Journal of Sacred Work

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.

                                                                                                          –Albert Einstein

The internist sitting next to me in the doctor’s dinning room at Nashville’s Baptist Hospital appeared to be in her mid-thirties. "How do you give loving care?" I asked.

"I’m an actress," she replied. "I start rounds before 7. Mostly, I pretend to care. If I gave compassion to all my patients, I’d be exhausted by noon…" 

   Any psychologist knows that the greater the distance between our behavior and who we really are requires great effort. After awhile, faking can lead to burnout. The genuine expression of compassion, on the other hand, may sometimes feel painful, yet each compassionate act reinforces a caregiver’s humanity.

    Faking compassion demeans caregiver as well as patient. Pretending to be kind, as this doctor feels she needs to do, requires a depleting kind of energy. While she pretends compassion, what is going on in her heart? Is she silently counting the seconds until she can escape to her charts? Is she resenting the person before her? Is she simply engaged in an innocent act of trying to protect herself from pain? Or has she never learned to express compassion?

    Keith Hagan, M.D., is one of the most compassionate and capable physicians I know. When I told him the above story, he shook his head in sadness. I could see that his great heart felt badly for a physician who had not yet learned that compassion is a gift to the giver as well as the patient.

   Another genius at expressing compassion is Mel Davis, M.D. An oncologist (now with the Cleveland Clinic) he cared for cancer patients at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus during the 1980s & ’90s when I served there as President. No matter what time of day or night I did administrative rounds, Dr. Davis was always there, sitting with his patients, comforting their families, casting his soft eyes on the caregivers with whom he worked.

   Another oncologist in the same hospital took a different view. As soon as his patients moved beyond the chance of a successful cure, he would withdraw. On occasion, families complained to me that this physician had abandoned his patient. I would often call on Dr.Davis and with his angelic grace, he would step in to help.

   Why do we feel that compassion is like a pitcher of water, each pour a dose leaving less water behind? For doctors like Keith Hagan and Mel Davis, compassion is an artesian well – an ever flowing stream that replenishes itself.

   This doesn’t mean that saints don’t get tired. It means that they know that the intuitive mind, as Einstein said, is a sacred gift. With rest, the fountain of compassion will flow again. For it is as endless as God’s love.