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

     One premise of Radical Loving Care is that transformation of individuals and communities occurs in connectedness and caring for the whole person. It astonishes me how often the converse is experienced in organizations devoted to healthcare. Picture a healthcare community filled with individuals who are all devoted to doing the right thing. Patient satisfaction is high, awards from outside organizations are plentiful, turnover is low, and finances are stable. Sounds like a place that we might think of as a place of healing and maybe even Radical Loving Care. But look a little closer in some places and it is possible to find a vast majority of individuals who are disconnected at the most profound levels of who we are as human beings, in the places of the heart and soul and spirit.

     Although on the outside things may look good, and even great, some well accepted results are not always the best measure of what is true or real. Even a prestigious award such as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award could conceivably be earned under the hard hand of dictatorship and fear. Desired outcomes can be garnered from any number of proven strategies for customer service and can even come as a result of especially moving, inspirational, or motivational speakers. Experience suggests, however,that at best outcomes emerging from externally imposed or motivated sources are fleeting and difficult to sustain. At risk is the disintegration of our very nature as created beings.

     St. Paul wrote of the perils and futility of doing even the most noble of acts without Love. In his well-known epistle to a community in the ancient Greco-Roman city of Corinth, Paul writes of the highly excellent, and in some cases, noble acts being performed by community members. As far as that community was concerned, many thought they had their act together! Paul uses strong words, however, to communicate that the most highly prized activities and results are nothing, meaningless,  if not done from and with Love. He goes on to suggest that human efforts will fail, and only Love sustains. When Love is present, care giving flows naturally and does not need rules, regulations, incentives, duty, or recognition as motivation. The presence and activity of Love from within signals wholeness of body, mind, and spirit manifested in our being.

     We spend a great deal of time and resource to learn the lastest in performance improvement techniques, to communicate effectively, to use the greatest technologies. We do many, great, and noble acts every day. The loss of the whole being, however, puts all at risk. Asking caregivers to leave any part of themselves out of the picture is leadership at its worst. Radical Love asks us to bring all of who we are into our giving of care, to bring out best. That means we are called to create environments, structures, and opportunities whereby every caregiver feels encouraged and supported in self-care and the presence of Love. We are asked to pay attention to the nourishment of our whole beings for the sake of Love itself. Why would we risk, even for a moment, anything less?

     What provides best self-care is known only to you. There are any number of practices that may help tap into the eternal and best source of Love itself – times of meditation, solitude, reading, reflecting, connecting with others. I'm not prone to making resolutions at the New Year, but this is a resolve I feel called to revisit over and over – to know and be Love in this world. What is your sense of priority and resolve around self-care in this New Year?