Journal of Sacred Work

Days 319-323 - Hidden Colors

   "It visits with inconstant glance/ Each human heart and countenance;/ Like hues and harmonies of evening,/...Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery." - Percy Bysshe Shelly

   Modern medical tools allow doctors to see through our skin. With this deeper vision, they can better diagnose and treat the physical illnesses that invade us.

   Contemporary computers empower artists to find new ways to touch the hem of Light's spiritual mysteries. These new views of color help artists reach more deeply beneath the hem of these mysteries to touch us and relieve our soul's suffering.

   Photos purport to record what is before us. Such images seen as art forms always signal more than what we think we see with our naked eye. Photographs approached as art may, for example, reveal blue coaxed from a woman wearing white, and orange teased out of yellow.

   The human eye struggles to make sense of the world. The heart's eyes see deeper.

   Are Love's colors visible? Where are they hidden?

   "The human soul is hungry for beauty;" the always-eloquent John O'Donohue writes, "we seek it everywhere...When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming."

   Everyone and everything holds colors often hidden beneath deceptive costumes. The elderly lady in the wheel chair holds the beauty of her child self within as well as the richness of her wrinkles without. The slurring alcoholic carries a gorgeous and wounded heart. Even the criminal holds God's colors beneath sometimes angry masks.

   Caregivers study science to learn how to cure the body's broken machinery. Healing caregivers study art to enhance their ability to bring the comfort of color to darkened hearts.  

   Each time we uncover more of Beauty's hidden hues we discover a powerful relief. Herein lies the strength caregivers must have to serve those drowning in Need's gray landscape.

   Now comes the chance for us to rescue sufferers with God's healing. Opening our sacred eyes, we can bring the needful Love's mysterious but always-present light.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph - "Hill Series #3" - copyright Erie Chapman 2011

Days 317-318 He Lives A Life of Passion

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.  I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on a purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. " -Joseph Campbell

 Note: weekend essay offered by guest contributor ~liz Sorensen Wessel

His words create connection, opportunities to see beyond the surface, to go deeper into a realm of thought that gives expression to what lives in our hearts. His writing provides a catalyst for traveling untried passages leading us to cross new thresholds and discover how Love's embrace dissolves the barriers of time and space. His is an authentic voice that shares his experience of blissful joy, unfathomable despair, rare courage. He creates a safe space for the intimacy of souls touching souls, as we seek to join with our “better angels.”

  We’ve become time travelers, able to explore the thoughts and hidden worlds of people today and those who lived long before us. His poetry is the language of Love. Here we are serenaded and bequeathed with sweet fragrances; flowerings of our eternal nature. We grown women swoon like school girls transfixed by the allure of romance. His heart offers some of the most brilliant colors, rich textures, translucent hues in agonizing shadows and pure healing light.

His music takes us to a land of immeasurable Beauty. As the butterfly, we shed the accouterments of our body to wing free. Here we are swept away on vibrant waves of converging notes to encounter exquisite vistas. He encourages us to soar to ecstatic peaks and willingly surrender to heartbreak, all for the sake of love.

His images hold mystery, and like his poetry, they reveal the deeper quest of his soul's journey. Through his pictures, he captures a moment in time that will inform memory for generations to come. As artist, he invites us to encounter loveliness, as we glimpse Beauty through his sacred eyes.

  In film, he tells the story of others lives, explores the meaning of suffering, uncovers social justice issues, as we wrestle with our conscience, and sort through life’s half-truths and contradictions. Whether award winning fictional movies, documentaries on end of life, sacred work, or healing hospitals, he inspires caregivers to breathe Love's spirit into their work; to live Love, not fear. A champion of Radical Loving Care he tirelessly encourages us to give our hearts to Love, to be compassionate,  to offer our humanity to others, and especially to ourselves. His name is Erie Chapman and he lives a life of passion.

 Happy birthday Erie (October 31st), as you live this one miraculous moment,  hour,  day of your precious life, may Love return to you tenfold...

With love from our hearts to yours!

Note: all photo's copyrighted, by Erie Chapman

 

Days 315-316 - Close and Far

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        The photo I made at left was created as a meditation on twin subjects: Parallel lines and Velocity. 

