefields, this little fellow with the always sun-drenched wings, who flitted by and vanished in a second, did something for me. He sparked joy.

When I slip into bed tonight and ask myself "What did I really see this day?" my dashing flash of a yellow friend will again ignite light in my heart.

Click here to see a 30 second video I made for you from online clips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=926j-8DbyyM

What sparked joy for you today?  

-Erie Chapman

The blurry pictures and video YouTube prove that these beings are, well, sparks. 

Does Blame Block Forgiveness?

Every caregiver encounters them. "Bedpan throwers," are a great test to professionalism.

Is it similar for parents with an "unruly" child? Problem children suck an enormous amount of family energy. The following sounds common but is unusually dramatic. 

Nearly six decades ago, two of our oldest friends introduced us to their beautiful children, "James" and "Johnny." James grew up well-behaved and successful. Johnny? A nightmare. 

Johnny became a drug addict. Horrified, his parents poured enormous resources into interventions and professional help.

They continued to flood both sons with love. Especially Johnny because, as his mom said, "He seemed to need so much more love while James was fine."

Across decades, Johnny whiplashed in and out of rehab and jail. Like the father in "The Prodigal Son," they forgave but tried to be firm. 

Al-Anon advised, "Keep your prodigal son at a loving distance." But, Johnny had a fatal gift: huge charm.

One Christmas Eve, he showed up unexpectedly. "I'm so sorry, mom and dad. May I join you?"

Swallowing hard, both parents said, "No." Yet, Johnny's charm prevailed. They had a happy evening.

Christmas' dawn delivered a shock. Johnny had stolen one of their cars and all their credit cards. 

One afternoon, the nightmare reached a conclusion. When Johnny's mom drove to check on him he was dead of a drug overdose.

Long before, Johnny's mother had found peace through a crucial understanding. "I forgave Johnny repeatedly. But, I could not forgive myself," she says, "until one day I realized: "Blame blocks forgiveness for me as well as him."

When a caregiver stops blaming a patient, a co-worker or anyone else, relief flows both way.  

-Erie Chapman

Painting: "The Prodigal Son," Pompeo Batoni, 1773

What's in the Frame?

One of Nashville's most delightful locations is unconnected to country music. Cheekwood Gardens' 55 acres are flooded with an astonishing array of every kind of flower, plant and tree. Walk the forest behind its 30,000 square foot mansion and you will be greeted every so often by a world class sculpture.

The thing that fascinates me most, though, is not the framed paintings inside the mansion or the gardens without. It is a single empty gold frame. 

What is in the frame? Nothing...or everything. The blank space symbolizes what we cherish, Possibility, and thrills her companion, Imagination. 

Frames fascinate. They focus our attention and lend instant importance to their contents. Empty frames long for fulfillment. 

Artists see possibilities others miss. Among zillions of canvases and wood panels I sometimes wonder about one. It is 21" x 30" and once laid on a table in a 16th century Florence studio.

Blank it was worth a few cents. One day it was struck by lightning. A genius touched it. Today the DaVinci's "Mona Lisa" is visited by millions and is worth billions.

The years we have lived are already painted and framed. The years ahead? A blank canvas.

Paint them with love everyday and you will fashion masterpieces worth far more than that mysterious face framed at the Louvre. That is what caregivers do.  

That is what you can still do!

-Erie Chapman

*Many years ago, I saw the Mona Lisa in person along with hundreds of others and noticed something strange. There were a couple dozen other masterpieces hanging on adjoining walls: All beautiful. Each ignored. 

**And Leonardo's masterpiece was painted on a white poplar wood panel.  

A Special Presentation for Caregivers

   How do we find rest? I created this special short film for your rest and refreshment...by taking you on a visit to water - especially the kind that cascades over cliffs.

Waterfalls do no laboring, have no bills, no worries or troubles. They do not even know their names. They just are. 

I stood so close to the falls to make some of these pictures that I could literally feel the electricity and power of the water as it crashed down. Thrilling.  

PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK (BELOW) so we know whether we are reaching you!

Happy Labor Day! :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRSYyoxFYs

Thank you, 

Erie

Is Peace Red, Blue or White? Ask Kathleen - August 26-30

  My friend, nurse Kathleen Grannan (left), wrote in a beautiful Facebook post. "We can do better than just hate and anger. It’s on us to breech the divide."

   Her truth is as wise and as hard as Radical Loving Care. Everyone loves white clouds puffing up a blue sky. Storm clouds demand attention.   

   We all love peace. Some paint it red. Some blue. White absorbs all colors. 

   The red/blue divide is exactly that: a divide. A tragic one that only "white" can absorb.

   My trial lawyer training demanded "fighting" injustice's, storms. Three years in law school, seven as a trial lawyer, and eight as an acting judge, taught how to "win" arguments. 

   Outside court, I noticed that victory using lawyer's arguments generated resentment. Divinity school training years later taught me pathways to peace. My years of ministry in hospitals and to Death Row affirmed patients and prisoners as people, not numbers.

   What about Aesop's 3000-year-old fable of how the sun bested the North wind? And the message 500 years later to "love our enemies"? 

   "Please, red and blue," Kathleen pleads, "if you can share a moment of really listening, really reaching across the divide, please do so...We owe it to our country to try."

   Peace asks more than silence. It seeks Reverend King's balance of "tough-minded/tender-hearted." Unity marries listening presence with respectful response.

   My peaceful-politics failures have severed some friendships. Thank you, Aesop and Kathleen...I am trying. 

- Rev. Erie Chapman

   *Want to support the mission of Radical Loving Care^®? Donate-a-dollar - www.eriechapmanfoundation.net. (You can use the Donate button but we cannot acknowledge your name unless you donate by check to Non-profit Erie Chapman Foundation, 112 Dunham Springs Lane, Nashville, 37205. THANK YOU! 

Be Still And Know...

As people raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition know, the full phrase is "Be still and know that I am God" from Psalm 46. I truncated the sentence to make it universal regardless of faith.

My experience teaches that stillness expands "knowing." The gift of the God of my understanding arrives when I surrender to God's centering energy.

Yes. There's all that noise out there. No, we do not have to compulsively add to it.

Yes. Music can be calming. No, we don't need to play sound 24/7.

Yes. I have learned that when I ask any audience to close their eyes for three minutes some cannot do it. "Too scary," some say. "To many thoughts," ("monkey mind") others report. 

Silence itself becomes noisy. Tasks, fears, compulsions to "do" not "be" defeat Silence.

Can the God of our understanding squeeze through the noise to heal us? Must the radio always play while driving? Can we sit, eyes closed, for five minutes every day? When did you do that last?

Here's a proven way to quiet the monkey mind: Hire security guards called Repetitive Prayers or Mantras. Let them clear your path to rest. 

No one needs to be reminded to breathe. We all need to be reminded to notice our breathing. One way I "catch my breath" is to observe my breathing. To practice exhaling noise and breathing in peace. 

To be still and know. 

-Erie Chapman 

Photo by Erie

 

 

Courage? August 5-9

There are so many kinds of "courage" that a question mark accompanies the word.

The oddness of being recruited from courtrooms to hospitals in 1975 thrust me face to face with bravery beyond anything I had seen. Caregivers calmly facing bloodied accident victims, screaming drug addicts, patients throwing bedpans... It takes courage for hospital or hospice workers just to show up. 

We are born with survival fears. Courage must be learned. It took me into adulthood to begin honing a calm that leaders (and trial lawyers) must show under fire.

Bravery's most infamous showcase? War. In the life-changing World War II film series "Band of Brothers" one soldier tells another, "The only way to survive is to understand that you're already dead. That's the way it is in war."

That is one path to courage. Soldiers are routinely spotlighted. Courageous caregivers never secure either the credit or the empathy they deserve. 

