When you”re a healing presence, you’re an artist. – James E. Miller & Susan C Cutshall in: The Art of Being a Healing Presence
She’ll be ninety-four years old next month. She’s far from being the oldest person in the country, but she’s the most gracious one I know. Perhaps you can see this grace in my mother’s eyes in this recent photograph – the sparkle and warmth that gracious people offer to us by their presence. Whatever I knew about grace as a child, I learned from her. From whom did you learn grace?
A new reader of the Journal of Sacred Work, Tom Sheehan, sent me his nomination for the most compassionate person he knows:
"When she walks down the hall at the nursing home, balm, serenity and comfort follow her like an aura is loose on the premises. Beth Sheehan is the old-time nurse, talented, resourceful, responsive and, most of all, deeply compassionate. In her whites she is the personification of nursing, the most compassionate woman I have ever known."
Tom is writing about his wife. Across their decades of marriage, he has seen proof of his spouse’s deep commitment to her work as a caregiver. "Who of us knows, in the tortured or confused mind of …patients, what touch is kindest or most temperate?" Tom thinks that Beth knows – and that she is the essence of love to her patients.
For some, the idea of healing presence is a mystery. Where does it come from? As Tom himself says in his letter: "I am never sure if it [compassion] carries her or she carries it, they are so intertwined, so interdependent."
Tracy Wimberly, R.N., is one of the most gracious people I’ve ever met. In a quarter century of working together, as I watched her co-found Hospice at Riverside in Columbus & the Elizabeth Blackwell Center & head up Patient Care on my leadership team at Baptist Hospital System in Nashville, I often wondered about the source of her healing presence. Tracy grew up as the daughter of parents who were unable or unwilling to provide their presence to Tracy and her sister. So where did she learn her gift? She credits her grandmother. I credit Tracy. I believe she has spent her lifetime trying to develop the grace within her and to share it with others – to give others the love she may not have received in her growing up years. Tracy’s life is proof that each of us, with commitment, can enhance our gifts of our grace.
If, as Miller and Cutshall offer in the quote above, healing presence is an art, then caregivers may look to what artist’s do: they work on learning how to express their gift & they are constantly honing their skills. What else do they do? They study other great artists. Then they look within.
Healers need to do the same. We all have some gift of grace within us. We need to learn about how to express this gift, to practice it every day. And we can look to the models around us, the great heros of grace that make us and others feel better whenever they enter our presence. Think of how Christians consider Jesus – one from whom some could gain healing merely by touching his clothes or hearing his voice.
Today, I’ve introduced you to my own first model of grace – my mother. Perhaps this meditation will re-introduce you to some of the people who have brought grace into your life. They have given you a gift. Pass it on. And, like Tom Sheehan, use the space below to offer a Comment on a person who brought grace into your life.
Exercise:
- Make a list of people you know who are your own heros of grace. They may be famous people like Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King. Or they may be people we see at work every day.
- What are the characteristics of their presence that creates this sense of grace?
- What do you see in their eyes, their tone of voice, their body language?
- Do they seem to be in a hurry?
- Going beyond their surface behaviors, what attitudes do you think lie beneath their behaviors? That is, how do you think they view others?
Journal of Sacred Work 
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