   In friendship, parallel lines intersect in ways that raise trust and nurture our humanity. We cannot live without others.

   Friendship causes us to slow at its various intersections. Velocity can threaten relationships. 

   By 1974, it would never have occurred to me to doubt my pal, Don. We had been friends for four years during which I sent him lots of business to support his budding insurance work.

   One day, I asked Don to contribute a small amount to a theater with which my wife and I were involved. He declined.

   Since I had never asked anything of him, I was stunned. Without explanation, I ran from the relationship and began feeling a drop of poison every time his name arose. 

   In a single phone conversation, we went from close to far.

   Don had no idea he had offended me. It took me a long time to realize that the problem was velocity. I had raced to an unwarranted conclusion. 

   Of course, my resentment was foolish. If I had been a truer friend, I would have raised the issue immediately and we could have resolved it, as we finally did. Our friendship is now forty years old. 

   The moment a perceived slight appears, we are often quick to condemn the other while justifying ourselves.  David Whyte says our lives are dominated by velocity. Old friendships can split in a millisecond.

   What is more precious than a dear relationship? At its intersection we feel a resonance that affirms our existence.

   Thus, there is nothing more painful than "break-up," as toxins burn our hearts. Lines which once intersected move back to parallel.

   Such stories fill literature and courtrooms with tragedy and acrimony.

   All of it is usually avoidable.

   Do we expect too much of each other? Do we count on co-workers to back us and turn on them instantly when they don't? 

   I have seen nurses act resentful the moment a patient "dies on them" as if the patient has intentionally abandoned the caregiver. I have experienced supervisors who suspect all employees because once, long ago, they were tricked by a subordinate. 

   As we open to others, the rawest skin of our hearts is exposed. Heightened sensitivity enables joy. An accidental pin-prick may feel like a dagger.

   Should we avoid drawing close?

   You may have made this life choice. You may have determined that your wounds have drained the blood of compassion from your scared heart.

   In a long life, I have felt betrayed many times. It has never been helpful to nurture hostility. My life has never been enriched by veering away from meaningful relationships - even when they end badly.

   But, close can feel dangerous. Far may seem safe.

   Jesus assumed we would love our friends and called us to love our enemies. Does Love have such a thing as an enemy?

Reverend Erie Chapman

Days 312-314 - Compassion in Action

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"We are like Jacob wrestling with the angel until dawn, waiting to be blessed and limping away after the struggle.” -Daniel Migliore

  There are so many outrageous things that happen in our lives. You hear that your best friend has cancer. An innocent man has been executed. A child is suffering because of a cutback in Medicaid funding.

   Diana Gallaher (with me at left) about whom I wrote last week as an example of humility, is someone whose actions continue to teach. She is one who doesn't preach about compassion, she lives it.

   A few years back, concerned about hunger and poverty, she moved out of her comfortable lodgings to occupy low-cost housing. She endured southern summers without air conditioning and lived where safety, especially for women, is a constant issue.

   Simultaneously, she worked for a charity that sought better food for the poor. After that, she worked for an agency that pursued justice for Medicaid recipients. Now she helps the disabled.

   I often think about demonstrating. Diana does.

   Protests, of course, can be hazardous. In the course of demonstrating in favor of a state income tax (Tennessee has none) she was confronted by a vicious crowd of counter protesters.

   One opponent stood directly on her feet to block her. Another blared a horn in her ear so loudly it caused her hearing problems.

   As a peaceful demonstrator how do you engage the face of violence? Amid the noise, Diana opened her sacred ears to the voice of Love.

   "The woman standing on my feet is more than her angry face," she told herself. "The man before me is more than his blaring horn."

   She talked with the horn blower. "I heard his real pain," she wrote me. "He was a plumber who hated taxes because he could not make ends meet.  I remember the pain in his voice, not the pain experienced from his ear-piercing horn.  I am thankful that I don't think of him first as the man with the extremely annoying noisemaker."

   In the midst of fear Diana sought out the better angels of her enemy. She is "thankful" she found them. 

