Journal of Sacred Work

Days 153-154 - "A Rainbow in Someone's Cloud"

Thank you, Maya

 

A great soul passed from our world this week yet, her glorious Light holds an eternal flame.

Maya Angelou, beloved human being, mother and gracious friend of many.

Although celebrated for her good works as a poet, civil rights activist, writer, actress, and novelist, it was her strength of courage and conviction to speak truth; a truth that courses through the veins of our humanity, which changed us.

In her, images flow on rivers beyond time, to embrace an ocean of Love; one that continues to pulse in cadence with the universal heart of our beloved Maya. 

 

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Artwork by ~liz

Days 149-152 - Memories of Now & Times of Persuasion

"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?' - Mary Oliver

   Poet Roger Housden follows Oliver's piercing line a question that can define your days: "Have you ever longed for a life in which every last part of you is entirely used up?"

   Are fear or ennui causing you to leave your finest gifts hidden until you die?

   In your experience of this moment, what memories are you creating to add to the row of your recollections? Are you breathing full or taking a string of shallow breaths?

   Trained as a trial lawyer, I find that too many of my memories have involved advancing my views.

   I continue to practice the ethic of my profession even though I put aside the active practice of law decades ago. Advocacy has been as useful to me in running hospitals as it was in courtrooms.  

   Advocacy can be just as useful if you engage in dialogues of persuasion rather than monologues of making points. My son, a noted Boston trial attorney, offered a reflection. It is hard-mined gold I pass along to you.

   If your sole purpose is to make your point, you will likely fail, he advises. The problem with "point-making" is that it advances your agenda and ignores theirs. 

   If your goal is to persuade consider not your point but their point of view. 

   Try to win an argument and you will lose what matters. I have sometimes impressed myself with how brilliantly I have argued my position only to discover that I alienated the person before me. 

   As you create your memories of now, remember what I often forget: The goal in caring relationships  is not to triumph. Humanity is not won with legalistic reasoning.

   Love cares nothing about winning. 

  -Erie Chapman 

Photograph: "Picket Fence" erie chapman

Days 146-148 - The Heart Remembers

[*Essay by Liz Sorensen Wessel]

Take This Hand  

On the day when our soldiers took their stand, 
leaving behind them their life, their love; a 
voice inside said "this is my wish that you
defend my shores till peace returns." 

So, take this hand, it is broken, crippled for 
you, your life to protect, every time that you 
look, a Memorial you'll see, for unto to you,
I gave my all. 

Let each person give thought to where I've been, leaving behind them criticism and condemnation, for where I've been, it brought tears and fear yet, inside I knew, that peace would return. 

So, take this hand, it has been shattered, 
broken for you, your life to protect, every time 
that you see me, a Memorial you'll see, for unto to you, I gave my all. 

To each and every person that gave of themselves during time of conflict, I dedicate this to you, for you truly have given your all, for each of us.

By J. Mabury, a twenty year veteran with the Army (retired 1976).

 

   During war, how many letters have been written to those who anxiously wait at home and hope for their loved one’s safe return? The harsh reality of war shreds any illusion of endless tomorrows and with the poignancy of life’s precious nature people find the courage to live love wholeheartedly and to profess their love unequivocally.

The hand that wrote the above letter was my uncle Jim to his sister, Elizabeth (my mom) during World War II. How happy she must have been to receive an answered prayer from her older brother; to know that he was alive, at least for the moment. What joy to discover he had also seen her husband, Phil while they were both serving in the chaos overseas.

My mother has told us the following story that my dad never chose to disclose. My father was drafted and my grandfather, who was described as a pacifist, did not wish to see his son ship off to war. He was desperate to save his only child from the perils and carnage he was about to encounter. It seems that my grandfather had a connection with a high ranking officer in the military and he arranged a meeting with him. This general offered my dad a chance to avoid military service. To this my dad replied, “I think I will take my chances with the other boys.”

My parents were soon married and dad reported for duty. Elizabeth and Phil would not see each other again for four years. My father was a medic in the Army and he served at the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke of the war. Yet, in his last days of life I caught a glimpse os some of what he must have gone through while he relived some distressing flashbacks.

As his father before him, my dad sent off his first born son, Philip to serve in Vietnam War. Today my heart remembers both my father and my eldest brother, with love and gratitude.

Is there someone you wish to give tribute to today? We invite you to share your heart’s remembrance.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

 I leave you with the following video from veteran, Melvin Amrine. Please click on the URL in my comment below.

 

Days 139-143 - The Shape of Soft

   When you entered this hard world the first thing you sought was soft. After your voyage through the birth canal that is what your newborn self wanted: your mother's breasts, her rounded touch, her cradling arms, her body-warmed milk.

   You never lose your yearning for what the kind earth can offer you. Thus there are the pillows of sleep, the lullabies of the moon, your fascination with clouds, the appeal of dawn's light. 

   As John O'Donohue told us, "Light is always more fragile at the threshold." So were you in your first moments. So will you be in your last breaths. And in the raw moments when illness returns you to a brittle state your body and soul will scream for soft. 

   Injury is the essence of hard. Illness thins the cushion between you and the jagged blades of agony. 

   Hospitals are lined with hard surfaces and harsher light. Caregivers must keep curing environments sterile and filled with enough light to see where the scalpel must cut and the needle needs to go. 

   Yet, healing (beyond curing) occurs in settings where hard competence is balanced with soft compassion.

   You can buy treatments. But, healing cannot be purchased.

   Just as Beauty cannot be acquired Love cannot be owned. 

   Love, as God, is an experience not a thing, a question not an answer, a continuous exploration not a final discovery.

   Love is wild and beyond taming.

   Love tamed is Love drained.

   Possessive parents and jealous lovers are always surprised to discover this deep truth. 

   Today, you can soften life with your hands, your eyes and with the kinder tones in your voice. Today, let Love dance through you in all her willd and gentle beauty. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph, "Elaine soft with child," 2009

Days 137-138 The Blessings of Light

Sometimes, when I am empty of all my reserve, I find myself in an uncomfortable zone of fragility, feeling inadequate and unlovable. I vacillate between a voice of calm reason that offers encouragement and the fear that I am on the verge of falling apart.

Does this make you uncomfortable just reading about this awkward place of vulnerability? It does me, I would much rather push it all away.

But then I catch myself, and notice my resistance to being present to tend to these inner trembling’s. After all they are only feelings and if offered loving awareness are bound to float by like clouds in May.

It all gets a little muddled but on some level I believe that acceptance is the greatest gift we can offer one another. On the other side of gloom is this lovely Light and my heart swells with gratitude for your presence in my life.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Artwork by ~liz

Days 132-136 - Love At Your Window

"God comes to your window,/ all bright light and black wings,/ and (sometimes) you're just too tired to open it." - Dorianne Laux

   Fatigue is the challenge every lover faces. You have worked two shifts and want to drink in the Love at the window, but "you're just too tired to open it."

  Another transcendent poet, Mary Oliver, offers the kind of solace that may help you whenever exhaustion and fear arrive during your journey with your partner, Radical Loving Care.

   Oliver writes of Jesus with the fisherman amid the storm - how he "stood up in the boat/ and the sea lay down,/ silky and sorry."

   What a relief to those in the boat. Jesus calmed the sea for them.

   Another occasion for hunger arose as the multitudes awaited food. "Nobody knows what the soul is," Oliver writes. "It comes and goes/ like the wind over the water/ sometimes, for days,/ you don't think of it."

   It is amid your body's exhaustion that your own soul may seem far away. Where is Love's comfort hiding?

   It is then that you may forget how Jesus faced the storm, how "he rose and talked to it/ tender and luminous and demanding/ as he always was...."

   Of course, you cannot calm storms. You can only calm yourself. You can let the holy spirit touch your hands and heart. 

   Elusive as she may often seem, Love is always at your window and mine.

   Recover your soul's humility. Tap the window ajar so you can let Love heal.  

-Reverend Erie Chapman

 

Photograph "Man in Ocean" by erie

Days 130-131 Divine Mother

Icons of Mother Mary adorn the improvised alters in many a home, be it a hearth’s mantle, a bedroom nightstand, or a living room wall. She gathers all the hopefulness of our prayers into her soft being and responds with peace.

Mary, constant in her quiet presence listens to our concerns and intercedes on our behalf. She is steadfast in her love, offering many small acts of caring; whether to wipe away a tear, share a kind word of acceptance or patience for our healing.

And when the night is cloudy,

There is still a light that shines on me,

Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.

I wake up to the sound of music

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be,

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be. 

