What myriad gifts bless all of us that live in a country where freedom reigns. In so many parts of the world, even blogs like this about Love would be subject to review and censorship. Instead, you may feel free to share any thoughts you have with your fellow caregivers by clicking on Comments, below. Have a Happy Fourth of July weekend!
With love,
Erie
Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.
Storytelling is believed to be one of the earliest forms of folk art. In its earliest appearing, storytelling 
was a way to manage long journeys and longer dark nights. For many, storytelling was the purest form of history keeping, a way to pass along the beliefs and traditions of the ancestors and elders. In the Middle Ages, storytelling became the gift of the traveling troubadour who moved from town to town, welcomed in castle and market place alike. As they traveled they gathered new tales and spread them to villages and people who could only imagine what lay beyond the stone walls of their homes. With the invention of the printing press, reading took the place of listening and story telling became an almost lost art. Some of us are blessed to live near places where storytelling is still revered through festivals and fairs. Great storytellers sometimes speak from imagination, while others tell stories from history, and many talk of myths and legends and fables. The best storyteller I've known simply speaks from her life.
"Jesus says...God is inside you. Whoever knows [oneself] will find this." The Gospel of Thomas
One of the great mysteries of the Bible that many of us grew up with is not what is there, but what is not. In the 4th century, the Council of Nicea made decisions, some of which seem quite arbitrary, about which gospels and books and letters to include in the Bible and which to expel. The Gospel of Thomas, like the Gospel of Judas, was one of the many books of wisdom that was, unfortunately, left out. As a result, it's insights from the lips of Jesus have not been read by many.
Modern insight restores to us the gifts that these gospels and books bring. The Gospel of Thomas is filled with wisdom. The Gospel of Judas, brought to light recently by the unlikely but reliable National Geographic Magazine, brings us truths. Judas, for example, was only a betrayer because of Jesus' instructions.
Listen to the echo of truth in the Gospel of Thomas. Do you find yourself, as a caregiver, looking up to pray to God? Do you think of God as outside of you instead of within?
Surprise! God lives within as well as without. You and I are homes to the divine. All that Love asks is that we let her flow through us and into the lives of others - especially those in need.
Celebrate the Love that abides in you and travels through you (if your ego doesn't get in the way.) Celebrate your gifts of healing as you reach to free another from pain with your loving touch. Behold the God that lives within. Know yourself and you will know that this is true.
How do these words come to you? Do they sound true? How does love travel through you to others?
-Erie Chapman
I encountered them in the store - three ordinary vegetables who looked
anything but ordinary to my beholding eyes and close touch. Beholding.
It's an elegant and noble sounding word. Beholding the rapture brings
the weight of the religious since some think of the rapture as something to do with the
ascension of Christ.
But a more common meaning of rapture
describes it as a state of being transformed by a lofty emotion. A sort
of ecstasy. To behold such a rapture must be transforming in and of
itself.
Things and people are sacred and meaningful because of
the way we encounter them. Since we are the ones who bring the meaning,
then anything can be meaningful. Any anything may be a vehicle for transcendence
Thus my encounter with the trio of
peppers. It wasn't that I wanted to taste them. It was that I wanted to behold them and to run my fingers around their whorls and over their
curves. To me, they are magnificent.
One of my colleagues at the
Trust spoke at our Monday staff meeting about the relatively new (to
America) concept of "slow food." It's become a movement
described at the website: www.slowfoodusa.org.
Slow food is understood best by thinking of it in contrast to it's
widely practiced opposite, "fast food." In the midst of a fast eating society,
a small cadre of Americans have begun to contemplate slow food as a
whole different way to live - a life of appreciation of safe, clean,
wholesome, fresh and carefully enjoyed food. It is a way of beholding
God, something that may seem hard to do in the rush of the local fast
food joint.
What does this mean for caregivers? Amid the bustle
of paperwork and tasks, behold the being before you! You are
witnessing the sacred quality of your work - the slow moments amid the fast.
-Erie Chapman
"After the injection, he'll be an ordinary human being. And you know what stinkers they are."
