I'm on retreat right now in this beautiful, sacred place.  Jack was someone who naturally drew you into deep contemplation...and TJ is picture captures Jack for me.  Gentle, deep, inviting and adventuresome.  Jack was a mentor for me and always a welcoming presence.  I miss you, Jack, and I thank God for the gift of you.  

Mary Ellen, you are in my prayers as we remember Jack today.  I surround you with prayers and love!

Jayne

"It is good to be children sometimes and never better that at Christmas when its mighty founder was a child himself." --Charles Dickens

Our Glaser tradition sending family photos continues, even without dear Jack behind the camera. The grandchildren often say "He is always in our hearts."

His legacy is honored creatively by St. Jopseh Health and in kind words of rememberance by those lives he influenced.

Life moves forward.  My priorities are to advocate for healthy child development, spend time with family and friends and doing clinical social work in the community.

With love,
Mary Ellen Glaser 

 We have already heard this afternoon from Jack’s family and friends about the beautiful, rich and complex nature of Jack Glaser. We know he was a wonderful husband, father, grandfather and friend.

It is an honor for me to reflect for just a moment on Jack as a major contributor and shaper of the Catholic Healthcare Conscience.

Throughout his ministry in Catholic theology and ethics, Jack served as a teacher and a mentor to so many people. Since Jack’s death and as recently as this week, when I attended the Catholic Health Association Board Retreat, people have shared with me the significant impact that Jack had on their professional lives. Sr. Pat Talone, vice president of mission services for CHA, told me that Jack wrote an article many years ago that called to her so deeply, it served as the impetus for her decision to seek her Doctorate in theology and ethics. When she met Jack many years later and shared this with him, in his usual humble way his response was to thank her for being one of the two or three people who read that article. I have heard this story over and over again in the last few weeks.

For those of us who worked with Jack, we know his gift for providing us frameworks for examining complex issues. One of the frameworks he set forward was three concentric circles: the individual, the organization and the society. As I reflect on Jack’s career with SJHS, I am struck by how his own contributions paralleled these circles.

In the early years, Jack was deeply involved in helping us understand and work through individual patient issues, especially at the end of life. He and Corrine explored the issues related to personal autonomy through individual cases like that of Karen Quinlan. He consulted with our ethics committees and helped us develop resources for our clinicians, pastoral care and mission leaders as they faced end of life decisions such as DNR orders and withdrawal of feeding tubes.

While these individual issues never lessened, Jack began to expand our thinking about issues on the organizational level. This past week, our President’s council reread and reflected on an article Jack wrote on the role of the organization in assuring for the common good. Jack challenged us to remember that our budget process was laden with choices that reflected the tension between individual “wants” with the larger common good. He helped us understand that these decisions were difficult not because they were a choice between the good and the bad, but because they were a choice between two goods. I know many of you can see one of Jack’s “stick person” drawings with a single yes, surrounded by so many nos.

And in collaboration with Johnny Cox, Jack brought forward to us the concept of using “personal footprints” in our process of selecting leaders. He called us to move beyond the use of resumes and traditional selection tools to look for the life evidence of a person’s values and contributions.

But nowhere will Jack be more remembered at SJHS and in Catholic Healthcare than in his dedication to the societal good as best represented in his passion for healthcare reform. Jack demonstrated this commitment from his wonderful drawing of the lopsided house of healthcare delivery, to his partnership with Sr. Nancy in creating the Center for Healthcare Reform. Through the Center Jack did more than anyone I know in helping people understand the issues at the heart of healthcare for all. We know his deep belief that the change that is required for us to truly achieve reform is a change in the hearts and minds of the people, not the politicians. He challenged us to remember the examples of child labor and slavery where true social reform was demanded by the public. He helped us shape our own Vision of Healthcare Reform that directs our work on a daily basis.

Finally, for all of us who had the pleasure of sitting with Jack in his office or ours, being with Jack in a meeting or learning from Jack in a class, we recognize that perhaps his greatest gift to us was to slow us down, to stimulate our hearts and our minds, and to ensure for the presence and time for the movement of the Spirit. I was reading through the many tributes on the beautiful life celebration page that Corrine set up and I came across an entry from Jennifer Perry where she reminded us of a typical “jack-ism”: “don’t just do something; stand there.”

Jack, we thank you for these gifts, and we pledge our adherence to using frameworks so that our discourse is not filled with wild personal rantings but is instead a thoughtful dissection of the complexities of life.

There was another entry on Jack’s page from Marty Trujillo that to me summed up all I would like to say: “He was also one of the wisest and funniest persons I've ever known. I loved his quirky and unpredictable ways. I loved how he'd sit in the dark in his office, eating apples, doodling, quoting Goethe, and flashing you his incredible gap-toothed smile. All the secrets of the universe seemed to dwell in that smile of his. I'll miss it."

We all know how Jack loved poetry and music, so I wanted to end this reflection with a poem written by William Henry Channing, Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives in 1863-64, called My Symphony.

My Symphony
To live content with small means;

to seek elegance rather than luxury;

and refinement rather than fashion;

to be worthy, not respectable;

and wealthy, not rich;

to study hard, to think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never;

in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious

grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

Jack, we thank you for the symphony you brought to our hearts.