The last hours of the year provide an opportunity to reflect on the 364 days that have preceded this one. When I consider my efforts to nurture the Garden of Loving Care, I often find my own behavior wanting. Clearly, writing about Loving Care doesn’t make it come true. If anything, it establishes a standard that those around me sometimes like to point to. "Hey, Mr. Loving Care, how come you’re seeming irritable?" someone will point out to me when I veer off the path of kindness.
What I am pleased about are things like this:…
1) This Journal is still alive. Although our readership is still
not large, we have fifty to one hundred people a day who regularly come
to this site. About five to seven people are kind enough to offer
comments to nurture further reflection.
2) A brand new book, The Caregiver Meditations – Reflections on Loving Presence, came out in the spring of this year and thousands of copies are now in the hands of caregivers.
3) The charity work of the Baptist Healing Trust has helped improve the lives of thousands of vulnerable people in Middle Tennessee and beyond.
4) Top leaders of twelve hospitals attended our first annual CEO Healing Hospital Summit in Nashville. This summit signals a greater focus on loving care by the leadership most able to bring about change.
5) Although I had nothing to do with it, of course, I’m so grateful for the arrival into this world of my granddaughter Sonia Gina. At age three weeks, she is still blessed with good health. She also has the precious blessing of two wonderfully loving parents.
This year has held many other sweet blessings as well as some heartbreaking losses. Each day is a gift – especially when we are present to it.
What are the things you’ve done this year that have nurtured your own Garden of Love?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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