- from the movie "Harvey" (1950)
Elwood P. Dowd, the character played by Jimmy Stewart in the movie version of Harvey, is about as charming as they come. He's tolerant, funny, kind and, above all, loving. Of course, that's because he's not a "normal" human being.
The core of Dowd's life is his fantasy that he has a friend, a six foot rabbit named Harvey. It's outlandish, of course. But that's just us normal human beings scoffing at the imagination of a person everyone concludes must be crazy. And he's so lovable we still enjoy the character he created.
If a four year old concocted such a fantasy about an imaginary rabbit, we would think it was funny. My older sister, an only child for six years until I was born, created an imaginary friend named Teely. Her friend could be, as can any imaginary creation can be, anything my sister wanted her to be. She would play the way Ann wanted her to play. She would cooperate, laugh at my sister's jokes, and join her for tea around the plastic tea set.
Caregivers must know that so many of their patients, especially the
older ones, live in other worlds. The current world, with its illnesses
and disabilities, is so difficult...
Welcome to these Open Forum days. Please share any thoughts you have for other caregivers by clicking on Comments, below.
Thank you!
Erie
Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.
The words of St. Francis of Assisi hang as a touchpad at my door's entrance: pax et buonum - peace and all good. These are the words St. Francis of Assisi is said to have used in leave taking whether in writing or in person. His words of blessing came to mind recently as I toured Alive Hospice here in Nashville earlier this week. This is a place renowned for radically loving those who enter its doors. It is a 
place of peace and all good. Walking through the hallways of the hospice residence, the quiet and almost invisible presence of the caregivers there reached me in deep and almost forgotten places. How many hundreds of hours of silent and unacknowledged care have the hands of these caregivers provided? Countless days of tender care, competent skill, loving hearts, and soft hands have been offered over and over to those who may not see or hear or even feel the gifts being provided, all without fanfare or formal recognition in the moment of the giving.
Miles Chapman has grown to an age where he has begun to challenge reality. At age four, he has taken to advising his toy puppets that they are not real. When his Dad makes the puppet ask, "What do you mean?" my grandson responds by saying, "You are just pretend. My Daddy is making you talk."
Needless to say, this poses an interesting existential question. If the puppets are not real, why is Miles talking to them?
The great wish of Pinocchio, of course, was to be a real boy - to be human. Miles sees that he is human and puppets not. But, he's still unclear about what the puppet is?
Children are constantly teaching us if we are listening. There have been days when I look in the mirror and hear myself saying to my image: Are you real?
There are many layers to such a question, aren't there? There is the literal inquiry about my physical existence. There is a second meaning which tests whether I am presenting a truthful face to the world. And there are also questions about what it means to be real as a human being with a time-limited existence.
One of the fascinations for caregivers who are present to the dying is the notion of what happens in that split-second when life departs. It can be a sacred moment for anyone near. Or it can be an ordinary moment ignored as a mere transaction by a worker who's doing a job rather than responding to a calling.
What does it mean for you to be real in your work as a caregiver?
-Erie Chapman
Druids celebrated the summer solstice as the wedding of heaven and earth. The Catholic tradition celebrates it as the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. How did you celebrate the longest day of the year last Friday eve?
Sometimes the event falls on June 21. This year, it occurred, technically, on June 20.
The real question, of course, is not the length of our days, but how we live them. If we never find our sacred eyes, it doesn't matter how long the day is because our heart will never notice.
So many struggle to live longer lives as opposed to living better lives. As any afflicted old person can tell you, life may not feel so precious when its quality has been compromised.
That is the gift each caregiver brings to those who suffer in illness. Caregivers can heal with loving care as well as with medicine. They can restore meaning to broken lives with the special touch of their hands and hearts.
You may have missed the experience of watching the last rays of light as they faded into Friday night. You may have been standing by a bedside, filling out a chart, or starting the night shift.
Whether you noticed the length of the day or not, I hope you will celebrate love in each hour that remains in this year. How are you doing drinking in the quality of your days? Which is more important to you, the length of your minutes, or their quality? How do you invite the exquisite into your life?
-Erie Chapman
These are Open Forum days. Please share your thoughts with caregivers by clicking on Comments, below.
Thank you
Erie Chapman
