Journal of Sacred Work

There is more potential power in a single human spirit than in any atom bomb.
-Erie Chapman

   On August 6, 1945, the world learned of the stunning power that could explode from a single object when an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.  How could such extensive devastation arise from such a relatively small metal tube? How could a bomb smaller than a typical room destroy all the rooms in almost all the houses in the city?
   It doesn’t take a physics major to understand the raw mathematical result: 100,000 people killed in seconds.
   And, fortunately, we don’t need to be expert scientists to appreciate Einstein’s insight that enormous energy is locked up inside even the tiniest mass, an energy made evident when that mass is multiplied by the speed of light squared.
   What energy is locked up inside a human being? How can caregivers make use of their enormous power to mix love with the tools of medicine to create healing?… 

   Nuclear power can be but put to good or hostile use depending upon the
decision of the human beings that manage that power. The power of love
lives in each of us and in groups of people as well. What kind of
energy does it take for a single person or a few to awaken the power of
millions of people?

   We all know that a single human being, smaller in physical size than an atomic bomb, was able to awaken enough hatred to kill millions. That’s the kind of poisonous energy Adolph Hitler awakened amid the devastated economy of Germany in the 1930s. I don’t know that he killed a single person himself. Yet it was his horrible power to persuade that awakened a killing hatred in the minds of millions of Germans.
   Joseph Stalin did the same thing during his evil rule of the Soviet Union. Millions met their deaths in Siberian prison camps all on the orders that came from the mouth of that single twisted soul.
   In contemporary times, millions more meet their deaths because of a force stronger than the atomic bomb. Hatred led to the killing of hundreds of thousands in Rwanda. Hundreds of thousands more have died in Darfur and other parts of Africa as the bombs of hatred explode across the world.

   These examples illustrate the quantum effect of hatred. What about the quantum effect of Love? What single soul has awakened love in the minds of billions? Christians look to Jesus (click on Rembrant detail – left) as the source that planted and nourished the seed of Love across the world. Moslems look to the single life of Mohammed. Others look to Confucius or Moses or Buddha.

   Jesus moved through his short earthly as a single being so deeply infused with God’s Love that he was able to plant seeds of hope that have bloomed in countless hearts. His solitary life, his words, and his sacrifice offer Love’s energy to today’s world two thousand years after his crucifixion. Through the example of his one life, we can feel the power that positive energy holds to heal our deepest wounds.   

   The revelation in all of this is that each of us is capable of awakening healing in others by how we engage the power of love. Consider not Martin Luther King, Jr, but all the people who followed him. Consider not only the life of Mother Theresa, but all those that have been inspired by the example of this one tiny soul from Albania. Consider Gandhi and the millions that followed this powerful little man who, dressed in the simplest cotton wrap, stood as a shining example of peace and nonviolence. Each of these was a single soul. Each generated more power than any atom bomb.

Loving Caregivers:   Reflect, now on the power a single caregiver can have on the life of a single patient, a family, a group of the patient’s friends. Nashville physicians Keith Hagan, Cheryl Fassler, LIz Krueger, & Roy
Elam (left) are four doctors I know whose healing powers go far beyond the tools they wield or the medicines they prescribe. These doctors create healing by weaving loving care into their ministrations to patients. This means that their patients receive a benefit that patients of less caring doctors do not receive. Each of them has touched the lives of thousands. Any doctor can integrate love into his or her care. Many don’t. These four do. And in so doing, they change the lives of the patients they treat.
   The same is true of nurses like Deadre Hall, Laura Madden & Lorraine Eaton. They are but three examples of thousands of nurses across America who spin a halo of healing around their patients by the way they give loving care.
   Each caregiver has the opportunity to do this every day. The question becomes how to find this energy and release it in caregiving? The answer is that this power can flow through each of us when we slide our egos out of the way and let Love shine through our hearts to fill the needs of others.
   Small atom bombs can wreak havoc across giant cities. Individual human beings can spread the massive power of Love across the entire world of caregiving. Each of us can release the explosive energy of love in our lives. There is more potential power in a single human spirit than in any atom bomb.

-Erie Chapman