Journal of Sacred Work

Caregivers have superpowers! Radical Loving Care illuminates the divine truth that caregiving is not just a job. It is Sacred Work.

About

Former President & CEO of multiple hospital systems and founding president & CEO of 20-hospital OhioHealth, best selling author, film artist, ordained minister, composer, published poet, syndicated T.V. host, trial attorney, federal prosecutor and Municipal Court Judge. Erie is internationally known as the founder of the Radical Loving Care(R)movement. He also heads Erie Chapman Foundation, Dane Dakota Productions, LLC, and Chapman Health International, Inc.

About

The Second Seed of Loving Care – Potential

December 10, 2007

"I’ve just snapped. I can’t take this meaningless existence anymore. I’ve been a constant disappointment." – Suicide note of Robert Hawkins, left (the Omaha Mall Killer.)

Because 19 year-old Robert Hawkins couldn’t find a loving purpose in his life, he ended his life, and the lives of eight other innocent people in a murderous rampage through an Omaha mall. "Just think, I’m gonna be famous," he said in his suicide note.
The criticality of the seed of purpose comes in poisonous examples as well as through the lives of the angels among us. What some refer to as "senseless acts of violence" are often explosions born from the agonizing vacuum created when people can’t find a purposeful way to express their potential.
Likewise, caregivers who feel their potential is being underused may experience burn out. Without nourishment, the seed of their potential begins to die or, worse, it may turn toxic, poisoning the life of the caregiver and those around her….

All truly great leaders have found a way to nurture the seed of their potential so that it has grown into a great flower spreading beauty through the world. Moses, Jesus, Mohamed, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, each of them found expression for the seed of their potential. Similarly, the unrecognized angel down the hallway who is devoting her life to loving care is expressing her Love-given gifts in important ways.
Each of us needs to look within to find the gifts Love has granted us in this life. Most of us are blessed with many gifts. It requires great energy to choose which seeds of our potential need nurturing and which to ignore.

The Omaha Mall killer is wrong about being famous. Briefly, he is infamous. But we will forget his name as his act fades back on the growing list of meaningless crimes like Charles Roberts, the so-called Amish murderer who killed innocent people. Roberts left a suicide note (left) similar to Hawkins in which he describes "unimaginable emptiness." It doesn’t take any skill or talent to walk into a crowd, lift a gun, and shoot people. But it takes God’s Love to do, as the Amish did, and forgive Roberts.
Perhaps the most powerful lesson his actions teach us is a powerful reminder of what may happen when we become so desperate for recognition that we chose a dark path. For Hawkins, the darkest path he could imagine looked brighter than continuing a life in which he saw no meaning.
Love is the organizing principle that helps us decide which of our gifts we will unwrap, and which we will attend to so that they will true blossom in the Garden of Love. And the gifts necessary are not simply ones connected to skillful performance. For example, each of has the gift of listening, vital to the work of caregiving. And each of us has the potential to find the grace we need to deliver compassion to those in need.
How do you nurture your potential so that you may give Loving Care?

-Erie Chapman

Posted in Meditations

8 responses to “The Second Seed of Loving Care – Potential”

Edwin Loftin

December 10, 2007

Sir Issac Newton defined for us Potential(PE) and Kenetic Energy(KE). In simple terms PE is enegry at the ready and KE is energy in use.
This applies directly to the provision of Loving care because we begin with the assumption that there is energy or more importanly Loving Care always ready and awaiting relaease.
To nurture our PLC (Potential Loving Care) and have it become KLC (Kinetic Loving Care) we must focus on two critical components. First is keeping the tank of fuel filled. Here our unconditional love, support, positive expectations and positve examples can touch and fill the tanks of many. Second is identifying the relaease trigger to create KLC. This may be the delicate “moment in time” that is difficult to see and consistently know when/how to act upon. For everyone in history andtoday that has found purpose that trigger point was identified and pulled by a loving care giver with acceptance of the individual. For some reason people such as Hawkins or Roberts the trigger point was missed.
I find that in the life and commitment to Loving Care it requires consistent filling the tank of PLC and regularly pulling the trigger to allow KLC. As I found with my first experiment in Physics many years ago the release of the potential is exciting and creates a powerful continuation of KLC.

