A Hospice Chaplain's Field Guide to Caregiving
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RE: renewable caring

For those who show up...however they can for love

…caregiving of yourself and your others …and the world

to be better gardeners of our ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE….

Eulogy for a M.A.I.D. Patient

9/6/2021

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The medical aid in dying legislation allows patients to apply for and take an end-of-life cocktail. This is new to people in hospice.  We are still sorting through and sitting with the differences. For example, as Interfaith spiritual hospice care, I create eulogies and memorial services after the patient dies.  This one was sp0ken to my patient.  He liked it...and I read it on his deathday...to him.
​

​Eulogy & Prayer for L.C. 
September 4, 2021 9 AM PDT

 
May all that we say
and all that we do be in harmony with thee,
God within me,
God beyond me…
Maker of the Trees.
 
Today L.C. will meet the Maker of Trees.
A carpenter, the grandson of a farmer, brother, and uncle to his family but also a friend, and teacher to the wider world…the teacher for many young men to be better in the world… to be makers in the world.
 
Holy One of Many Names, We ask that OUR hearts be open to see more clearly...To see your presence is with us all &…always…underneath the many misunderstandings of love that get in the way of seeing. Open OUR hearts now…that we might move motes and logs from our eyes…to see deeper and more clearly….       

The light we can see with our eyes in goes out gently at our end…but this man has made a life around following a more evergreen light– your everlasting light–to the best of his ability, which is all that you ask of us, here while on this Earth.
 
Maker of all THINGS, Receive this carpenter, who taught many of your sons the skills of life crafting…of responsibility and of forming useful things… of fixing things… making broken parts into a whole to the best of his ability.
 
These teachings form his legacy…like a rock thrown into a still pool, the ripples expand from this point and move outward…growing more of itself as it moves into the world, making waves, which meet others to create more waves…of itself – of kindness, responsibility and love… He leaves this world a better place for his brother, sister, nephews and family but also for the greater world… in the legacy of teaching responsibility, kindness, and being a maker of things…not a destroyer.
 
He now places the unfinished projects of his heart into your care waiting…as seeds in good soil.
 
Receive this carpenter not because he used what he had to create more good, which he did, but simply because of love…he is a beloved son who has finally come home… & come home to your call.  And he has met that call by reaching back to you, responding to your call with the same consideration and kindness for others, which formed his life.
 
It is our honor here, to wait with L.C. on this edge of life, surrounded by and supported by the arms of God, the Maker of All Things…

May he feel this love now and be welcomed home…to the place we all come from …and the place to which we will all go, when it is our time.
 
May all that we say
and all that we do be in harmony with thee,
God within me,
God beyond me…
Maker of the Trees.
 
Amen.
 


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COMPASSION: River of Light

7/12/2020

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Stories of Jesus are about showing compassion by demonstration  awareness of the needs and feelings of others–friends and strangers alike….(and I would add the shadow parts of ourselves which we reject…)

Jesus did not turn away from any social outcasts; he  welcomed them in, healed them, and shared meals with them.  His compassion fed multitudes…it still does.

Those stories can also be about our inner struggles…do you turn away from your shadow social outcasts?  Those part of your that need some help?  That are experiencing illness? Or do you want to slap them into compliance when they need some extra rest.  All your life your body has been waging a campaign of love…and health for you.


"“Ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There is a crack in everything
    That's how the light gets in.
    That's how the light gets in.

    The birds they sang
    at the break of day
    Start again
    I heard them say
    Don't dwell on what
    has passed away
    or what is yet to be.
    
    Ah the wars they will
    be fought again
    The holy dove
    She will be caught again
    bought and sold
    and bought again
    the dove is never free.
     
  – Anthem by Leonard Cohen

A Love Story for All our Orphan Parts...


No. 31- One Story – Human beings are powered by stories – a love story
There is a war.  It is the war we wage each day…Love vs. fear.
 It's the war of caring for ourselves and our loved ones…and the world.

Ah the wars they will
    be fought again
    The holy dove
    She will be caught again
    bought and sold
    and bought again
    the dove is never free."

–Leonard Cohen

“In the trenches the more love I have, the less fear I can hold. Thich Nhat Hanh likens the human heart to an immense river. If we have enough flow of love, little bothers us and little pollutes us. He speaks the most important question, how do we help our hearts to grow in capacity (and flow) like a river?

How do we hold more love & stop the leaks?”

