Journal of Sacred Work

Days 334-335 - How "Empty" Becomes "Full" - The Impact of Expectations

   We expect a lot from art. We want it to inspire us. Yet, most of us overlook that truth that to enjoy the best art we need to make an effort. No art can reach us unless we discover how to be open to it. 

   The photograph portrays a dying leaf. If it is seen as only that, we may experience the image as "empty."

   How does this image (or any other) "fill" you? That depends on how you choose to experience it.

   We expect a lot from self-help books. Too often, we harbor a sweet expectation that the wisdom of "masters" will lift us to enlightenment.

   No writer, speaker or soothsayer can do this. Darn it!

   What the wise can do is point us in the right direction. They can guide us along our path to enlightenment. To discover this we need to walk (not run) down that path.

   The constant irony is that the enlightened journey leads in, not out. Society says otherwise. But, enlightenment (as both Jesus and the Buddhists teach) comes from within.

   The second most striking thing? To become "full" we must become as "empty" as we can.

   Our world view is clogged by so many wants and things that Love must struggle to make its way through our hearts.

   After decades of reflection, I am closer to understanding the idea of how empty becomes full (and vice versa.) Yet, my path to live this understanding takes more backward steps than it does forward ones.

   Ego is the enemy of Love. 

   Caregiving points us away from ego and towards Love's enlightenment. Crucial is that caregiving means the care we give to each other whether we are actively ill or not.

   It is the human experience that needs constant nurturing. 

   This is the energy behind Radical Loving Care. It is ten years since I wrote this book. The concepts are as valid to me (and to more than fifty thousand readers) now as they were then.   

   The teachings point the way. The stories we tell take us into the place where Love lives.

   The more we serve others, the more we are emptied of the noise of our desires. The more we let go of expectations the more Love beautifies our hearts.

   Easy words. The reason it is so hard to live Love is that our ego's shout otherwise.

-Erie Chapman 

Photograph: Late Autumn Leaf - copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 331-333 - Action & Inertia

"...things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard." -The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

    Something in me considers inactivity to be immoral. Unless I am "doing" something, I feel worthless.

   Of course, this flies in the face of my own philosophy that our worth is not dependent upon what we do.

   Sometimes, when I listen for inspiration to write a Journal essay I hear nothing. It's then that I feel have to push - sometimes hard. 

   Today Richard Feynman provided the help with his terrific book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Ironically, in my state of inertia, the first page I turned to addressed exactly that condition.

   The static bicycle spokes in the photograph seem to move. Why do some things appear in motion and others inert? Why do some people accept what appears to be a near-static life and others are constantly moving and sometimes innovating.

   Activity, of course, can be mindless rather than mindful. Many of us find it so hard to change a pattern that we stay in the same one every day.

   Indeed, doctors sometimes advise that staying "regular" helps our health. Supposedly, our bodies, like machines, prefer steady patterns.  

   Caregivers must follow protocols. This is good. But, it can also be stultifying.

   The heart does not listen to protocols. Healers must often break rules to find new solutions to complex problems. Artists who follow the status quo rarely create great art.

   We need protocols - patterns that keep us in a steady state. We also need to listen for and sometimes nudge ourselves along so we may find new answers when old ones don't work.

   In other words we need balance.    

   Balance lives in Love's song. Fear cannot birth Love. Balance comes from letting Love's energy move through us.

   One way to understand Love is to ask: How many of my actions are motivated by fear? How much of my life is guided by anxiety?

   How much of my life is guided by a genuine desire to help others through hearing their need?

   What if, right now, you listened for how you can be a pathway for Love's light?

 -Erie Chapman

photograph: Bike Spokes 2 - copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 329-330 Paraprosdokians

"Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a
sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently humorous.
Winston Churchill loved them." ~Anon

 

Here are a few paraprosdokians from a distinguished cat named Esmae who dreams these up as he gazes out the window of his charming Vermont home.