   Caregivers encounter troubled people every day. Sick people are often cranky. Family members, acting from fear, can become instruments of hate. Can we, like Diana, find compassion (rather than pity) for our "enemies?"

   I offer praise to Diana for her sacrifices. "I don't deserve it," she writes.

   But, as they "limp away from the struggle," the compassionate carry a sweet secret. Love provides Grace.

-Reverend Erie Chapman 

Photo Meditation: I made the image at left in New Orleans while exploring the impact of photographing my left hand inside a horn-like sculpture. (Copyright Erie Chapman 2011)

Days 310-311 Uncovering Basic Goodness

"Learn to laugh and cry with a gentle heart." -Trungpa Rinpoche

Note: weekend essay offered by guest contributor ~liz Sorensen Wessel

There are times when the shadow of doubt creeps over me. This leads me to a very vulnerable place in which, I feel exposed, as though the shameful secret of my unworthiness is being revealed to the world.

 Thoughts like “now that they know the truth about me...” bubble up to the surface. Wow, what a painful place to return to… is this what it was like as a kid? I can’t help but wonder. Yet, this is a space that I would much rather avoid and never re-visit again. After all, as a middle-aged, aging woman, can’t I move beyond adolescent self-esteem issues? I hear a chastising voice within say, “I mean really, Liz get over it and let’s move on”, as I dissolve in a pool of embarrassment. Still on some level I know there is more to this than that.

 Yet, in the quiet of the dawn while I sit listening, sometimes dreaded thoughts and painful feelings want to speak out rather intensely. Perhaps, because they have been ignored for too long. Yet, I’ve experienced a Loving presence that is willing to bravely sit with me without judgment.

 Although I don’t think it was outwardly noticeable,  inwardly this has been a challenging week for me. My anxiety grew as I took an honest look at myself and I felt a big sense of disappointment. Then in a quiet whisper the Holy Spirit encouraged me to have a little self-compassion, to look without condemnation.

 This evening I sought out Pema Chodron’s wisdom on YouTube.  It helps to know that in one way or another, we all have struggles and that perhaps beneath the surface we are not so different after all. In this video, Pema speaks about how we so often cover over our basic goodness with less attractive behaviors. She encourages us  to touch the heart of our grief, shame, rage, jealousy, loneliness, etc. To look with a gentle heart, to honestly see your/myself without giving up on ourselves. Take a few minutes to watch this video because her helpful insights will give you back a tenfold gift.

Days 308-309 - Walking Humbly

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   The greatest passion of my dear friend Diana Gallaher is justice. She has campaigned for and served the poor and vulnerable all of her life and she is a gift of light in this world. 

   When we met recently, we spoke of our worries about passing too harsh a judgment on those who see the world differently than do we. Diana reminded me of the oft-quoted (but never lived enough) passage from Micah 6:8. I offer it today for your reflection, meditation and, perhaps, as something for your prayers.

 "He has told you, O mortal, what is good:  and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

   How hard it is to "walk humbly" (as does Diana) in the presence of those with whom we disagree or who behave in ways we find offensive to our notion of beauty. How challenging it is to live Love as we travel the many tortuous paths of this earth. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Days 306-307 - Trapped

   The great nineteenth century thinker Schopenhauer believed that our lives personify longing. Recently, I felt a strange dose of this longing while trapped in the soul-killing world of a shopping mall. 

   Wiling away two hours walking linoleum-clad corridors (waiting for a pair of glasses to be repaired) I entered a Nordstrom's store. There I discovered suits priced at $3000 and mannequins with sharp points for heads. 

   At the risk of sounding stuffy, I wondered: Do we fight wars so that people can go mall-shopping? Do caregivers save lives so the resurrected can mall-shop?

   Imprisoned amid headless mannequins, I wondered if I could live the rest of my life never re-entering such heartless places. 

   John O'Donohue tells us that Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde" describes "our huge craving for love." Where do we find the answer to such a craving? 

   "The music of Wagner has a magnificent Architecture of longing," O'Donohue writes. Presumably, as we listen to his genius, our longing finds a home where we may lay down our burdens.

   Instead, most of us head for the mall. 

