Patron Profile: Christopher Mason

Christopher Mason is an Emergency Physician with the Cleveland Clinic with specialties in Emergency Medicine and Flight & Wilderness Medicine. Like many of us during last year’s shutdown, Christopher was taking stock of the things that mattered most and deciding how best to show his support to organizations that had a meaningful effect on his life. During his medical school years at Case Western Reserve University, Christopher would run or walk through Lake View and use it - as he puts it - as a sanctuary. He moved out of state for a time but has returned to Cleveland to practice medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. He wrote the poem below to show his #love4lakeview in the most beautiful way:

With a View of the Lake

the din of city traffic, a heavy freighter headed West, melt away
the beeps and whirs and commotion of another day in the emergency department soften -
to the pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat of my running shoes

passing through the northern gate, the walls begin to shoulder some of this weight -let my psyche relax, make room for the quieter conversations…
between the leaves and grass, stones and water, heaven and earth, heart and mind

a large hawk cries out, patrolling her airspace
oak leaves slowly waft in the animated suspension of the pressure changing before a summer storm

bees hum outside the chapel, feasting drunkenly on lavender
in short time the trees will explode into color
then the stillness of winter snows will come
at last, spring’s glory and life will emerge once again

this place, a Sanctuary – a reverent reminder and connection to the lives before us,
the lives around us
the life within us
and that which will follow

what we choose to nurture, those acts which we practice, will live and grow: our communities, our
better natures, our families, our Sanctuaries
without intention, even the most beautiful gardens wither

so in a time rife with distraction and roiling with division, support the things that truly bring value and hope and peace to your life

perhaps one of the best classrooms to connect with our own humanity is led by our predecessors –
laid to rest here
with a View of the Lake

– Christoper Mason