Journal of Sacred Work

The only way words can change anyone is if the listener’s heart is ready.
-Erie Chapman

    I suppose, personally, it  could be a big life event. That’s how I’ve cast it in the tiny constellation of my mind. I’ve been given the opportunity to summarize, in an hour and a half, all of the essential elements of the loving care work I’ve been focused on for over thirty years. Three television cameras will be set up to record the presentation before a live audience (what other kind of audience is there?) The event is scheduled for November 9. Post presentation, DVDs and CDs of the speech will be available. What pressure, huh?
   What would you do if you had an hour and a half to summarize the main points of your life credo? Different from my usual approach of speaking impromptu, I’ve been making notes like crazy. It’s a dilemma. If I read from the notes, the speech will be boring. But if I don’t check my notes, I run the risk of missing important aspects of this work.
   But does the speech matter? Probably not. It’s the subject, not the speech that holds the power… 

   Inside the noble subject of loving care, there is the risk of a trivial edge. For example, most customer service programs have very little to do with loving service and the very phrase demeans  the whole notion of love.
   Yes, I have some other thoughts to offer, yes I have experience and have written a couple of books, but who am I to summarize such an important notion as loving care?
   The answer is something that is true in any speech. The point will not be "the points." It will be whatever energy the presentation may awaken in the hearts of listeners.

Status Quo Syndrome (SQS)   Every speaker is up against the phenomena of what I call Status Quo Syndrome. As I’ve mentioned in a previous reflection, the status quo represents the familiar and the comfortable. For a speaker to defeat the SQS requires some powerful awakening.
  Have you ever been influenced by a speech or a sermon? If you have, you may not even recall that it was that presentation that awakened something within you – something that became a pivot point in your life.
   Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I have a dream" speech is a great example of a world-changing speech. I remember seeing it on live television in 1963. In subsequent study, I learned that his words took flight when he put aside his prepared text and let the light of love speak through him. If you watch the whole speech, you can see when this happens, when he literally abandons his text and lets the spirit move through him. It was a pivotal moment for the country and for millions listening – a time when the Civil Rights Movement took a sort of quantum leap into the deeper conciousness of the country.
   So it’s not intellectual material on love that will change anyone. And it won’t be anything on powerpoint slides that will trigger meaningful change. Our thought and behavior patterns are too deeply set to be changed by analytical material alone. Instead, it will be what new thought (if any) is ignited in the heart any individual member of the audience. The best any speaker can hope for is that he or she may lay the ground work for an epiphany in the life of others. This means not simply the right combination of words, but the right readiness in the listener and the persistence by the individual to anchor their epiphany in personal change.
   In my lifetime, I have given literally thousands of speeches. I don’t know if any of them have changed anyone, even though sometimes people are kind enough to tell me they have been "touched" by a given presentation I’ve made. But meaningful change in the person occurs more secretly, below the ripples of applause and beneath the surface of facial expressions. It happens because some sacred place in them has been touched and awakened. A new energy is released.
   I have heard my own share of presentations – thousands. I remember listening several times (in my car) to an audio tape of a speech by Caroline Myss. The most important thing she said came in one word: Gratitude. "Gratitude is where you want to hang out," I remember her saying to what sounded, on tape, like a "live" audience.
   That speech had an impact on me partly because I listened to it over and over – giving time for her remarks to find a home in my heart. As a result, I increased the practice of gratitude in my life and I am, pun intended, grateful to Ms. Myss for awakening more gratitude in me.
   When other speakers ask my advice on how to prepare for speeches, I tell them the same things:
1) Center your presentation on ONE point.
2) Remember that the speech is about the subject and the audience, not about you. 
3) Have fun.
   The third part of that trio of suggestions is the one that helps me the most because it’s the one that helps me stay more human, more humble and more real. It helps me to take the work seriously but not myself.
   Caregiving can be dreary work. We need to remind ourselves to have fun and experience joy. I’ve even pasted this message on my mirror because, in the middle of the agonies that populate caregiving and weigh down my heart, it’s easy for me to forget fun.
   November 9 will be an important occasion for me, but will it help anyone else? That’s the goal of loving care, to help the other. And that’s the only point I’ve got to make in my remarks. The goal is to challenge people (and myself) to find more, better and fresher ways to express loving care in caregiving.
  For two thousand years, the best spokesperson on love has been, of course, Jesus. The thing the rest of us can do is not just listen to speeches, but to ask ourselves a question: How are we living love in this world?
    We can break out of the comfort of our own case of SQS by reaching out from our normal patterns of comfort to help others. And, along the way, we can choose joy in our work.

-Erie Chapman