Journal of Sacred Work

   A nurse stands in the operating room. She suspects an error. The doctor has begun to cut and she thinks he may have started in the wrong part of the patient’s anatomy. She raises a question. The doctor and the rest of the group glare at her. She falls silent, yielding to the pressures of the moment instead of listening to the larger truth spoken in the House of Mother Time.
   A group of executives sits around a table. The monthly financial report sits before them. One of the executives notices a flaw. The numbers he sees don’t match a truth he knows. He raises a question.  "Hey, go with the flow," the CEO says. The rest of the group joins the boss. The questioning executive has a choice: Continue his challenge, or watch a piece of his soul break off and float away.
   "Go with the flow." It’s a common phrase in America but it has a confusing meaning. When do we join the flow of energy around us and when do we resist it? Aren’t there times when we should fight against the flow?…   

   Clearly, disgraced senior executives at companies like HealthSouth,
Enron, Worldcom and Tyco bent the rules, got others to "go with the
flow" to yield to the pressures of the world’s moments, and now, in
some cases, are serving worldly time in prison.
   Most faiths offer a guideline that can strengthen us as we face the challenges of peer pressure in caregiving. The Judeo-Christian ethic calls believers to listen to the voice of God, not the voice of man. To do this requires a combination of faith, courage, and discernment. It can be helpful to look past the pressures of the moment to consider that moments themselves simply reflect that we are carried on the wave of Time. If we can remember the voice of the eternal and yield to her call, perhaps we can find a pathway to better decision making.
   In considering the power of yielding to the voice of God, these words came to me:

To Yield

Caught in the house
of Mother Time, in the
eddies & whorls of

her corridors of air,
I discover there is no
way out of the sleek lap

from which I was born.
I know I will circle
here, carried on her
currents as they sweep
me in endless greening waves.

Like an ordinary person, I follow
the voice of those around me
instead of listening to her truth.

Like a fool, I stroke against her
currents not knowing
that the only wisdom is
to yield to the true voice
of Love, to lie back in 
the bed she made for me
in her eternal home,

to live my truth in the House
of Mother Time.

-Erie Chapman