“The birds they sang
    at the break of day
    Start again
    I heard them say
    Don't dwell on what
    has passed away
    or what is yet to be.”


–Leonard Cohen


“I have noticed my own leaks—that comfort for dwelling in the dramatic nuances of my righteous wounding or resentments where I blame others for outcomes. (you know…the ones where I am right and they are wrong.) Yet, when I have enough love and compassion, I can overlook anything. It’s an inner balance. Remember when you were “in love”, did it matter where they left their dirty socks? Or any other nit picky thing?

It’s our human story. Long or short, every human lifetime seems to be just one story. It’s a love story.”

How much love will you welcome into your life today?  Enough to overflow and bless others…how about the world?

Start Again.

Welcome the cracks. Be the light.
Dive into the River
Stay open.


    “Ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There is a crack in everything
    That's how the light gets in.
    That's how the light gets in.”
–Leonard Cohen


Ending Prayer:
May all that you say
and all that you do
be in harmony with thee.
God within me…
God beyond me …
MAKER OF THE TREES.


 - Chinook Liturgy,
a Pacific Northwest Native American Tribe


ATTRIBUTIONS:
1)    Daily Word - Compassion - Aug 2, 2020
2)    Anthem by Leonard Cohen
3)    My book the ending Rule no. 31 …and the most important one…it is the rule my next book will start with.– No. 31- One Story – Human beings are powered by stories – a love story- The Hospice Chaplain's Field Guide to Caregiving–Finding Resilience on the Front Lines of Love.


•••••••••
  • If you enjoyed this linked sound meditation – please Subscribe on Youtube.
  • If you are caregiving – try my monthly email – Taking Care Resilience News signup
  • If you want to attend the LIVE RECORDING SESSION for SHELTER in GRACE SOUND MEDITATION for your One Wild and Precious Life,  they are WEDNESDAY thru SUNDAY @9:45 Pacific Time - link Sound meditation with Rev. Eleesabeth or go to UnitySF.com Website and search virtual offerings...
THANK YOU:
1) My thanks to Mary Oliver for her line from THE SUMMER DAY– "my one wild and precious life"
2) MY thanks to  SF unity for the invitation to practice as my highest self.   I invite you to do that today.  We need your voice.   

Blessings….on your day.


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The Health Stumble...and Dance

7/10/2020

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EM Claire’s poem talks about stumbles…and grace in the stumbles…i.e.the benefits of a friendly Universe.

This is a simple lesson…but deep. It’s not a LESSON for beginners.

To hear the lesson in a stumble...or even just to  be willing to hear that the seeming failure or illness not about them…i.e. the judgment from them…of the others…from the world.  It’s about something deeper inside... me.

If we are spiritual beings having a human experience – as Telehard de Chardain says, it means we are whole already…as spiritual beings…but in our humanness we experience disturbances… Illness pain and suffering..


The Best Dancers

“Maybe God keeps me here like this
To stumble a little.
If I were to suddenly just turn into light,
Blinding even myself
To the most precious and necessary illusions

Then what hand could hold my own?
Where would rest a weary head?
What good use for warm hearts:
For hot tears?
Why eyes to see?
Why arms to open?
Which lovefamily to fall into?

Oh, only the best dancers know
What grace
Every stumble
Contains."    – EM CLAIRE


"We are spiritual beings having a human experience." – as Telehard de Chardain


Caregiving: Spiritual Maintenance

The ocean between these two: the spiritual body and the human body is about caregiving of yourself and your loved ones: spiritual maintenance.

Undeniably pain is part of this human journey…but is suffering?

We DO NOT suffer when we speak the story of unconditional love in a friendly universe. When we embody that love story we are vibrantly healthy. But it's easy to forget.  We forget whose and who we are in our fearful wanderings

Getting back to wholeness and health?

It’s a journey in which the whole of the human race accompanies us; we have KINSHIP here – Radical Kinship…(a term by Fr. Greg Boyle and subject of the meditation yesterday by same name)
Caring: self-care and caregiving, is OUR collective and individual healing journey:the ocean between the spiritual body and the human body is caregiving of yourself and your loved ones…

Caregiving is spiritual maintenance and it begins with two things.

Be WILLING
We become willing to hear the disturbances… to hear the lesson…or even just be willing to hear the disturbing story we are telling ourself… under our longings; under the chronic, and the painful.  

    ◆    What disturbs you?
    ◆    What story is coming up?