 

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

 Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

 To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

 I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency, Notify:' I put 'DOCTOR'.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

You're never too old to learn something irrelevant.

They begin the evening news with ‘Good Evening,’ then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure...

 

 

 

 

 

Contributed by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

Photos of Esmae Carr, Vermont 2011 by ~liz

Source: http://peopleplacesandpastimes.com/points-to-ponder/paraprosdokians/

Days 327-328 - Those Who Rekindle Our Light

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."  - Albert Schweitzer  

  Our co-contributor to this Journal, Liz Wessel, provided Schweitzer's quote. She is the kind of light in this world who, when we are weary of caregiving, ignites the flame within us. Her steadfast compassion touches hearts every day.

   The prayer of thanks I say today is for those who rekindle "the flame within us." Without these illuminating people, so much of our lives would be gray. 

   During our hardest chapters our light dims so deeply we may feel we can never recover. 

   The people who help us are the ones who, intentionally or randomly, remind us that Love is always present and always available to our lives.  For darkness comes when we forget Love's nearness.

   What a gift to be loved. What gratitude we may feel for the inspiration of someone we may not know who inspires us by the way they live Love in this world.

   Who has rekindled your hope? Who are we helping to rediscover Love?

   Today, we may celebrate the chance we have to rekindle the fires of life in another by offering the spark of love - a touch, a look, an example, a word, a sharing.

   Something that signals that hope is a ship on the horizon. And it is sailing our way. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 324-326 - "When I Was The Forest"

[NOTE: After more than six years, we are trying out an amended title for this Journal adding the phrase Radical Loving Care up front. Our work is best known by this phrase yet we still wanted to retain the Journal name so they have been combined. Our top line has also been changed from red to black as we seek out design alternatives.]

  When I was the stream, when I was the forest, when I was still the field, when I was every hoof, foot, fin and wing, when I was the sky itself, no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever wondered was there anything I might need, for there was nothing I could not love. - Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

     Meister Eckhart is one of the great mystics of history. The radical nature of his writings so provoked the Catholic Church of the time that they suppressed his work. Much of it was not discovered until the 1880s. More recently, the Dominican Order has sought to establish that Eckhart was an exemplary Christian mystic and priest.

   It is easy to see why Eckhart's work scared the reactionary church of that time. For example, consider the passion in this lines of his: "...Communion, first seek that from your lover's soul before offered from a priest."

   The manufactured skin that wraps our cities and suburbs and cars and bodies can seal us off from the truth of the earth. Even religion can blind us into thinking that God lives only in the soaring cathedrals we build for worship.

   Seven centuries ago, Eckhart saw things otherwise: "Is this not the holy trinity: the firmament, the earth, our bodies? And is it not an act of worship to hold a child and till the soil and lift a cup?"

   The more we seal ourselves off from the earth the more we distance ourselves from life. Love rises from the ground, wraps the trees, massages the oceans, stirs the fires of love and paints our hearts with the only colors that are real.

   "One day," Eckhart wrote, "the wind will show its kindness and remove the tiny pathes that cover your eyes, and you will see God more clearly than you have ever seen yourself."

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Forest Embrace" - copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 322-323 Back Home

Recently, my son John and I had an opportunity to go visit my mom in Vermont. Nearing her 97th year, mom's hearing has diminished to the point of near deafness, which makes quality conversations more difficult, but not impossible. However, I must confess that I felt perplexed at times, as I wondered how to get beyond the communication barriers. One conduit I discovered was the realm of silent films. We watched as Charlie Chaplain cajoled us with his comical shenanigans.

During my visit, I rebound the cover of a very old autograph book from my mo m’s junior high school days (dated 1929). She seemed elated with her treasure as she turned the pages and reminisced a little about golden days.  Endearingly, she read aloud a few inscriptions,

To you our latest baby, our jewel and delight, I wish you to know, and I don’t mean maybe, your efforts have succeeded in making our home so bright. Signed, Papa  

Dearest Elizabeth, The sweetest wish I know, God bless you! Signed, Mother

Dear Beloved, Lila Rub-a-Dub, Pookey, Child-de- dear, Lolita, Laura Lee- Lee, Enchanting One, My pet, how I love her, Sweet and Lovely. I have been searching for a name as nice as my darling Lila Ariel. Signed, Your Loving Sister Margaret.  

