"There are beautiful wild forces within us./ Let them turn the mills inside and fill sacks/ that feed even heaven." - St. Francis of Assisi
To release the "beautiful wild forces within us" we need to embrace the world with all the exuberance of the woman in the photograph throwing her arms to the heavens.
We know the world suffers. Yet, we can "feed even heaven" if we allow Love's energy to pour through us.
For forty years, I have been a faithful follower of PBS. Their Sunday night programing now includes a remarkable series named "Call the Midwife."
In the show broadcast October 14 a young nurse cares for and also befriends an ancient war veteran who is so astonished and touched by her caregiving that he breaks into tears. When his legs are amputated, he asks the nurse to scratch his phantom limbs. When he dies, she is one of only two people to attend the funeral.
"Beautiful wild forces" can express Love in the most quiet and poignant ways.
In the same BBC program, a white fifty-year old's forty-three-year old white wife becomes pregnant. It will be his first child and he is over-the-moon with anticipation.
The child turns out to be black and not "his" in the biological sense. The wife is terrified about her husband's potential reaction.
The script surprises us. The husband asks to hold the baby and pronounces him beautiful and "the sweetest baby he has ever seen." Love triumphs over possessiveness.
In other words, this quiet and low-key series is entirely about Radical Loving Care. Not the typical soap opera about the sexy young woman yearning for the handsome stud but the lovely young caregiver looking after a man forty years her senior.
In the story, an old person is rescued from degradation and loneliness by the love of a healing caregiver. Her beautiful, wild love lifts not only the elderly man, but each of us.
And as she engages her patient in a sacred encounter, she fills "sacks that feed even heaven."
-Erie Chapman
Photograph: "Celebrating Nature" copyright erie chapman 2012