TELL A BETTER STORY…a LOVE Story
We need to remind ourselves to tell a better story…
•    The truer story of what does not change.  
•    The Eternal story of an unconditional, accepting  love that heals.

We start with knowing that we are not any of the stories we tell – but there are helpful ones and damaging ones, to be sure.
We are spiritual beings with the whole of the kingdom of God inside us.  We are, as Rev. Eric Butterworth says,  “God is inside us …not like a raisin is in a bun but like an ocean is in a wave.”

How do we get back to wholeness and health?
We become willing to speak the story of unconditional love…persistently and unceasingly.  This love is deep at the core of me AND is our most precious NATURAL resource for our lives and a kinder,  just world. We stay open.
Let go of your negative judgments of  yourself, your cells, your body, and even your fears…
Replace them with Love story.

I Got Kin  by Hafiz

Plant.     So that your own heart. Will grow

Love, so God will think, aHHHH, I got kin in that body! I should start inviting that soul over for coffee and rolls.”

Sing.   Because this is a food. Our starving world. Needs.

Laugh      Because that is the purest Sound.   



WHAT IS your AFFIRMATION on your stumbles for love today?

What do you affirm for your one wild and precious life today?

What’s in the way of kinship with yourself?

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Originally prepared for 100 th session of SHELTER in GRACE – a Sound meditation for your ONE WILD & PRECIOUS LIFE July 10th, 2020

The NEW by line is attributed to Mary Oliver in her most well known line from THE SUMMER DAY.

ATTRIBUTIONS:
1)    The best dancers by EM Claire – Silent Sacred Holy Deepening Heart
2)    Hafiz I got Kin – the GIFT – translation Daniel Ladinsky

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
  • If you enjoyed this linked sound meditation – please Subscribe on Youtube.
  • If you are caregiving – try my monthly email – Taking Care Resilience News signup
  • If you want to attend the LIVE RECORDING SESSION for SHELTER in GRACE SOUND MEDITATION for your One Wild and Precious Life,  they are WEDNESDAY thru SUNDAY @9:45 Pacific Time - link Sound meditation with Rev. Eleesabeth or go to UnitySF.com Website and search virtual offerings...

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It all started with a caregiver...& the IRS

1/13/2019

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Have you seen "On the Basis of Sex..."?  The thing is...it all started with a caregiver.

It's a well done movie–relevant recent history about gender equality. But the thing is...the revolution started with a caregiver.  A good son was caregiving his mother and he got slammed by the IRS saying THAT deduction was only for men.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the ACLU found it to be a perfect test case to start challenging all the laws that we now take for granted.  All of you caregivers out there will relate to this poor guy's daily grind. Mom in a chair, dementia eating away at her, him stuck in the chaos and he's got another battle with the IRS.

Go see the movie.  It is an important and healthy distraction...while you do it...remember what you are doing matters. 


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8 minutes of fresh, ancient wisdom:    'The Good Enough Daily'

11/6/2018

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PictureLouise Hay, Cheryl Richardson have wonderful card decks...these are just a few of the ones I use each day.
I have started a daily practice of gathering serendipitous wisdom from the day.  I have a plan to create something more public–perhaps a video or audio daily live chat called "The Good Enough Daily". It is on a long list of possibles: TBD.

But until then, let me tell you about them on the hopes that it may inspire you to do the same. Here are some I use...there are so many card decks out there...
  • (various) Unity's card decks - link Amazon
  • Louise Hay's Power Thought Cards - link Amazon
  • Cheryl Richardson's Grace Cards - link Amazon
  • Self Care Cards - link Amazon

I draw cards as part of my waking up process...usually with coffee.  They are part of my own spiritual practices each day to help me taking care of myself...and keep my inner balance as I take care of many each day as a hospice chaplain.

This is also for the fifteen MILLION unpaid caregivers who are doing the daily, chaotic work of caring for their infirm loved ones.

Much like my weekly sound meditations in San Francisco, I listen for what is 'in the room'.  There I ask people to <quickly> check in:
  • How was your week? Your day?
  • What came up for you? What is troubling you? Sticking to you?
  • Any celebratory events or challenges?
Then I paint the watercolor of what the sound, silence and poetry might be of support to those and what is 'in the room'.

It's a form of meditative improv in service of love. So is drawing cards every morning.

Improv 'What is" is one of the rules in the Fieldguide. Any of its many forms of implementation is a good practice for me. You see my (prairie, bootstrapped) inclination is to want to get 'it' perfect and over prepare for whatever... 

