Journal of Sacred Work

Days 212-216 - The Quantum Energy in a Smile

   The young fellow with his arms & legs drapped over the tree Tom Sawyer-style is one of the most precious people in the world to me. Yet, even if he were not my oldest grandson I would love that smile of his.

   Almost every one of us carries potential magic in our faces. That is the quantum energy we can generate for ourselves and others simply by shaping our complex range of facial muscles into a smile. 

   As a caregiver you know the power of expressions in illuminating or darkening the life of your patients and fellow caregivers. Love is part of your healing work. 

   1952 was the first year I became aware of how a smile can impact the world stage. That year then-General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower ran for President.

  Red, white and blue "I LIKE IKE" buttons sprouted on lapels and dresses throughout my Westwood Village neighborhood. Every campaign poster & bumper sticker bore an image of the friendliest face I could imagine.

   Ike looked like my grandfather - like many people's grandfathers. I wondered how anyone could not like a person like that? 

   A lot of elements favored Eisenhower's election. Yet, it may have been Ike's smile that insured his victory.

   His opponent, Adlai Stevenson, was probably much smarter and better educated. But, the energy conveyed in Eisenhower's smile lit up the nation.  

   Whether offered to a tiny group or an entire population, smiles transform energy. Try one on right now and watch the light rise. 

-Erie Chapman

Days 210-211: In Simple Ways

 “However many years she lived, Mary always felt that she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow.” ~Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

It is hard to let go of someone you love.

In a children’s novel by Natalie Babbitt called, “Tuck Everlasting” a family is walking along a wooded path and they stop to drink from a stream. Later, the Tuck family grasped that this was no ordinary stream, for the moment they drank the water they stopped aging. No harm could come to them but they were destined to roam the earth forever. In time, they realized some of the unforeseen consequences of being immortal. They felt stuck in the world in a most unnatural way and decidedly it was a fate they wished on no one. This children’s novel was offered to me by my mother’s long time family physician. He suggested I share it with my family and perhaps read it to my mom.

I found reading to my mom an enriching experience as we spent time together in the hospital's garden area. There I began to recount some of my favorite stories that I read as a young girl; “The Secret Garden”, Jane Eyre and of course my mom’s favorite, “The Wind in the Willows.” My sister, Pat has also enjoyed reading to her from a beautifully illustrated book by Beatrice Potter.

Stories open the door to imagination, to a magical, mythical place that connects us to less complicated times. Here we drift into the carefree ease of childhood memories; of long summer days and enchanting evenings aglow with fireflies and crickets song.

Our stories bring us home to the lost parts of ourselves and back to one another. In ancient times, family histories were passed on from one generation to the next through the oral tradition. Jesus used parables so that others might understand spiritual truth.  When we share our stories we relate on a personal level and overcome barriers of separation to create intimacy, connection and communion.

Do you recall the comfort of perching on a grownups lap, enveloped in the arms of a book?

What story is waiting to be discovered in the eyes of the person before you? When caregivers are open to listening they may receive the unique gift of a person's story. 

Stories are one simple way that we can share and extend love. 

 

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandala by ~liz

Photo, Liz with Uncle Bernard

 

Days 204-208 - Second Looking, Second Listening

    How often have you had a friend invite you to a movie and heard yourself say, "I've seen that already." The obvious implication is that if you have "seen" it before why see it again?

   If a movie is exceptional (Annie Hall, Casablanca & Citizen Kane come to mind) than you will likely see more in the second viewing than you did in the first. Freed from tracking the story line you can watch for the light, relish the soundtrack, notice the way the actors speak the words.

   The same is true with a song, particularly a complex piece of classical music. Refuse to listen to Beethoven's Ninth many times and you will deprive yourself of the ever-deepening experience that comes with new hearing.

   What of the "ordinary" things that surround us? When we see a table we identify it and usually move on.

   I walked around my home looking at "overlooked" spaces through a camera lens. Consider the image (left) and the ones below.

   Look around your room right now as you may never have before. Go beyond identifying. Experience.

   After you know a friend's face you may stop seeing them. Look again. What do you see in their eyes today?

   Talk with someone once blind who has come to see, or a sighted person whose eyesight is about to vanish. Ask them how they see.

   If you are a veteran caregiver how do you nourish your healing powers? Look again. Listen again. Touch again.

   Open the eyes of your heart.

