Journal of Sacred Work

Presence to our calling is presence to Love.  – Erie Chapman

The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. -Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

   A truth for which we can live and die? This sounds very dramatic for those of us who may think of our lives as ordinary. But the fact is that we will live part of our lives in careers anyway so why not discover our personal truth – the thing for which we will live for and, ultimately die, our calling. Kierkegaard, one of the great existentialist philosophers, is also reported to have suggested that we were all born with sealed orders. It’s a powerful image isn’t it? How do we know what our orders are? Kierkegaard warns that we cannot simply "tear open" the special dispatch God has planted within us. We must discover our orders – find our calling… 

   Many caregivers discover their calling early. They know as soon as they
begin serving the needs of others that they were meant to do that kind
of work. One thing a caregiver need never wonder about is whether their
efforts make a difference, for the needs they serve are significant.
   Yet many caregivers are surprised at how good they feel when they choose to make a personal
sacrifice to help another. What is that strange feeling we experience (if we’re open to it) when we give love?  I often hear
people say things like, "I interrupted my day to help walk someone to
their car in the parking lot. I was thinking, ‘what a pain in the
neck.’ Instead, I found that I felt wonderful for quite a while
afterwards."
   I believe that good feeling comes because giving puts us in alignment with Love’s energy. When we give Love, God’s light flashes through us.
   For people who choose to make caregiving their calling, that light can
stream through them every day, even on occasions when they’re beginning
to feel exhausted. For this to happen, caregivers may need to reshape
how they think about work. If caregiving is a job, the light will
rarely come. If caregiving is a calling, the light will come to them
whenever they are present to it.
   Not everyone is comfortable with thinking of their work as a calling.
For some, the word "calling" may awaken uncomfortable feelings
(for them) about religion.
  The Loving Care Movement invites
people to think about caregiving as the alignment of their best human
energy with Love’s energy. The first step in this process is for us to recognize the sacred nature of caregiving work.
   Caregiving often involves a potentially intimate exchange with a patient or client. This is because of the deep vulnerability of people in need. The vulnerable bring their deep need to us asking for help. This need may be everything from cancer to childbirth to instances of abuse.
   Caregivers can rob these encounters of their sacredness by treating the encounter as a routine transaction. This kind of thinking is what causes some nurses, technologists, physicians & other caregivers to fail miserably in their communication.
   I remember dealing with one patient who complained about abusive treatment from her physician.

   "What did he do?" I asked the patient.
   "I was waiting anxiously in the recovery room for the results of my breast biopsy," she said. "My doctor walked out of the O.R. and right past me. Then, almost as if it was an afterthought, he stopped, then called over the heads of three other patients: ‘by the way, you’ve got cancer.’ Then he just walked away."

   Most of us in health care are familiar with stories like this. When I spoke with this surgeon (a former Marine who fancied himself as a medical version of John Wayne) it was clear to me that he was caught up in the definition of his work as a job filled with tasks. He clearly had trouble understanding why his encounter had been hurtful. He told me something like, "How I deliver the news doesn’t change the news does it, Erie? What am I supposed to do, hold her hand?"
   Of course, the answer to this might well have been yes. But I didn’t say this, because this doctor, at that moment in his life, could not have engaged in an encounter like that with sincerity.
   Then something terrible happened to him.
   Less than six months after that incident, this surgeon’s daughter was killed in a snowmobile accident. When I saw him at the funeral home, it was clear he had changed. As soon as I looked into his eyes, I knew he was recalling our conversation: "All the officer said to me was, ‘Your daughter’s dead,’" he told me with tears in his eyes. And I knew he meant that the officer had reported the information the way he had spoken to his patient – as if the officer thought of his daughter as an animal that had been struck by a falling tree.
   I wish I could tell you that this physician went on to become one of the most compassionate surgeon’s I ever met. Instead, he quit practice soon after the tragedy. I was surprised and touched to learn that after a few months of retirement, he put his suturing skills to work – as a seamstress in his wife’s dressmaking shop! Perhaps this was his true calling – that these were his sealed orders. In any case, his transformation told me something we all need to recall – there is often a kind and gentle soul beneath the brusque exterior we encounter. The challenge of the Loving Care Movement is to awaken that gentle soul and put it into balance with the strength we also need to be effective.

Called Caregivers
   When we open our sealed orders and live our calling as caregivers, it is so much easier for us to be present to those we encounter. A life of calling is a life energized by passion. Called caregivers are easy to distinguish from average caregivers. You can identify them by the extraordinary effort they put into their work unaffected by whether they have a good supervisor or a bad one, or whether they are working in a short staffed situation or a fully staffed environment.
   Called caregivers travel through life with a special blessing. They live with the light of Love in their hearts. It shows through their eyes, in the way they touch people, in the grace with which they live. It doesn’t always come automatically. Called caregivers, like anyone else, have their bad days. But in their darkest moments, they remember that their work has meaning. This hope invariably drives away the shadows.
   If we’re not feeling energized in our work, it’s time to stop blaming the person we report to. We all report to patients not to a boss. If we’re feeling beaten down in our work, it may well be because we are seeing our role as a job, not a calling. This meditation seeks to open the way for every caregiver to ask if they are in the right work, and for called caregivers to rejoice in the light of Love.

   When we are present to our calling, we are present to our lives. Unseal your orders from God.