Journal of Sacred Work

When it looked like the sun wasn’t gon’ shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds.  – Maya Angelou

   The only people who really seem to appreciate a line like Angelou’s are people who pursue excellence. These are the people who know the power of persistence married to skill. These are the ones who strive and seek and, in their refusal to yield, find the rainbow in the clouds after everyone else has given up
and gone away.
   Sunday night, the Boston Red Sox took on their hated rival, The New York Yankees. In the top of the ninth, the score 7-6 in favor of the home team Sox, the Red Sox closer, Jonathan Papelbon (left), faced the hottest player in the game today, Alex Rodriguez. If you’re wondering what this has to do with caregiving, hang on…

   The thing about sports is that it is always just a game. But at the peak of a close contest, it is also a marvelous metaphor for any big challenge in life.   
   The ESPN film crew did a marvelous job of capturing the climax of the game. It was all in the eyes. Papelbon laser-eyed a world-class hitter. Rodriguez glared back. A sold-out crowd of over 37,000, along with millions more on television still present near midnight, screamed as if their very lives hung on the outcome of the next pitch.
   It was a perfect moment for full presence and I was glad I was there (albeit watching on television.) If Boston could win, it would mean not only a victory but a three-game sweep. And all of this against a Yankee team so powerful that the golden thread of their history includes twenty-six World Series victories. By contrast, in 2004, the Red Sox won their first Series in eighty-six years. But they are always so close. Could they really top the vaunted Yankees, a team built on the biggest payroll in baseball? 
   The pitch raced for the plate, Rodriguez swung, made contact. The ball angled left, was fielded. The runner headed for second was out. Game over. Red Sox victory.
   So what? A magnificent game, but still just a game, right?
   The players on the field, every one of them very well paid, are remarkable examples of a particular kind of excellence. In the stands and sitting in living rooms at home, millions marveled at those particular examples of peak performance.

   Some of us know that today we will enter our own fields of potential high performance. We also know the hard truth that in so many organizations mediocrity is tolerated as part of the status quo.
   What matters more, a baseball game or caregiving in a healthcare organization? Consider the stakes. People go to games for fun. People seek healthcare because of serious, sometimes life threatening needs. In professional baseball, average performances are not tolerated. Why do we accommodate the substandard in the healing professions?
   Today, millions will watch games and millions more will enter the zones of hospitals and other charities because they are in deep need. What kind of care will they receive? What kind of care will we give?
   We would all like to think that America’s caregivers will deliver peak performances to those who desperately need help. Fortunately, there will be many beautiful acts of caring that will be delivered anonymously by countless caregivers. But there will be mistakes and substandard service delivered by others who should be denied the privilege of caregiving. The arc of excellence has bypassed them. They simply don’t care about caregiving.
   This Journal was created to support caregivers in their quest to heal. If you don’t care about your work, you’re probably not reading this. If you do care, part of your role is to help reawaken in others the sacred nature of caregiving. Our fellow human beings need our best. They need for us to engage the arc of excellence so that we may help transport them back to the land of hope. Inside the clouds of our daily work, can we find Love’s rainbow?

-Erie Chapman