Life is not that way. All I (and you) have to do is show up knowing we are enough...and worthy to be participating in what is in front of us.  Then we do the best we are able. Both (preaching) ministers at my Unity Church in San Francisco are stellar at improv on the stage...but for me it is a learning edge.

Because we all have our edges.  At last Sunday's meditation, several people spoke about the edge between what shows up in the world and what shows up inside us...and then there is the pause.  This is the place of choice...do we choose to react, respond? Are we triggered?  Are we needing to be right?  This is the same edge for us all.

Reading the Day
It is in same way that I draw several cards from my various (and lovely) spiritual card decks each morning and take a moment (but not too many moments...) to see if there a pattern to the cards drawn.   I then read this wisdom and speak about it for eight minutes, because who has a lot of time in the mornings?

...and I have theme music, too.  "Good Enough" by Karen Drucker.  She is awesome, if you are not familiar with her as both a songwriter and a performer.  Check out her song if you want a lift to your day.

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The Full Moon & Our Eclipsing Superpower

1/31/2018

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PictureA solar eclipse over Vancouver & the a lunar eclipse over Jerusalem
An eclipsing moon in the East greeted me when opening my door to the still dark day. Before early morning chores (before I fed my two cats—Smith and Wesson, before even coffee…), I saw, but did not know, if the show was almost done or just beginning. However, I knew with a different part of me that it was to be spectacular.
 
This is the oh-so-human way of discerning: head and heart. These days, as a hospice chaplain, and caregiver to caregivers, I listen more carefully now.
 
The eclipsing heart is unbalanced...       (read more...click below)


Read More
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Kaiser Symposium and Resilience

1/14/2018

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The Kaiser palliative RN symposium where I was speaking about resilience for pro caregivers...and my book...was easy (and went quite well) once I stopped reading my notes and spoke from my heart.  I don't know how many times I need to learn this lesson—speaking with people, not at them.  

It is so easy at bedside in hospice (or supporting my bereaved) to still my noisy mind, listen deeply and respond from that place...or let the space be empty.  In good design, they call it "white space".  

But... it feels so different when sixty-five palliative nurses are watching you, waiting for my amplified words to fill the gap between us—my words.

Oddly, it's not. As a chaplain and a woman of (growing all the time) faith, I agree with the radical French Jesuit theologian, paleontologist and geologist, Teilhard de Chardin, when he said: 

                            "We are spiritual beings, having a human experience."  

If that is true (and I have ample life, bedside and death bed evidence of this), then there is just one of us here, or at minimum we are nuclear family. My point about speaking up (and speeches)  is that we are all among family—all the time.

Sweet, right? (And, it's a better tactic than imagining  all of you/us naked...)
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My Father said if I had 1 or 2 authentic friends in my life...I would be rich

1/4/2018

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I am preparing a collaborative series of presentations around my new book and working with a dear friend to accomplish it.  It is great (chaplain) fun to find common ground between the sacred wisdoms and with the highly actionable nature of neuroscience research. 

Heart and head are powerful partners which change the planet...and certainly our lives.

This day long symposium is on resiliency in nursing.
These beautiful professional caregivers experience much of the same stress symptoms as their unpaid sisters and brothers on the front lines of love.  But the opportunity to work with a true friend when doing this work (that matters...) is an exceptional thing.

My father was a wise man: John W. Hager
He is gone from this earth and has been for decades, but his words are alive in me. His saying about the quantity (of friends) that make one's life rich, flies in the social media's face. As a new author, I am validated by how many people sign up for messages from me (...and by all means, please sign up).  Having said that, however, the magnitude of a nearby friend, one that shows up with treats when they hear a twitch in your best "I'm fine" survival voice, is measured on an earthquake scale.  

The 4.8 earthquake (which woke me up last night) is felt by all. But only one more richter point and it is feared by all.

A true friend is a wonder...they gently turn post-traumatic-stress from disorder to order...and growth. 

(or maybe even some fun.)


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    EM Hager
    Author, Bereavement & Spiritual care, Sound meditation guide.

    "Look deeply into nature and you will understand everything human"
               – Albert Einstein

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Sustainable Caregiving in sweet small steps...and two books:

"I read it all night.  It was funny and useful." - A.W.        
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                         TWO BOOKs AND AUDIBLE Recordings:
     BEGIN AGAIN has the first 8 gifts...                                                           The Field Guide has ALL the gifts... 

Both are about caregiving as a circle of care & that includes you.  
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