LikeLike

Reply
Tom Knowles-Bagwell

December 10, 2007

In “To Pray and to Love: Conversations on Prayer with the Early Church,” Roberta Bondi defines the “imago dei” as, “. . . that place within us that never stops seeking to love.” I remember being very excited when I read that line because I could identify a “place” like that in me. When you talk about nurturing the potential for love, Erie, I immediately begin thinking about nurturing that aspect of myself, that part of me that never stops seeking to love.
How do I nurture that part of myself? Well, “community” immediately comes to mind. I keep finding ways to bring that part of myself into a community of others who are living love. It seems to me that outside this sort of community, that aspect of my self would wither away after a while.

LikeLike

Reply
liz Wessel

December 10, 2007

I feel challenged when I try to make sense of someone whose life has become so painfully twisted with the torment of fear, isolation, and hate to want to unleash such pain and horror on others. Obviously, persons who have surrendered to evil are seriously mentally ill.
When a child is born, we hold such hope for his or her potential. There is a delicate balance of many variables, personality, genetics, life experiences and how they are internalized, social mores, and the influential people and events that help shape our lives.
We must cultivate our seed of potential and provide the right conditions for healthy growth. A seed will lie dormant in the soil until the right time and intuitively it begins to grow towards the light. A flower naturally opens to the sun.
We all have an innate potential to Love. I believe we all come to a defining moment in our lives when we realize it is all up to us. We have to make a choice. Will we choose Love?

LikeLike

Reply
Catherine Self

December 10, 2007

Tom, I appreciate your insights around community as a place of nourishment. Perhaps community acts as the needed spark that Edwin refers to in his post. I am currently working with a personal trainer three times a week trying to accomplish in myself what for years I’ve been able to encourage in others. Why have I not been able to do the same for myself? I wonder if the key to potential is something that must been given to us from outside – an encourging word, a clear affirmation, a challenge, etc.
Anne Frank, that young, wise woman, wrote: “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The goods news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”
Maybe that is our greatest gift to each other – to see the potential that cannot be seen by one’s self.

LikeLike

Reply
Gay Lindsey

December 10, 2007

There is a reflection I have kept in a file for many years: ” A smile of encouragement at the right moment may act like sunlight on a closed-up flower. It may be the turning point for a struggling life.” (unknown author)A simple gesture of kindness, such as a smile, a greeting, a hug, an encouragement, has more power than we can imagine to those around us; known and unknown. We have all experienced that dark time in our lives, the feeling of emptiness, maybe even thoughts of suicide, no strength to continue daily life. Albert Schweizer said once “Sometimes our light goes out, but is again blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light”. Awareness of those around us, simple, random acts of kindess, projecting our love outward may be all another person needs to see that there is hope out there. We should be the breath that rekindles the flame in others.

LikeLike

Reply
Lorilee Amlie

December 10, 2007

What a painful subject today. I know people with such depression that ending it all seems to be the only way to go. But someone with such hate and hurt is such a horror in my mind it is hard to fathom.
The way I nuture my potential, quite simply is to be grateful for each day and remember that ‘Life is Good’. I feel blessed in my life and because of that I try to give of myself to others with smiles, listening and other expressions of love.

LikeLike

Reply
Victoria Facey

December 10, 2007

Erie, I’m glad to see that you addressed this senseless act of sadness from the past week. How do we react when seeing this? Such sorrow and such a cruel thing, in this young man’s confusion to take the lives of innocent people, too.
I try to remember that I can make the difference in someone’s life as I travel between home, work and other places each day. I witness that small gestures of kindness and love do go a long way. This is how I nurture my potential.

LikeLike

Reply
Karen York

December 10, 2007

I agree with many others who have posted already. A very important aspect of nurturing potential is an attitude of gratitude for what I have been given. A second part is putting action to my gratitude to share my blessings of health, wealth, love, kindness with others. I think we all probably have cycles and when I’m in a low cycle, when nothing seems to be good or worth doing any longer, I usually figure out it’s because I have focused my energy too much toward my own ego and what I’m not “getting” any longer rather than focusing on gratitude.
It is impossible to understand the actions of this young man and the many others who have taken lives in addition to their own. Perhaps from our potential, we can be the light that helps another tap into their own.

LikeLike

Reply