Journal of Sacred Work

   I had just arrived home for my first break as a freshman at Northwestern University. My parents took my sisters and I to dinner at their country club. Eager to tell my parents about the giant new world I had discovered, I barged into my freshman impressions. Could they tell any changes in me? Could they see how much I had matured? Could they finally sense that I was a man now?
   Midway through the second sentence of my first story, dad pointed to a man across the room and asked my mom, "Who’s that, honey?" My mother supplied the man’s name. Although surprised to discover my parents were not hanging on every word, I barged ahead. In the early stages of story number two, there had been several more interruptions unconnected to my college experience…

   My parents meant no harm, of course. People who ignore us while we’re talking never mean to be rude. Yet the absence of attention can leave many of us feeling that if our stories don’t matter, then neither do we.

   The problem is chronic in medical practice. The amount of time that passes between when a patient starts a story and the doctor interrupts is, according to one study, 18 seconds. Harried practitioners, flooded with a waiting room full of patients, are anxious to get to the bottom line. They may feel they’ve heard the story before. But this overlooks the fact that the patient has not, perhaps, had the chance to be heard.
   Central to Radical Loving Care is an understanding of the enormous potential power of each encounter we have. Health care is designed around the core relationship of caregiver to patient. Full, loving presence by the caregiver maximizes the chance for healing to occur.
   So how do we learn this kind of presence? Most of us know it all ready. We know how to give deep presence to a television show, to a caring friend, or to a comedian that makes us laugh. How are we to learn to give that same caring presence to someone who needs us but who may not be so enchanting?
   The practices we encourage are clear enough: 1) practice meditation to calm the mind and open the spirit, 2) cultivate the arts – presence to art teaches presence to patients, 3) redefine how you imagine the people in front of you. If you have been thinking the person in front of you is a boring jerk, recall to yourself that this person is a child of God – someone who carries, like you, a spark of the divine.
   Perhaps these seem like intellectual exercises.Consider another way to really appreciate the importance of presence. Recall, carefully, a time when you felt you had something important to say and no one seemed to listen. Perhaps, as you remember yourself sitting there feeling unheard and unloved you will know how powerful your presence can be to another.
   Love calls us to be present to the other just as we would want them to be present to us.

-Erie Chapman