Journal of Sacred Work

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

"The worlds' battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet than on the most memorable battlefields in history" – Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887).

     Who is the greater hero – the one who stands and cries out with a loud voice against injustice, only to be silenced through imprisonment or death? Or is it the one who leaves everything behind so as to protect and preserve family, safety, and health? What about the one who stays to stand with hope and perseverance, quietly touching the lives of scattered individuals living in the shadows of great injustice? In healthcare systems and workplace settings across America there are tyrants as real and as unjust as those who lord over the camps of North Korea or the desert plains of Rwanda.

     It takes great courage to stand publicly and denounce what is wrong. I have witnessed the professional (and sometimes personal) demise of a number of caregivers who have chosen to take that path. They are heroes for many. And it takes great valor to walk away from a long career and strong ties in community in order to preserve (or restore) health and well-being that has suffered under the harsh hand of uncaring supervisors. As I've said goodbye to good friends who made that choice, we said we would stay in touch, but we haven't. Our community was forever changed. They are heroes for a few.

     But it also takes a special bravery to stay, quietly working beneath the shadows, bringing hope to the hopeless and compassion to those who have given up on love. And for the patient whose only hope is found in the hearts and hands of those who stay to serve, they are also heroes, and will perhaps always remain unknown. It seems love calls us at times to stay, serving from a place of authenticity, a place occupied by the heart and soul.

     Parker Palmer has said that a man or woman can skillfully use a knife to either cause harm or healing, the difference being found not in the external power but in the heart. External power seeks to control, impress, or succeed, and comes and goes with time and change. Fear dwells alongside external power. Sadly, in the hallways of many of our places of healing there are those who would seek to control with fear. Authentic power, however, emerges from within Love and perseveres, even when others would tempt with an easier path, a greater good, or a seemingly safer way.

     The Christian sacred tradition offers the Way of Love, recorded in a letter from St. Paul to the Corinthians. These words seem to me to be words from the heart of a hero:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
   Love never gives up.
   Love cares more for others than for self.
   Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
   Love doesn't strut,
   Doesn't have a swelled head,
   Doesn't force itself on others,
   Isn't always "me first,"
   Doesn't fly off the handle,
   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
   Doesn't revel when others grovel,
   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
   Puts up with anything,
   Trusts God always,
   Always looks for the best,
   Never looks back,
   But keeps going to the end. Love never dies…. (Scripture taken from The Message).

I wonder where are the heroes of our today? How does love inform your way?