The stereotype: Males start wars. Females heal. 

Want to see five shades of courage? Study the eyes of America's first black female nurse. Civil War caregiver Susie King Taylor (1848-1912) : 1) chose caregiving, 2) in wartime, 3) as a black person 4) a woman, 5) was a teenager. For all that, she was attacked.

"There are many people who do not know what some of the colored women did during the war," she wrote. "There were hundreds of them who assisted the Union soldiers by hiding them and helping them to escape. Many were punished for taking food to the prison stockades for the prisoners."

This week, on August 6, pioneering battlefield nurse Susie King Taylor would have turned 126. Take a moment to honor her Radical Loving Care™.

-Erie Chapman

Please also take a moment to support our mission. Donate-a-dollar via the "button" at: www.eriechapmanfoundation.net

Photo: Wikipedia

Does Life Guarantee Joy?

   It occurred to me today for the first time. Life guarantees suffering, but not joy.

   Instead, from the moment of birth, pain is assured. Why is a baby's first breath often used to cry? Do they know this already?

   Empathy helps healing. Judy Herendeen (pictured) is one of the most empathetic people I know. A former Riverside psychiatric caregiver she describes, with stunning eloquence, her childhood exposure to Appalachian poverty during her early Children's Services work and through her Doctor-dad:  

   "I couldn’t believe people lived in such poverty. I would go on house calls with my Dad. He’d pull in a driveway to a wooden shack. Does someone really live here? Men with long beards and shot guns were sitting on the porch. I stayed in the car. I heard them greet Dad. “Hi Doc, the boy is in here”. Dad would go into the house followed by the men. When he came out, the men who looked scary to me now were smiling. Dad would be carrying a bottle of dandelion wine and a homemade pie... I saw people who wouldn’t let my Dad leave without being paid...Generational poverty and its cycle of destruction of the human soul is something you understand when you care enough to see it for what it is. Really see it."

   The legendary poet, Walt Whitman saw it while caring for Civil War soldiers: "...Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,/ The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,/ I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young/ Some suffer so much..."

   Suffering is guaranteed. Joy is elusive. 

   How well do non-caregivers understand other's suffering? A grieving expert teaches, "The worst thing to say to sufferers is, 'I know exactly how you feel."

   Regardless of our agonies, other's pain is profoundly personal. Yet, we can, like Judy, learn to empathize and thus offer sufferers a caregiver's gift: Joy. 

-Erie Chapman

Photo: Judy Herendeen, by Molly Muth

 

Why Abandon "the Box?" Einstein's Most Useful Advice

 "Out of the box" thinking makes most anxious. "Why leave the box?" they wonder. "It's safe."

   True, unless the answer is not in the box. 

   Einstein warned us that insanity is "trying the same solution repeatedly even though it is not working." Innovation, by definition, is crucial to excellence. The old 9-dot puzzle (below) is a delightful way to train such thinking.

    It's an ordinary square with three dots on each side and one in the center. The challenge? Connect all dots with 4 straight lines.*

    Kids under 6 solve this fast because they are not yet imprisoned by conventional thinking. Most adults are so stuck in routinized rules they quickly get stuck in repeating the same approach even though it will not and cannot work.   

   Are they like healthcare leaders whose leadership philosophy is strings of threats?

   Hospitals are thrive on routines. During my decades of working with first line caregivers, I developed enormous respect for those who cleaned the same floors, laundered patient sheets, did the same surgery procedures, counted out pills, or typed doctor's notes. Breakthroughs often call for breaking "the rules." 

   You can solve the 9 dot puzzle in under 9 seconds if you through away one key assumption. Ask any 6 year old. If you apply your learning to any problems you've repeatedly been unable to solve how would your life change? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYGQ04wyshw

-Erie Chapman

*Note: the puzzle can even be solved with only three straight lines!

"Goodbye, you who are always leaving me..."

