Why does Radical Loving Care matter?

    Each minute 250 people are born. During the three seconds it took to read that sentence twelve entered earth's orbit.

   During life's first minute a single procedure changes everything. That thin rope that connected us to our mothers, that lifeline through which nourishment traveled from her to us, is unceremoniously severed. 

   Set adrift into a sea of yearning we experience a passionate longing to return to the woman who sent us away. If we were lucky, our mother clutched us to her breasts. We drank her milk & reveled in her touch.

  Otherwise? Babies blocked from human contact fail to thrive, Neonatologist Elizabeth Krueger, M.D., says.  Our first cry casts a lifeline for food. Our new humanity also screams for Love's dual nourishments: compassion & competence.

   Even when we receive them, Life's umbilical also carries energy about which babies know nothing – hostility, rejection &, worst, indifference. 

   The womb is Love's first home. The umbilical represents the link to our heart's desire. Cutting it triggers life's cycle of longings.

   Patients are people in crisis. They seek Radical Loving Care, not just bandages & drugs.  Loving caregivers sense this when they attend the sick & the dying. 

   We long for healing. We long for love.

   In the past minute 105 of our fellow humans left this world. Since losses increase with age, aging can aggravate longing. The elderly often complain they are always being left.   

   Pair Longing's angst with his twin, Abandonment. The cut umbilical launches Act 1 of the human tragedy.   

   The only antidote to longing lies in a story that ends (& begins) with the three most electric words in Christianity: "He is risen." 

  If we still fear Longing's ocean Christ offers Love's ultimate umbilical, "Lo, I am with you always."

-Erie Chapman

Photoart: Rebecca & Baby 1979

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