   At the mall, I discovered a father who (perhaps desperate) had decided to keep his young children occupied by showing them a cartoon on his iPhone (below right.)

   Down the linoleum, I spotted a long line. "What are you waiting for?" I asked. "Oh my God, the new iPhone is inside," an excited couple told me. "It is, like, so awesome!"

   How do iPhones and $3000 suits meet our longing? Do they keep us so pre-occupied we can ignore harder life choices? Frankly, I admit that I find it more diverting to watch a football game than to consider the meaning of my life.

   A store front offered an answer. "Couture your life," the pink writing on the store window said (below.)

   "That's it!" I thought. "I'll just 'coutoure my life.' Once my clothes are custom-designed, longing will dissipate like morning fog.'"

   Alas, the store was dedicated to women, as was the one next door where the slogan said, "Burberry your body." Naturally, wrapping oneself in Burberry would, at least, deliver warmth and a feeling of being a cut above those wearing Target specials.

   "I was compelled early to isolate myself, to live in loneliness. When I at times tried to forget all this O how harshly was I repulsed by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing."

   The writer is Beethoven. He longed not for a Burberry or a suit, but for the restoration of his hearing.

   Had there been shopping malls in the mid-nineteenth century perhaps Beethoven could have drowned his sorrows there. Instead, in the midst of complete deafness, he composed his world-changing Ninth Symphony. Who has not felt an answer to longing amid his "Ode to Joy?"

 -Reverend Erie Chapman

Days 304-305 Metanoia: A Change of Heart

"Through the heart, we come to know of the Divine and through the heart the healing Grace of Love manifests in our lives. " ~Fr. Michael Adams

 

 

Note: reflection offered by guest contributor ~liz Sorensen Wessel

A widespread view held in the Christian tradition, is that Jesus endured a horrific death on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice; in payment for the sins of humanity. Yet, there are some who are not completely content with this interpretation of Metanoia as “repentance” as to suffer remorse, or to pay a price for our (perceived) sins. One such person is a friend of mine and these reflections represent a correspondence in which these sacred thoughts were shared (by my friend) in an expansive way.

 Helpful to some is the fifth century Peshitta (Greek New Testament) most likely translated from Greek to Aramaic, the language that Jesus would have spoken in ancient times. “In Matthew 4:17 the Greek translation of Jesus words are 'Repent' for the kingdom of God is at hand. In Aramaic, He would have used the word “tubv” which can mean repent but primarily means to answer, reply, or to return.  It can also mean to come again, flow back or ebb. However, a deeper layer of meaning suggests waiting with something by affinity because it feels like going home.”

 "Where is this home?  In the story of the Prodigal Son, he literally retraces the his steps home to his family, the spiritual meaning describes a change in how one perceives, a change of mind upon reflection, as well as repentance. The ebb connotation of  'tubv' could be seen as a return to within or perhaps among.” (some paraphrasing)

 "Mathew 4:17 is paired with the statement that 'The kingdom of God is at hand' meaning to arrive, touch upon, something that is happening now. The Aramaic word refers to meeting or coming together in the innermost part, the center, or if you will, the heart. Yet this has nothing to do with what we usually call 'mind' or 'ego.' A change of ego thought, which might be seen as a flow of reformation as in New Years resolutions, is to simply exchange one set of illusions for other illusions. There is no real change in the sense of resolutions but what Jesus is getting at is a turning around, a response whose form astonishes or strikes one to the core.  It suggests a process that flows from within to without, a manifestation of our true Self in God.”

 No doubt, the official Christian version of the bible reflects the radical love of Jesus. “Jesus' teachings were not only revolutionary but subversive to ego thought, which His believers were mostly stuck in, so Jesus resorted to telling parables.  In Mark 4:10-12, Jesus speaks of being forgiven, which in Aramaic means to be restored to ones original state, or to be set free.  Jesus is hopeful that in time, like a delayed reaction, the parables meaning will hit you and I in the heart enabling us to let go of ego thought, the past, our 'sins', which is the real meaning of forgiveness.”