We read all the sweet sentiments from friends and teachers. Afterwards, Mom said, “Be sure this does not get thrown away when I am gone.”  I reassured her that we (my siblings and I) would be trustworthy keepers of the book.

We ventured further down the path of reminiscing. Mom's laughter mixed with tears as her story unfolded. It seems, her sister Margaret sent little “Lila” on a mission to the corner store with instructions to bring her back an ice cream topped with whipped cream. On this hot summer day, Mom carefully carried the desert but could not resist a taste. Upon her arrival home the whip cream was all gone.  When confronted by her sister’s chagrin, Mom sorrowfully exclaimed, “but it fell into my mouth!”

  Morning arrived with the bittersweet ache that accompanies goodbye. My son John and I took a few pictures to capture the moment in time. The culmination of our time together crystalized Love’s essence in our awareness.

 My brother had busied himself making food for our journey, sandwiches and homemade thumbprint cookies, warm from the oven. His love does not manifest in words but rather in thoughtful gestures.

As we drove off down the road, my son John said to me, “Ah, just when I settled in and was having a good time, it was time to leave.”  

We left, knowing we were somehow better for having come. For even when we love impecfectly, we still love.

The Eyes of Jesus -By John O’Donohue

 I imagine the eyes of Jesus were harvest brown,
the light of their gazing suffused with the seasons;
the shadow of winter, the mind of spring,
the blues of summer, and amber of harvest.
A gaze that is perfect sister to the kindness the dwells in his beautiful hands.
The eyes of Jesus gaze on us, stirring in the heart's clay
the confidence of seasons that never lose their way to harvest.
This gaze knows the signature of our heartbeat, the first glimmer
from the dawn that dreamed our minds,
the crevices where thoughts grow long before the longing in the bone
sends them towards the mind's eye,
The artistry of the emptiness that knows to slow the hunger
of outside things until they weave into the twilight side of the heart,
A gaze full of all that is still future looking out for us to glimpse
the jeweled light in winter stone,
Quickening the eyes that look at us to see through to where words
are blind to say what we would love,
Forever falling softly on our faces, his gaze plies the soul with light,
laying down a luminous layer,
Beneath our brief and brittle days until the appointed dawn comes
assured and harvest deft
To unravel the last black knot and we are back home in the house that we have never left.

~liz Sorensen Wessel

Above photo of mom's house by my niece, Lisa Gayle

Days 320-321 - The Texture of Sacred Encounters

   The photograph at left is of an electric meter box. A few light touches during editing transformed it into a pattern of purple textures that resemble evening clouds. 

   To the world, texture is a physical word. To the loving, texture helps describe the feel of sacred encounters. 

   My relationship with my children has textures. It began when I held them as babies - their skin, the scent of their foreheads, the sound of their first cries. All of these textures mattered because they were informed by Love.  

   The four decades since then have created memories that play today amid our reunion embraces and the chances I have, now, to encounter my children's children. 

   My relationship with my work has another range of textures. In courtrooms, I recall things like the touch of the counsel table as I waited to deliver a closing argument to a jury. More deeply, I remember the feel of my daily and nightly encounters with work that I loved.

   I remember my handshakes with patients and the way they looked up at me from their sick beds wishing, perhaps, that I was their doctor or nurse instead of the administrator. The only healing I could give them was reassurance.

   It is the resonance of those reassurances with both them and with my fellow employees that made the texture of those times worthwhile. If I had hated those days, the textures would feel cold as chains. Since I loved those days, they lift my life. 

   When Love is present, touch is different. Sacred encounters have a texture that only the presence of Love can provide. 

