Our stories define our lives. Particular stories can change the direction of our journey – the ones told by family and friends, the ones described in books, movies and on television and  the stories we tell each other.

   Most crucial of all, of course, are the stories we tell ourselves.

   Here are three books that have changed my life over the last several years: David Whyte's masterpiece, The Heart Aroused, John O'Donohue's Beauty and Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth.

   Along with this is the writing and speaking of storyteller Minton Sparks and my own book upon which this work is based, Radical Loving Care. 

   "…all our demons rise to meet us at the prospect of a fall," David Whyte writes. [There is] "the deep physical shame that we can never measure up.

   This is the plight of all sincere caregivers – the worry that we "can never measure up." We seek, we pursue and we often succeed. But we seem unable to accept that we have, in fact, done the best that we could.

   In other words, the demon-fire of shame burns us into a tragic corner. 

   This demon crumbles if we absorb what Eckhard Tolle writes: "The ego takes everything personally."  Obvious as it is, these five words struck me like a lightning bolt. 

   Tolle's path away from ego is, first,  to notice that the pain-body of our ego is shouting the wrong messages at us.

   We are not our ego. We are spiritual beings who can live well on this earth when our intention and actions arise out of Spirit, not out of ego. 

   We, as caregivers, are not what we do. We are grounded in Being, not in ego. 

   Only when we act in this world out of the Love rather than ego can we  practice the art of healing. 

   To escape the insatiable appetite of the ego, we move towards our spiritual Being and allow our lives, as healers, to be directed from The Source within us that is God.

   God is Love. 

   Where are Love's images? "The words sea and ocean are too small to image such wild divinity," John O'Donohue writes. 

   This is the world of loving caregivers. There are no words to describe the "wild divinity" that illuminates healing. 

   This is language that can send us beyond language – the knowing that it is powerful to pursue the art of description and to know, ultimately, that we may touch the hem but not the center.

   God will not accede to description. For this, we can only accept a "knowing" that is as personal, deep and sacred as the "flow of the ocean."

   Minton Sparks writes,  "Riding together but all alone/ Time sings/ 'Nothing but dust in the wind, child./ Why did you even get in?"

   We are "in" for now, living our story of the world moment by moment in eternity.

   Sparks responds to her own question:  

   "I'll answer:/ Cause I mighta missed,/ Cause I mighta missed/ Cause I mighta missed this ride."

   How rich "this ride" becomes when our story moves beyond the clatter of ego to become the song of our Being. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman