The woman in the photograph at left is not posing for my camera. Instead, she is playing the Second Movement of the Beethoven Piano Concerto #5.
She is an image of Beauty married to the music of Beauty. Her lyrical performance is part of my new film, "Alex Dreaming," a movie made to celebrate as many shades of life as I could direct onto the screen.
The documentary "Sacred Work" (www.amazon.com) which I made ten years ago, portrays Beauty in a different way.
The film is suffused with images of caregiving: New-born triplets lifted into the world, a man terminally ill with cancer saying goodbye to this world, a critically sick patient groaning in agony amid the wires, beeps and tubes that populate intensive care units.
The Beauty in images of pain appears in Sacred Encounters where Love meets need.
The triplets are delivered by doctors and nurses who seem as happy as the new mother. One of the nurses caring for the dying patient climbs into bed with him and lets him hug her. Another nurse sheds tears as she discusses her patient's imminent death.
Listening to the heartbreaking moans of the intensive care patient are two nurses, one on either side of the bed. One adjusts I.V.s and struggles to bring physical comfort. The other holds his hand and intones a line that becomes a mantra. "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."
Love blooms in the mysterious heart of the miraculous. She does not move by increments. No measuring stick can calculate or calibrate her energy.
Trying to measure Love is like attempting to snap a picture of God.
Still, we can see Love at work when caregivers bring to the bedside of the suffering the skills to cure and the compassion that brings light into darkness.
The pianist does the same.
They are, each of them, profiles of Radical Loving Care.
-Erie Chapman
Photograph: "Kelsi Playing Beethoven" copyright erie chapman 2012