   It's the difference between a superficial "hello" to a stranger and a sincere "how are you?" from a caregiver to a person in need.

   The proof of this comes by considering the difference between the touch you give to someone you love and the brush-by that happens when you bump someone on the street. The first encounter means everything. The second means nothing. 

   Metaphorical thinking allows us to dwell in the spirit of encounters. To think of Love as having textures, colors, tones, aromas, even tastes, enables each of us to embrace life as sacred rather ordinary, as filled with Love rather than informed by hate, as something whose textures our souls can feel.

   It's almost as if Love were made of silk we could drape around us. Something we could wear to celebrate life.

 -Erie Chapman

 Photograph: Gray Metal #2 - copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 317-319 - Abstraction & Orientation

   Why must our minds immediately try to "make sense" of whatever we see? Of course, it is because we need to be oriented to the world. 

   Without orientation, we lose balance. Physically, dizziness can be paralyzing. Emotionally, we need to orient ourselves to the world in order to relate to it. 

   Windows are now required in hospital ICUs because immobile, intubated patients who cannot orient to their environment (including time of day) can become psychotic.

   But what about the abstract? We can measure the quantity of a drug. Can we measure out Love in milligrams or cubic centimeters? Can we photograph it, put a frame around it, and hang it on the wall?

   If we try to divide up love into amounts, to parcel it, have we blocked Love's presence?

   If Love is an abstraction, what does it look like? I took a series of photographs of ordinary scenes along the alley behind my office. 

   Do we need to let go of trying to figure out what it is and determine how we feel. Can our spirit embrace what it cannot understand?

-Erie Chapman

All photographs copyright erie chapman 2012

 

Bike #2 copyright erie chapman 2012

 

 

 

truck #1 copyright erie chapman 2012

 

 

Days 315-316 The Only Truth I Know

"Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths." -Muhammad Ali

 Trees don't question, they receive water's blessing and simply soak up nourishment into their being.

Humans often think, if only we try a little harder and harder still; the pieces might fit together securely. How fool hearty for us to ignore, in our determination to be in control.

It is easy to miss what we cannot see, to think we are set apart. Yet, all the while Love’s invisible energy is present, awaiting our notice.

Tune in and listen to this gentle voice of truth; your truth, mine.

Why resist? rather than acknowledge, even  befriend the underlying stream of emptiness.  

I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,
and your closest friend, whom you can never know,
blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,
and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.
The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day
and makes you feel so fantastically happy.

I am the one you have loved for many years.
I walk beside you all day and look intently at you
and put my mouth against your heart
though you're not aware of it.

I am your third arm, your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you cannot accept,
and who can never forget you.

-By Rolf Jacobsen (1907 - 1994)
English translation by Robert Bly, original version is in Norwegian

Love is.

~liz Sorensen Wessel

 Vermont Trees by ~liz

Days 313-314 - Organizing Love

   Radical Loving Care is the actually the organization of Love. Love's needs to be structured and disciplined so that it can express itself in the world.

   Nature organizes the expression of Beauty into a flower. The flower is not Beauty. It is an expression of Beauty.

   The care given by the Good Smaritan is not Love. It is an expression of Love.

  The decision you make today to let Love flow through you into a person in need will not be Love itself. It will be your choice to let go of your agenda so that Love may makes its transit through you and into another.

   This matters because it tells us that Love is like the elements of the earth. The air is free flowing until we sew a sail to catch it - to allow it so move our boat across the lake. 

   Water moves mindless of our needs. We must shape a cup to drink it.

   Beyond that, if we attend to the design of the cup we may catch Beauty in it as well as water. For example, look at how someone shaped water's delivery for many pairs of hands  (photo above.)    

   The earth lies ready but will not feed us until we pick or plant or mix. The earth will shelter us and support our endeavors if we structure buildings to sit on it. 

   Across three decades of leading hospitals, it came clear to me that how we organize our expressions of Love affects Love's power in this world. 