Personally, this concept of Metanoia is very meaningful to me because it is freeing and absent of  guilt. A spring bubbling up with hope that we will recognize ourselves in God, and to see  each person we meet as ourselves; to Love our neighbor as ourselves and to know the  joy of being  One in the Great Spirit.

I leave you with this song called The Colors of My Heart by Sharon Burch

note: mandala by ~liz

 

Days 302-303 - Love Index

    Perhaps, you can see the love that flows between my son and his son in this photograph. It can be sensed, but never quantified.

   A former board member at OhioHealth, the ten-hospital system of which I was founding president, thought otherwise. For him, what mattered is what could be counted and he loved to play the role of a curmudgeon. A divorce lawyer, Jack Chester (recently deceased) had also served in the state legislature and loved politics.

   He was trained to argue. But, he was also good at recognizing when he was "beaten."

   One day, Jack stopped me in the hall and gave me his usual accusatory gaze. "All of the focus you've got on loving care is wonderful," he said, "but what does it really do for the hospital?" 

   "It's our mission, isn't it," I responded.

   "I suppose," he replied, "but how do you measure something like love?"

   "You mean if you can't measure it, it doesn't matter?"

   "Exactly," he replied.

   A lot of people who work in organizations think like this. In their eyes, everything is quantifiable.

   To be fair, the other extreme - where measurement is totally disregarded - is equally unwise.

   My effort to answer Jack's question continued. It was as if he thought we should have a love index on which we would calculate doses of love doled out and then measure the effectiveness of each dose.

   "Do you love your four kids?" I asked him.

   "Of course," he said.

   "How much do you love them?"

   "A lot," he said.

   "How much is 'a lot'?"

   He stared back at me. For once (the only time I ever saw this) he was speechless.

   "I know you love your kids, Jack. You can't measure it, but it matters most, doesn't it."

   We all know that love is the most important and immeasurable power there is. Yet, we continually try to quantify it as if its value could be laid out on a spread sheet and totaled up. 

   We do, of course, have an idea of what Love looks like. We see it in gestures, eyes, efforts to help. But, we can't count up its value to us.

   Many hospitals use "mission measurement tools." But, Love cannot be forced or its genuineness quantified anymore than we can calculate the power of God. The biggest value of such measurement tools is not their accuracy but that they focus attention on loving care. And where attention goes, energy flows.

   Loving care matters least when it is offered in order to reach some kind of quantitative target. The question is not "how much" love we give. The question is are we living it?

   We can't get paid to love. We can only live to love. 

-Erie Chapman

Cellphone photo- father and son - copyright Erie Chapman 2011

Days 299-301 - The River of Atonement

    Light and dark jumble the river of our lives. We navigate the currents as best we can. The wisest of us know that we need help.

   The Judeo-Christian tradition offers various pathways to atonement and renewal. Jews seek to rediscover light through Yom Kippur. Christians seek relief through rituals and sacraments that include communion, confession, baptism and the salvific Christian narrative. 

   Our search for light means we are all afraid of the dark. Finding light means we have already seen darkness. 

   How do we understand our desire for atonement? How do we enter the river of light?

   The cause of death is life.

   During our life, we live on the air above and the earth below. But we are primarily water.

   Water always connects - from clouds to earth (and back again), from lake to ocean, from cup to lips. Rivers run through our earth bringing nourishment to some and floods to others.

   Sailing the ocean of worldly desire, our spirit discovers its own thirst.

   We may not understand that the River of Atonement is always flowing through us. 

   Water can cool the fiercest fires of our lives. In the wash of sacred water lives an atonement that enables a new direction.

   Only the River of Atonement can truly slake our spiritual thirst. Only God's living water can turn our darkest desires towards Love's light.

   We recognize that we have wronged others. "We may not have fulfilled our great potential, or we may have misused the soul's energy given to us for a higher purpose," Rabbi Yitzchok Tiechtel writes. In preparation for Yom Kippur, Jews are called to "make amends" to those they have wronged, and to express gratitude for the certainty of God's forgiveness. 

   How do we ensure our soul runs true from its source? Atonement forms a foundation that strengthens when we take responsibility and open our hearts to receive God's Love. 