   The title launched a poem my wife wrote to our college-bound son long ago. The words ring louder today amid rising refrains of goodbyes to family and friends as well as to jobs and to former homes. 

   Hospice caregivers are constantly saying goodbye. They teach us that passings need not be melancholic, especially as the "bitter" in "bittersweet" yields to "sweet."

   Departed jobs and long ago companions are ships lighting the way to islands of memories. 

   Former American Poet Laureate Billy Collins (left) is among the most delightful writers of our generation (I rarely use poet's line breaks because they scare away readers.) 

   Note Collin's whimsy about the dead in his poem of the same name. "The dead are always looking down on us, they say,/ while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven/ as they row themselves slowly through eternity.../"

   Does this change your feelings of  the death to which we are all headed? He continues, "...They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,/ and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,/ drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,/ they think we are looking back at them,..."/

   "....which makes them lift their oars and fall silent/ and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes."

  What a soft coda.

   Aging floods us with goodbyes. How much could Collins' poetry enrich your days?

-Erie Chapman

To support this journal go to: https://www.eriechapmanfoundation.net

 

Tom Brady's Incredibly Helpful Counsel to Caregivers

  How could. the most successful quarterback in sports history possibly have any regrets? Somehow, he found one.

  Interviewed recently he confessed that he took himself too seriously. 

  "I watch (Super Bowl Champ) Patrick Mahomes out there running around in the backfield, having fun," he said to myself, "Why didn't I do that?" 

   Brady made a mistake most caregivers commit every day.  Instead of taking, their work seriously NOT themselves, they fall into an intensity level that steals joy from their long careers.

  Obviously, caring for the sick and wounded IS serious work. But there is nothing wrong with finding chances to laugh,  to celebrate the rewards of knowing how you helped people. In fact, the"wrong" thing is Brady's mistake.

  Living love not fear, includes following your calling with a high focus on the one thing you control, your own performance. Are you ever glad for times you let Fear control you?

  Extensive studies reveal that those who work hard AND celebrate the privilege of their calling perform better, longer,  and with higher personal satisfaction.

  If superstar Brady wishes he had laughed at himself more in the past why don't you that in the present? Even if"retired" you can find joy in knowing how many you have helped and STILL help.

-Erie Chapman

Do Women Still Need Men?

Ai gurus ask, "How much longer will people be needed?" What about the current power shift around gender roles? 

I. 1950's

In the binary world of the 50s I heard no existential questions about gender. Women ran the home. Men ran the world as they always had even though male militancy wrought massive suffering. 

Was that just about physical strength?

The '50s inquiry, "How could we have won WWII (or any war) without men?" begs the question of whether there would have been a war if women had been governing. How much would more feminine presence have improved organized religion? 

II. 21st Century 

Caregiving:

Despite a wildly diverse career, my life has been about two things: caregiving and the arts.

Both have been male dominated. Both must yield to a balance of feminine and masculine energy for both to thrive.  

Excellent leaders know this. They remain rare. Caregiving, founded by women, still chokes in the grip of insensitive male energy including when any female leader allows aggression to destroy compassion. 

Arts:

   Pending a rebalance, I am a feminist advocate, My art reflects that. The goal, however, is humanism.

   My classical figurative art of women hews to early training from Roberta Waddell at the Toledo Museum of Art. Other women, including 35 female subjects, and sculptor Alan LeQuire, have been massively helpful. 

    Abuses by many male predecessors have pushed some feminists to over-correct: "Beauty can only be portrayed by women," they say. Public sentiment is moving their way.

   This problem arose when my 2019 film art show, "The Feminine Divine" debuted at Vanderbilt Divinity School. No viewers complained about nudity. Instead, some complained I had not gone far enough. "Where are transgenders or heavy women?"one feminist asked. 

   "Not my interest or expertise, but did you see my still-animation of a transgendered Jesus?" I asked. "Missed that," she said, generously confessing, "Maybe I was too anxious to criticize a white male."  

