[Note: the following essay is excerpted from the soon-to-be-released book, Inside Radical Loving Care.]

 

           "The unarmed truth." That's one of the phrases Martin Luther King used to describe the power of truth grounded in Love. Truth is its own protection.

             Radical Loving Care is God’s Love expressed in the caregiving world. It means living Love, not fear. It is radical because it is exceptional and therefore rare. Only the finest caregivers can sustain it.

             The biggest distinction between you and machines is Love. Computers can now program robots to do, or potentially do, almost everything a human can do except for to Love.

             Doesn’t this tell us that we should increase our focus on developing compassion to balance our obsessive focus on task performance?

The Golden Thread

             Caregivers can carry the Golden Thread of healing in their hands or they can break it. 

             Although Love is an eternal energy, it's expression in the world requires that it flow through our earthbound selves. Like a garden it requires constant tending. Every gardner knows that there is never a moment when the plants can be ignored, when he or she can say, "I have nurtured the garden to Beauty and now my work is done."

             Radical Loving Care, once developed, requires constant support and renewal. It is the gift given by every person who walks in the footprints of the Good Samaritan. It lives in the courage of the caregiver who travels the rocky ground and then reaches into the blood of fear to try and heal a wounded heart.

Our Most Sacred Place

             The most sacred place within us is also the most secret. It is the hidden chamber of our pain.  Our scars are stirred when we encounter the agony of another.

             Many run from this darkness. Caregivers cannot.

             We need to enter the other's darkness in order to help them find healing. There is a hidden reward for this. It comes in the joy that floods your heart when you are able to relieve another’s suffering.

             It is up to you to open your heart to this greatest of all powers. The door to this gift is covered with so many warnings that most leave it shut. It requires courage to open it and to keep it open because of the struggle you undergo to understand that healing comes from within.

             Training teaches the opposite. It tells us that once we have skill we can cure. We practice our skill. Lo and behold, some people are cured. Yet, sensitive caregivers quickly discover that skill can heal injured skin but not a wounded heart.

              Only a loving heart can heal a scarred one.

              To create art our heart needs to hold the hand of skill. To heal requires an artist’s passion.

              The power to create, to love and to heal lives in all of us. It awaits awakening.

              Competence enters through one door. Compassion enters the same room through another. When the two are married in a sacred encounter, Radical Loving Care is born.

             To mend damaged hearts, surgeons have to force their way into our bodies using both saws and scalpels. They cut to cure.

             Compassion’s energy will not appear through force or command. It waits to be invited and will only enter a heart that is open.

             Let Love open your heart.

-Erie Chapman

Special thanks to Liz Wessel for creating the beautiful image that describes the essence of Radical Loving Care.