   We may then begin anew.

   There is nothing harder then to take a new path in life, a path that may look unfamiliar, unattainable and unappealing.

   Those that go beyond apology to continuous acts of loving kindness are the lucky few who enjoy both the River of Atonement and the refreshment that comes only by embracing God's Love.

   How hard. How crucial to life.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph: Currents Study #1 - copyright Erie Chapman 2011

Days 297-298: JC Has Just Arrived!

 Note: Weekend essay by guest contributor ~liz Sorensen Wessel

I had an extraordinary week, one that has left me more aware of the subtle divine presence that is always in our midst. A synergy unfolded throughout the week that effervesced and overflowed with positive high energy. Could it really be true that I am speaking of our Joint Commission (JC) survey? I don’t mean to imply that our survey process was stress free. It certainly had its moments of intensity but this experience intermingled with all my encounters of a busy work week were deeply gratifying on many levels.

 When our colleague checked the JC website Wednesday morning, as she had done for several months, the announcement was there, the surveyors would be arriving in 30 minutes. Calls began to go out to notify our teams. We had been anticipating this day and we were ready to greet our seasoned surveyors with hospitality.

One of the first tasks I needed to do was to cancel my participation in two off-site gatherings with colleagues from across our Health System. I sent an e-mail message stating, “JC has just arrived! I’m sorry but I will not be able to attend the meetings." I received a response back saying not to worry and that they would be thinking of us. Then an afterthought message popped up, “You do realize that in a mission integration context saying, ‘JC has arrived’ could be interpreted in a whole different manner!” I laughed and half kidding answered, “Oh, but He is here!”

 The surveyors conducted a typical comprehensive three-day tracer methodology survey observing and evaluating our performance in meeting the myriad of standards. The surveyors discovered throughout our ministry a culture of compassion and excellence in service. Oh how sweet are the fruits of everyone's labor! Yet, what astonished me most was the invisible spiritual energy that enfolded and connected us all. I am still shaking my head because I’ve never experienced something like this in a survey. Perhaps, this was because all traces of fear were superseded by Love’s presence.

 What a blessing to be able to shine a light on all the compassionate dedicated caregivers that serve our community.  An affirmation of all the unseen miracles that occur on a daily basis.  Caregivers whether behind the scenes or directly using their hands to heal, help to make Love manifest in our world.

 Watercolor by ~liz

Note: To pass on the Journal to other caregivers, we would be grateful if you might post our link on your Facebook page or in other ways you find appropriate. The link is www.journalofsacredwork.typepad.com . Thank you so much.

Days 295-296 - Your Life's Song

“I’ve read of a tribe in Africa who lived their entire lives in the presence of their own deep song." Suzin Green

    Imagine your life as a song. What pitch and tone and notes make up its verses? How do you discover your song?

   In the tribe to which Ms. Green refers, there is a ritual. When a mother believes she is ready for motherhood, "She goes into the bush to listen," Green reports. The prospective mother then waits to hear "the song of her unborn child."

   This gorgeous ritual presumes that we all have "a life song" that lives in the air even before our birth. Our mother can wait to sense this song and, as she hears it, she recognizes the holy vibration of life on the verge of arriving on this earth.

   Next, she honors what she hears by sharing this music with her husband. "Making love, they sing together welcoming the new soul to their home."

   If we ever wonder about ways to weave spiritual value around new life, it is rituals like these that, when discovered and applied in our culture, can prove a precious welcome that precedes baptism. Such a ritual can be adapted to any faith tradition - praying over a pregnancy as a way of honoring the formation of a new being.

   As Kahlil Gibran wrote a century ago, "Our children are not our children..." This tribal ritual affirms recognizing that each being has its own song. We raise our children as ours. Yet, the wise parent appreciates the unique soul that lives apart from parents.

   Who, besides ourselves, sings our song? The tribal ritual continues as the parents now teach the song of the newborn to the village and "all join together singing as the child is born."

   This sense of community reinforces the communal nature of the best kind of child rearing. We are all children of God and this tribal ceremony reinforces our role as each other's "keepers."

    "Throughout each person’s life their song is sung at every passage and finally, too, their passage into death," Green reports.

   I can only wonder how some aspects of this ritual might further enhance the meaning of our time with the sick. For, in our culture, caregivers are often the first ones present at birth and the last present as the final life song is sung.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Note: To pass on the Journal to other caregivers, we would be grateful if you might post our link on your Facebook page or in other ways you find appropriate. The link is www.journalofsacredwork.typepad.com . Thank you so much.

Photograph - Mother & Baby Nursing - copyright Erie Chapman 2010

Days 292-294 - "Dark Beauty"

    In 1998, I interviewed a cancer survivor prior to the taping of my national television show, "Life Choices with Erie Chapman." One question I asked her was whether she resented her diagnosis and the subsequent horrors of chemotherapy.

   Her answer startled me. "Cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me," she said. "It has been such a wonderful teacher.

   Pain is always an expensive teacher. Why is it so hard for the rest of us to listen to what our agonies illuminate for us?

   "Beauty is not all brightness," John O'Donohue writes. "In the shadow lands of pain and despair we find slow, dark beauty."

   So long as we maintain a shallow notion of beauty as all flowers, smiles and light, it will be difficult to understand what both O'Donohue and the cancer patient understand. Illness is ugly. And yet illness can illuminate gorgeous gifts that lie beneath pain.

   O'Donohue invites us to rethink our notion of wounds as only situations where skin is torn and the sensitive tissue within is exposed. What if, he suggests, we think of a wound as "the place where much of the hidden pain of the body surfaces."

   In illuminating "dark beauty," this great poet and essayist references the harrowing journey every artist travels in order to mine great gold from the cave of great pain. "The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling...a beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words or music emerged equal to the hunger and desperation at its heart."

   The more we are willing, as caregivers, to face into our own pain, the more likely we are able to heal as caregivers. The more we turn away, the greater the danger that we will become hardened to the needs of others.

   Twenty-three years ago, I didn't immediately understand how a cancer patient could describe her illness as a gift. The subsequent agonies of my own life have taught me she was right.

   Every one of us has suffered. What if we choose to remember our pain as something we may study as if to prepare us for our next test - a time of pain that will surely come?

   Perhaps, as we reflect, we will see for the first time, the "slow, dark beauty" that hides in the shadows of our pain.

-Erie Chapman

Note: To pass on the Journal to other caregivers, we would be grateful if you might post our link on your Facebook page or in other ways you find appropriate. The link is www.journalofsacredwork.typepad.com . Thank you so much.

Photograph Erie Chapman 2011

Days 290-291 "I Want to Capture Your Hearts" Mahatma Gandhi

Note: Weekend reflection offered by guest contributor, ~liz Sorensen Wessel

"I want to capture your hearts, I don't want to receive your claps. Let your hearts clap in unison in what I am saying and I think I shall have finished my work."  -Gandhi

 The United Nations has degreed October 2, as the International Day of Non-Violence; the birth date of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (born 10/2/1869 – assassinated 01/30/1948). Gandhi  led the Indian independence movement through non-violence and his impassioned belief in the supreme power of Love.

 Known by many as Mahatma (Sanskrit word for Great Soul) Gandhi believed that a culture of peace could not be realized through the controlling rule of any government but rather through transformation of the human heart. “Peace starts with people -- it flows from the hearts of committed women and men. Communities, families, and individuals all have a critical role to play in defeating violence and creating a culture of peace.”

The following is an excerpt from Gandhi's moving speech given on October 7^th 1937, which offers insight into his transformational beliefs.

“There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything. I feel it though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike anything that I perceive through my senses.”

“I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change, a living power that holds all together, that informing Spirit is God. I see God’s Spirit as purely benevolent for I can see in the midst of death; life persists, in the midst of untruth; truth persists, in the midst of darkness; light persists. Hence, I gather that God is life, truth, and light. God is Love.”

Later in his life, when Gandhi was asked if he was a Hindu, he replied, "Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew."

 On this International Day of Non-Violence, may our hearts be continually transformed by the unseen power of Love, so that our homes, workplaces, and communities come together for the common good of all people and the earth.