   Women can self-portray. Males succeed only in partnership. 

   What if women took charge of healthcare and the arts? Could this correct historic male overreach?

   Absolute answers are nonsense. The question is not whether women need men. We all need each other.

   And our questions must prod us to figure out how to better equalize our culture. Soon!

-Erie Chapman

Circling the Still Point

   Is life about different kinds of marriages - to people, jobs, landscapes, hobbies? The determined fellow portrayed looks stuck. 

   What is it that we marry in others, author Michael Ventura asks. He describes it as "a process that goes on while we manage to earn a living, go to the m0ives, watch television, go to the doctors, walk on the Palisades, drive to Texas, follow the election, try to stop drinking, eat too much Haagen-Dazs."

   Is this the whirlwind of your caregiving life? Do you live under the commands of the moment or dance circling a still point?

   We imagine balance. Yes, hope is the answer. Depressed people never think, "I feel so hopeful." So hopeful generalizations crush nuance and never dent suicide's trends.

   My passionate journey down wildly diverse paths looks whimsical. My current travels generate as much depression as joy as I flail for meaning beyond simplistic advice. 

   My best still point is a salvific, God-centered, imperative: Whatever I do must serve others.

   This is so lofty I am often lost, floating amongst the Palisades, running to the cliff's edge, screaming into the void, and stopping to eat too much Graters.

   Does approaching journey's end force setting priorities in our cathedral? OR, can even caregivers release goals, sit in center of the chapel and watch the dance? I have visited the mediation room but have never stayed. It is not a thing you "do."

   What is it like to be? Can we be and do in a new marriage where the still point dances?

-Erie Chapman 

Portrait, "Erie at Parthenon" Minton Sparks, 2019 

   

What is in the Circle?

   The story still haunts me. Rosalyn Carter was siting on the front porch with Jimmy the day after he left the President's office.

   "I need to replace some of those bricks below the front steps," he told her. 

   "When Jimmy said that," the former first lady told a reporter, "all I could think was that the day before we had been dealing with  the Iran Hostage Crisis. Our life horizon had suddenly shrunk from leading the free world to worrying about bricks."

   Astride any large stage in our lives, our attention is focused on what seem to be big issues. When our stage shrinks, we keep doing the same thing. A crack in the front steps sucks our attention as if it were something earthshaking.  

   Sometimes, the stage changes size twice in the same day. The nurse manager of a giant ER who has spent all night multiple victims of a mass shooting may chuckle to herself when she comes home to see her teenager fussing about a cut finger. 

   It is difficult and important to sustain perspective. Indeed, that skill has a direct impact on our ability to practice once of life's most essential skills: gratitude. 

-Erie Chapman

If It Ain't Broke, Make it Better! - June 3

   We love catch phrases. It's so much easier (and lazier) to say, "Haste makes waste" than it is to discuss how rushing can cause trouble. I, too, love some of these sayings including the doctor's injunctive, "first do no harm"

   Still, catch phrases can cause trouble.

   At each of the three hospital systems I have been privileged to run, staff often greeted me with, "Erie, this place is doing fine. And 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' right?"

   Wrong. Most of the time. Leaders must always seek meaningful improvement.

   Recently, I asked the incoming head of a crucial training program at a large hospital about her plans. 

   "I have none," she said. "The program is doing fine."

   Seeking to preserve the status quo is a deceptively dangerous strategy. Status quo leaders frustrate meaningful innovation. Leadership grounded in staying the same in an always-changing world pursues a dicey proposition. 

   What if Steve Jobs had decided in 2007 "The iPhone is fine. No need for more."?*

   This truth holds for us personally. Contemporaries declining to learn new technology risk irrelevance.

   God hands us presents. Universal wisdom holds that we die with countless gifts unwrapped. 

   Those who see no need to work harder to live love are, in important ways, not fixed but broken. 

