"Whatever image you take within you deeply,/ even for a moment in a lifetime of pain,/ see how it reveals the whole – the great tapestry." Rilke – from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 21
It was a night of routine rounds for me at Baptist Hospital in 1999. I worked my way from the 8th floor down to the 4th, and then to the 3rd – the happy floor.
The third floor of Baptist Hospital is where well over half the babies in Nashville are born. It's really is a joyful place – most of the time. It's a contrast to every other floor where the sick and wounded wait for health's return.
On that night, I entered the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. As everyone knows, doctors and nurses can now quite often save the lives of the world's tiniest people.
Laura was gently stroking the back of a baby that could not have weighed much more than a pound. But, he was breathing. "How is he?" I asked, expecting her to tell me the baby would be fine – another miracle.
"He's dying," she said. He has no more than twenty or thirty minutes.
"Where are his parents?" I asked.
"They left. It was too hard for them. The baby will die with me."
As I left the area, I turned and looked back at the two of them – the loving nurse stroking the back of her dying patient, speaking to him in quiet tones, honoring his fading humanity.
That image etched itself into my heart so that twelve years later, it is as clear to me as it was that eve. I have told and retold this story and each time I take it in more deeply.
Inside the tableau of those two souls lies the "whole tapestry" of Loving care. Nothing in the nursing rules requires that the nurse continue to attend to the needs of her helpless, dying patient. It is within those rules that she is allowed to close the bassinet and turn away to finish paperwork.
Instead, she chose to reach out with love to a patient beyond curing. She choose the caregivers most sacred power - to heal.
That tiny baby could not, of course, say "Thank you." Nor could he have asked for help in the first place – have asked that someone be with him in his last moments on this earth.
The encounter represents every loving exchange that has ever happened or is happening at this moment. It is the Good Samaritan.
It is Mother Theresa reaching down to help a man dying of starvation. It is you as you choose to express love – and remember the image of your patient so that it weaves itself into the fabric of your heart – all of your patient care summarize in a single interaction.
In the enviornment of caregiving, these sacred meetings are happening all the time. In the midst of pain, they bring us hope – a moment when Love reaches out and meets need in a way that is flooded with holy light.
-Reverend Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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