Journal of Sacred Work

    In the ancient story, a man steps from the road to help a wounded stranger who is thought by other passsersby to be untouchable. The helper, famously referred to as The Good  Samaritan, does much more for the stranger, going far beyond the small politenesses we see all the time. He does what he can not only to help, but to heal..

   In telling this story, Jesus described the meaning of Radical Loving Care - of what Love looks like in its fuller expression. 

   Why did Jesus need to remind us of the richer colors of Love's light?

   Along a hospital corridor in the middle of the night, a housekeeper puts down her mop, walks into the rooms of a man in pain, and holds his hand. Why is this unusual?

   In the streets of Calcutta, amid the shattered remnants of a neighborhood in Haiti, and in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Chile, a small number of strong human beings reach out to help a large number of weakened ones.

   In a northeastern hospital, a nurse leans to help an elderly man. In the neonatal intensive care unit of a southern hospital, a nurse strokes the back of a terminally ill baby who is beyond medical help. Her touch cannot save the life of the baby, so why does she do this?

   In the middle of a cold-as-steel night, a doctor in a rural Wisconsin town of the 1950s, rises from his warm bed and travels through ice and snow to help a mother deliver triplets in her tiny home. The family is too poor to pay him. Why does he do this?

   Perhaps the very first examples of the caregiver-to patient-relationship turns our eyes back to the most primary example of all. In the time before civilations, the earliest mothers nursed their newborns. In another expression of love, fathers stood guard to protect mother and baby, occasionally leaning in to help, often hunting and gathering food to share.

   A mother's love. That is our first encounter with caregiving. If we are lucky, we feel the taste of Radical Loving Care in our first minutes of life. 

   Often, when I describe Radical Loving Care to leaders, they act as if I've told them the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course," they say, "I know what love is."

   Yet, it is clear that the vast majority of leaders have either no idea or no intention of truly supporting the expression of Radical Loving Care in the workplace. In the operation of the modern hospital, Love often falls down the priority list, replaced with fear-driven energy focused on bottom-line performance. Efficiency is accomplished through threats. Leaders engage in savage strategizing aimed at stealing market share from competitors (some of which were also founded as non-profit charities.) 

   For these organizations, mission is window-dressing. Instead, they are engaged in Mission fraud, deceiving the public into thinking their main objective is loving care when in fact the primary goal is to profit from treating the illnesses of others.

   There is, of course, nothing wrong wtih financial stewardship, attention to efficiency, and strategic thinking. There is everything wrong with driving caregiving by fear rather than with Love. When hospitals and hospices make these tactics the be-all of their daily work, they undermine loving care and betray both patients and loving caregivers..

   The very first hospitals were founded by churches to provide a place for the weak and vulnerable to find shelter and care, not for executives and huge corporations to profit. 

   The most basic and crucial of the four relationships is that of caregiver to patient. All other encounters must be designed to support this foundational expression of Love.  

   Caregivers need to support each other. Leaders need to take care of the people who take care of people. Caregivers need to care for themselves to they can care for others.

   Yet the core relationship is caregiver to patient. It is in this encounter where Love can find its most sacred expression.

-Erie Chapman

*Photo of nurse and patient is by Tia Chapman, for the Hartford Courant.