Journal of Sacred Work

CONNECTION & Vulnerability: Days 148-152

Renee Speelman Erie Chapman 1987  "Wish the good old days could have lasted forever," dear friend Dr. Nick Baird texted me after watching "Acts of Caring" on the new foundation YouTube channel (600 site views in 7 days). To go directly to "Acts of Caring" (click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLYPoFrf5qM

    Aging means memories matter more. Memorial Day demonstrates that every hospital needs a Facebook site like RMH Alum. But any hospital veteran can connect with the loving care portrayed in Jeff Kramer's BRILLIANT documentary. 

   The new YouTube site is drawing a crowd because it offers a feast to those who hunger for and wonder about what Radical Loving Care® looked like at Riverside Methodist (1983-1995) and Baptist Hospitals (1998-2002.) Such care is threatened with extinction unless current leaders nurture it! 

  Maria Popova captures our cravings in the opening of today's spectacular weblog The Marginalian:  "The hardest thing in life isn’t getting what we want, isn’t even knowing what we want, but knowing what to want. We think we want connection, but as soon as contact reaches deeper than the skin of being, we recoil with the terror of vulnerability. There is no place more difficult to show up than where marrow meets marrow. And yet that is the only place where two people earn the right to use the word “love.”

   I claim love for the caregiver relationships across the past 48 years. As Dr. Baird said at the end of his text: "Thank God for our days in the sun."

-Erie Chapman 

Screenshot – Erie with cardiac nurse Renee Speelman from "Acts of Caring"

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3 responses to “CONNECTION & Vulnerability: Days 148-152”

  1. Ada Davidson Avatar
    Ada Davidson

    I began working at RMH in 1974. Patients and staff were a top priority. It was a fun and fair place to work. While maintaining such a fair and fun place to work, because of patient care being of the utmost priority RMH kept all departments efficiently staffed and made employees accountable, which, in my opinion, is what kept RMH successful. RMH is and will always be, my favorite workplace.

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  2. Erie Chapman Avatar
    Erie Chapman

    Thank you so very much for sharing your thoughtful comment, Ada! Thank you also for your long career of deep dedication to caregiving and for the way in which you honor Riverside Methodist!

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  3. Liz Wessel Avatar
    Liz Wessel

    Wow! It is incredible to see these wonderful videos and the way in which a culture of RLC has been nurtured and blossomed exponentially. How lovely to revisit these times and to glimpse such an extraodinary legacy of leading with love. Thank you for sharing so generously the gifts of your passion, the fruits of the spirit, your love of caregivers and those most in need of a loving response. So many have benefited from your mentoring throughout the years as RLC has and continues to expand out beyond what you will ever know but thousands will have benefited.

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