Clara Barton

A quilt square stitched in compassionate care and love.

Excerpts from a 3-page letter to the future President.

Founder of the American Red Cross

In Sickness and in Health

“I worked during President Abraham Lincoln’s tenure and had the privilege of reconnecting over 20,000 soldiers with their loved ones. This was of great healing to a ravaged nation, the tatters of which needed mending. I was called “Angel of the Battlefield,” but the reconnections that became possible were treasured times, for they were the healing of hearts.

Learning about the Red Cross while in Europe, I felt it was only fitting that we establish this back in the United States. To neutralize the wounds—whatever side they took into battle, each needed healing, strengthening, and being allowed to cry in grief, in deep sorrow for the loss of limbs or mobility of any kind, the loss of self-dignity.”

Commenting on the issue of immigration, she says

“In deportation and immigration, there is a lot of severing—not of limbs, but of heartstrings. Not with needs of bloodletting, but of blood pumping miracles of talking again, of loving again.”

Clara had to face death many thousands of times—not her own, but those whose lives ended. She offers the following reflection on life and death.

“Perhaps The Quest of everyone’s life is to have a good death. Not scary; not violent.

A death not of assassination—either physical or of one’s character.

It is a transition element in which some known “facts” await the concept of judgment. The belief in salvation. The worrisome thoughts of retribution. The ways of karmic laws.

The voice of God—which is not a voice at all, really. But rather panes and sheaths of light that illuminate life. Illuminate one’s pathway on both sides of the Veil.”

  

Clara Barton explains that her work and her passion were always in healing, and assures the President-elect that,

“Love is absolutely part of the healing process.”