   A hospital, hospice or nursing home can organize itself to deliver services. But Love will find no purchase there unless leaders support the training of caregivers on how to express it. Neither can Love find its way through caregivers hands and into patients hearts unless the healthcare culture is structured to support Love's energy.

  The crucial application of this idea comes when you consider structuring Love's expression through yourself. If my thoughts are patterned to determine what I will get for myself out of each encounter, Love will not appear because the intention underneath transactions is personal gain, not loving service.

   Love enters not by force but by invitation. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: Seven Faucets - copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 310-312 - Ordinary Angels

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” – Flannery O’Connor

    Hurricane Sandy brought horror to the east coast. His winds also stirred the hearts of ordinary angels.

   Love can make for "odd" behavior.

   New York newspapers ran the story of a nurse who evacuated a premature baby from the darkened New York Hospital. She descended nine stories of wet stairs cradling both the baby and his oxygen tank.  "Odd" heroism by an ordinary angel.

    Disasters always bring stories of compassion alongside reports of looting and mayhem.

   My sister Martha (left) who urged me to write about the New York nurse, happens to be an angel herself. Over her thirty years as a receptionist at a large hospital she typically did atypical things to help others.

   For example, sometimes she left her seat behind the reception desk to help a struggling patient or a confused visitor. She lived the kind of compassion we want from caregivers.

   But, it was too much for one of her supervisors. “You’re overdoing it, Martha!” she complained. “Leaving your desk is outside your job description.”

    “I thought we were here to help,” Martha responded.

    “The truth is you are making the other employees look bad,” the supervisor confessed.

    The real truth is that Martha's exceptional loving care made her behavior look “odd.”

    Mother Theresa was ridiculed by some for her efforts to save “the poorest of the poor.” Why bother with the dying?  Why touch “untouchables?”

    Compassion is not a requirement for a medical license. Radical Loving Care is not necessary for nursing certification.

    At a recent medical conference I urged doctors to ask fellow caregivers how they give loving care. “It’s a chance to learn from each other about the core of healing.”

    Afterwards, one physician said to me, “I think it’s a odd to talk about love with nurses,” he said. “It sounds too sexual.”

    Unfortunately, I have heard this complaint before (always from men.) I always wonder how a discussion of loving care could be interpreted as “sexual.” 

    These same worriers may be the ones who demean love, confuse art with pornography and think that a fig leaf should cover the penis on Michelangelo’s David. Perhaps, these cynics also think the Good Samaritan was a fool for helping the wounded stranger.

    Love embarrasses those who either don’t understand it or just don’t want to practice it.

    Love is truth and truth Love. Both are rare.

    Perhaps, that’s why practicing Radical Loving Care can make us look “odd” – and why supervisors sometimes punish the compassionate actions of our ordinary saints.

-Erie Chapman  

Days 307-309 - "The Mysticism of Ordinary Life"

   Liz Wessel shared with me a powerful bit of writing from Father Richard Rohr that includes the following:

   "Everything is profane if you live on the surface of it, and everything is sacred if you go into the depths of it—even your sin. Jesus lived and loved the depths of things, as all mystics do. So the division for the mystic is not between the secular and the sacred, but between the superficial and the profound. Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit, who was an expert at Vatican II, loved to call this “the mysticism of ordinary life.” Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate  Prayer: My deepest me is God!" (emphasis added)

   Banyan trees hold a particular fascination. In some ways, they appear upside down - their roots reaching into the sky instead of digging into the ground. Their complexity reveals depth as well as Beauty.

   Consistent superficiality converts the sacred to sacrilege. Frenetic living blocks us from engaging the holy.

   God is, of course, still there at the surface. But, if that's where we are living, we can't see or experience God's Love. 

   We have the chance to live the profound only if we find the courage and the quiet to live deep - to face into rather than to run away, to embrace rather to flee, to care for the patient in agony rather than to avert our gaze.

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: Banyan Tree #1 copyright erie chapman 2012