By Paul McCarthy

 

Is it no wonder that we love her so? My mom, has fondly shared through the years, that our grandma prayed to Mother Mary because she always answered.

This weekend, some of us may have the good fortune to be able to gather with our own mothers to express our Love and gratitude. Perhaps, you will sit and hold her fragile hand, even though she may not recognize you. Still others will honor the memory of one so dear in the stillness of your hearts. Conceivably, you have welcomed other women (and men) into your life who bestow this kind of love and nurturance.

Our Divine Mother comes to us in the most surprising ways; cloaked in her glorious mystery. Yet, if we pay attention, she will reveal a vision of Holiness that is without sacrifice or payment of any kind. She shines our purpose, which is to see the world through the Holiness of our essence. In quiet recognition, we begin to see that all that is given is received and nothing can be given away without receiving it in return. In this light our relationship with all of life, takes on new life. 

The following is a blessing for all on this Mother’s Day!

 

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Watercolor by ~liz

Days 125-129 - Private Prayers

"Prayer is an egg./ Hatch out the total helplessness inside." - Rumi (1207-1273)

   Across childhood, my night's sleep was preceded by a ceremony you may have practiced yourself. Kneeling by my bed, my father towering above me, I spoke the old refrain: "Now I lay me down to sleep..."

   When my daugther was a child she would end with a catch-all sentence. Sweeping her hand in a wide arc she would intone: "God bless everyone in the whole wide world."

   If "prayer is an egg," can you hatch it by reciting words drained of meaning by repetition? What are the truest prayers that walk through your heart in your most private moments? 

    What prayers rise up on their own - so powerful that they travel through you like an unstoppable wind?

    Carol Ann Duffy described this wind when she wrote: "Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer/ utters itself. So, a woman will lift/ her head from the sieve of her hands and stare/ at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift."

   What is the difference between your inner and outer prayer life? What sermons do you preach to yourself and how do they affect your life?

   Jesus warned against public prayers spoken to impress others. As my understanding of God has changed so have my private prayers. If, as Jesus says, God already knows your prayers then you can offer gratitude.

   Rumi wrote "Hatch out the total helplessness inside." It is your humility that awakens Love's energy. 

   That is why my prayers include the hope that you and I, in our ministering, will first acknowledge our own wounds. In this way we honor that Love will reach her healing hands into our vulnerability. Only then can we truly help others. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph: Erie Chapman

Days 123 - 124 In Praise of Caregivers Everywhere

Note:  A special thank you to Cheri Cancelliere, author of this luminous essay.

 It seems as if every conversation I have had lately has focused on caregiving. So many are caring for elderly parents and grandparents, sick or disabled spouses, special needs children, new babies or ailing pets. For some Baby Boomers, the challenge might be all of the above.

I have wondered for some time what makes a person a caregiver, for it is surely more than necessity. What makes some people step up to the plate while others seek an escape from the hard realities of neediness and vulnerability? Many of us are natural caregivers. As children, we loved the three legged dog, the one eyed cat, the runt of the litter. From our earliest years, we were sensitive to other children who were shy, different, not picked for the team. As adults, we gravitated to the helping professions of teaching, ministry and healthcare.

Because we care about people, we gravitate to each other for no matter how strong our inclination toward nature or nurture, at some point we have made a choice to live lives of love. In our deepest being, the divine spark of the Imagio Dei whispers, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends” (John 15:13). In this, we value, affirm, honor, and support each other’s choice to care and to love, our sacred work.

We are not more selfless, noble or virtuous than others. We have simply followed our hearts, listened to the still small voice, and made a choice to obey Love. Because love never disappoints, our lives are filled with incomprehensible joy and when we reach the end of our days, we will know the peace of having given our all. In the face of Eternity, our homes, possessions, careers and achievements will not matter, but the hands we have held, tears we have dried, kindness we have shown, and love we have chosen will last forever. We will be there when they take their first step and face their last breath. Our calling truly is sacred work.

Here’s to caregivers everywhere, to those who care for us and each other spiritually, emotionally and physically. Here’s to long days and longer sleepless nights, giving until it hurts, and loving until there is nothing left but the One who loves us all. I celebrate the choice to love with each of you, my heroes, for ours is the abundant life that Jesus promised.

"Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt 25:37-40).

 ~ Cheri Cancelliere

 

P.S. Happy Birthday to Liz Wessel who consistently encourages and affirms that radical loving care is always the right choice!