Journal of Sacred Work

    My heart, like yours, has been broken many times. My spirit has often suffered as well. I have also broken the hearts of others, including cutting the jobs of dedicated caregivers. In many ways, my heart and, I hope, yours, has also healed in important ways. Darkness is required before there can be any kind of "rebirth."

   Each day, the question for loving caregivers is always the same: What can I do to help another? Hidden somewhere within you is another question: Do I have the insight and strength to choose an even richer way to encounter my relationships – both with people and the world?

   Can you be "reborn?"

   As a caregiver, what lies ahead as you wind through sun and dark shadows? What of Love will you bring to the encounters that will come to you this very day, and in your days ahead?  

   It is the dreams we choose to follow, rather than the ones we are dragged into, that bring the most joyful fulfillment to our lives. Oddly, we often decline the invitation life offers to each of us, at any age.

   We always have the chance to begin anew, or to renew our journey. If your journey is to be meaningful, it will require traveling through a different experience than anything you have lived thus far.

   All of the "insights" I suggest are offered not because I know better than anyone else. Instead, what appears here is an effort to summarize and redesign the best wisdom of the ages in ways that caregivers can use.

   Although, I like to think I am a wiser person than I was twenty or thirty years ago. I'm not sure this is true - in spite of my efforts. Wisdom tells us this: We all need keep asking the same questions and look for new answers. Instead, most people become tired of the questions and fail to seek better answers.

   What has your adulthood been up to this point? To conduct this inner inquiry, several inquiries are of deep importance. Reluctant as I am to list and number things, I know this is often helpful to many.  

1. How do you deal with the four different relationship we describe in living Love as a caregiver: a) your relationships to yourself (& God), b) how you encounter patients. Do you accept that you will one day be sick yourself? c) how you connect with your team members? d) how you relate to leadership.
2. How much fear remains in your life and how well are you able to replace fear with Love?
3. Have you considered the pathway you would like to take in whatever time you have left on this earth?

   Anyone who wants live Love in the deepest way needs to "die" to their old way of living. Many of your current habits may have held you back. 

   Changing the thoughts that lead to these behaviors may involve a dark and difficult pathway. After all, "dying" means letting go of many things we have loved about our current life. 

   Living Love at the highest level is a process that will result in your "rebirth." Can you come face-to-face with your most negative biases? Can you maintain your commitment in the face of obstacles that are sure to come?

   Rebirth is rarely a sudden process (although it may begin with a dramatic epiphany.) When Saul, on the road to Damascus, heard the voice of Jesus and became Paul, he needed to act on this experience in his life. Fortunately, he did.

   On the other hand, Siddhartha's transformation, or "rebirth," into the Buddha came through a long and painful process. It began when he renounced the great wealth and luxury of his early life to pursue the path to enlightenment.

   What if Paul had never gone about his preaching? If he had dismissed his experience, approximately half the pages of the New Testament, all written or attributed to Paul, would never have appeared!

   What if Siddhartha had refused to pursue his pathway to enligtenment? Buddhism, today the fourth largest faith in the world, would never have been founded

   Ministers often tell me stories about people who come to them reporting they have been "saved" only to come back a week later to say they are lost again, then returning a month later to say they have been "saved" once more. So many give up. Persistence in Love's journey is among the most critical energies to sultan.

   We know that the same is true in our lives. Talk show host Larry King told me during an interview on my old television show, "Life Choices with Erie Chapman" that after his first heart attack, he "saw the light" and promised he would never smoke again. His promise only lasted a few weeks and soon he was back to his old habits. Awhile later, he was hit with another heart attack, this time much more severe. This time, he got serious about changing his life and was "reborn" into a new way of living.

   Dr. Bernie Segal, M.D., told me in another interview on that same show that absent a traumatic event, people don't change. He's partly right. Traumatic events hold the great potential to alter our life course. Absent these events, our person change process moves by steps - typically backward as well as forward.

   Hardest of all, we need to renew our choice of Love everyday. Life any living thing, Love must be nurtured because where attention goes, energy flows.

   I believe we all know these things. My questions are offered as a challenge to you as a caregiver. The challenge is much easier to ignore than to accept.  

   If you (and I) truly wish to live the Love in which you believe – in your everyday life as well as in your life as caregivers - you know you need to honestly and persistently engage practices of the kind I have described in this work on Love. Absent a deep commitment, absent a new way of thinking and altered life practices, you will drift along to the end of your days having missed life's greatest opportunity.

   With Love, all things are possible. If you believe this, begin anew. The journey will last the rest of your life. If you are already on this journey, you have found life's finest wisdom. You know your opportunities for deeper growth.

   If you have not begun your path toward living Radical Loving Care, why not begin? If not now, when?

-Erie Chapman