-Erie Chapman

Photo: First iPhone, 2007

*Not to mention the Apple II (1979) computer's world changing transition to the Macintosh - so user-friendly that when I turned on mine in 1984 the first image on the screen was a smiley face! It rapidly became the first mass-marketed computer. 

   

  

How a Deadly Disease Saved My Life & My Cousin Became a Hero

   When veterans were honored at church I wished I could rise. The Chapman tradition of military service began in 1779 with Constant Chapman (with Washington at Valley Forge) and continued through every generation. It includes my cousin Terry's Navy service and our first cousin Harlan Chapman's* (left) heroism as the first Vietnam POW.

   Harlan, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He passed away May 6 (summary below)**

    I would have entered the military legacy but for a diagnosis at age 19. In 1963 Crohn's Disease could be fatal. My doctor warned, "You'll be lucky to live to 40. Quit college, ditch law school, go home." 

   From 19 to 24, I hid my illness and pretended wellness while pain and isolation cursed my days. Then, the tragic Vietnam War. All Ohio males 18-26 were called for physicals. Part of me wanted to serve. The other part? I was a sick law student with  a pregnant wife. 

   I cruised through my physical until the Army doctor read a letter from my doctor. "Crohn's makes you 4F," he said. "You're out."

   Had illness saved my life? Probably.

   Crohn's causes vulnerability via diseases like Black Water Fever (common in Vietnam) and makes for unreliable soldiers. Attacks trigger "Failure-to-thrive Syndrome."

  But we can be prisoner's of illness as well as war. My cousin was a 7 year prisoner in a hell. Simultaneously, I was a life long prisoner in a different hell. Even in America, I was hospitalized in 1989 and in '99 barely survived a second attack. 

   Gladly, blessings emerged for Harley and me. He lived happily with dear wife, Fran. Even though my disease remains, I just celebrated 25 years in remission. 

   And Crohn's caused something else. Across 7 years in courtrooms and 50 more in hospitals, my suffering fueled a passion to help others through Radical Loving Care.

   A life saved confers on survivors a moral imperative to serve. A reason why I continue that to this day.

   Memorial Day calls for profound thanks to every veteran. They saved our country. 

   Today, we may also honor veterans suffering in illness prisons and the Radical Loving Caregivers that help free them. 

-Erie Chapman

 

*Click on the following link to learn how Harlan Chapman endured as POW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfQfYAxZasY&t=3073s

**After bombing a bridge, Harlan was shot down, trapped in mud, and captured. His 7 years of torture (beside Senator McCain) created many heroes. Contrast that with former Commander-in-Chief Trump's statements that McCain and POWs were "not heroes" because, "I like people that weren't captured" and Trump's statements, verified by his Chief of Staff John Kelly, that 1800 soldiers who died in a WW I battle were "suckers"; that dead or captured solders are "losers," and that he refused to be filmed with amputees because "It's not a good look for me." Trump brags about avoiding the draft. His claim? "Bone spurs."

 

Compassion & A Happy Return - May 17-19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75zuaI2NZv8  

It is a great gift to be able to hand out gifts. Especially if the present is cash award that recognizes the centerpiece of Radical Loving Care: Compassion.

   The gift handed me was the chance to be the keynote speaker at the annual nursing scholarship awards. What a magnificent event, as you will see in the video (Click on link above a photo of the event.)

   Since my speech was only 8 minutes, I am attaching the link and hope you will take a moment to listen to remarks that include one of the most touching examples of compassion I have ever seen in a half century of leading healthcare organizations.

   It has been a quarter century since I've gone back to Riverside Methodist Hospital for a formal event. RMH is also the flagship of the OhioHealth system I founded as President and CEO in 1984 so my visit, on May 2, was during the 40th anniversary of OhioHealth's founding.

   Congratulations to the winner of the Erie Chapman Foundation Compassion Award, Sarah Hemans, BSN, R.N., who was selected by her peers from 20 nominees!

   -Erie 

 

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

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