-Erie Chapman

   

 Table wheel

 

 

Garage doorway

 

 

 Front Hall Orchids

 

 

Cushions

 

 

 Sofa Study #3

 

Photographs: Erie Chapman, 2014

Days 202-203: A Sacred Prayer

An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break." 
--An ancient Chinese belief

Life comes full circle. This thought comes to mind while I spend a few precious days with my dear, elderly mom. There are lovely patterns that manifest in life. Nature’s intricate designs create a connection between the individual and the whole, the cell and the cosmos,  the I and thou of relationships, the symmetry of snowflake to the wonder of a starlit night. In the turning of seasons we receive the story of creation in the miracle of birth, the sadness of letting go and in the blessings of new life, and so it goes.

Perhaps, too this is why I find meaningful expression in drawing mandalas (Sanskrit word for sacred circle.) In 1998, during a visit to my mom, I seemingly stumbled upon a book by Carl Jung but looking back I recognize it as a synchronous moment.  The colorful mandalas drawn by his patients and Jung himself really caught my attention. Something welled up from deep within and I knew that I would draw mandalas throughout the rest of my life.

The picture above is one of my early mandalas drawn with magic markers and colored pencils. I drew it for my mom. I had not drawn since high school and my mother’s love of my designs nurtured my newly found, heartfelt intention.

This journey has led me here to you and I am grateful to share in the unending stories unfolding somewhere in the middle and leaving us with the mystery of a question rather than any finite answer, and therein lies the Beauty. You are a sacred prayer.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 197-201 - "The Rush of Light" - How Do You Pray?

      Humility is a condition precedent to meaningful prayer. Not even God's Love can penetrate the neon lights of an over-weaning ego.

   How do you think about humility? How does your idea of it affect your prayer life?

   For example, I confess I have prayed for my team to win?  But, why would God's light want to elevate the ego of one side and darken the other? 

   I like how my daughter prayed as a little girl. She listed all the people she wanted to see blessed and then ended with a flourish, "God bless all the people in the whole wide world."

   What could be better?

   The posture of prayer is fascinating. In every faith, people bow in deference to a higher power. Christians often kneel.  Muslims bend their bodies to the ground.

   Hands are typically important. Facing hands touched together are a prelude to entry into a sacred experience.

   The late Riverside Methodist Hospital Chaplain Reverend Bob Davis taught me that open hands at the beginning of prayer signal a willingness (and desire) to receive. John O'Donohue's poems about blessings, one of which is quoted by Liz Wessel in the Journal, offer so much:

...when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found world.”

   For much of my life, I prayed the way my little daughter did. After I graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School in 2002 and received ordination I revisited my practice. 

   When asking for God's blessing for another, I now seek to enter that person's persona - to become another channel of light's entry into my son or daughter or a suffering stranger  (fortunately, "distance" prayers do not require the presence of the other person.) 

   But, prayer is personal. So is your decision to approach it & the world with humility. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Days 195-196 A Blessing for Light

A Blessing for Light by John O’Donohue (To Bless the Space between Us)

Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.

In the glare of neon times,
let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive. 

That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
glimmering in the fugitive light.

When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.

When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear. 

When we love that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found world.”

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Painting by~liz

Days 190-194 - Honoring Sacrifice

"Despite extreme cruelties during interrogation periods and severe maltreatment on a continual basis, Lieutenant Colonel Chapman distinguished himself by his indomitable spirit and dogged tenacity." From Harlan Chapman's Silver Star Citation  

   In spite of the usual speeches and fireworks this past July 4th can we truly appreciate our veteran's sacrifices? The range of suffering by millions is so huge it is hard to refine to a scale we can understand.

   Even the battlefield agony of one dying soldier or wounded nurse can exceed our comprehension. 

   On November 5, 1965, Harlan Chapman was captured by the North Vietnamese. He was not freed until February 12, 1973. 

   I was fortunate to attend my cousin's homecoming. Harley was (and is) a hero. So was our great grandfather, Harlan (photo below), who was wounded at Armstrong Hill and his brother, Degrass, who suffered and died at Antietam. 

   But, Harley's suffering went on for more than seven years.

   After the celebration Harley wanted no more war talk. He even asked my father and others not to introduce him as a POW.

   Why would he want to relive more than 2,600 days of physical and emotional torture? Why would anyone want to be questioned about the number of times he had been hung by his arms (as was his fellow prisoner Senator John McCain) or tossed into lice-filled cages and fed rotten food day and night?

   Loved ones also suffer. For the first three years the North Vietnamese  refused to reveal that Harley was a prisoner. 

   My cousin received other medals. Would he trade them to recover those years when his son was growing up and the free world was moving on without him?

   What matters is that Lt. Colonel Chapman chose to sacrifice for us. He knows that the badge of courage he wears in his heart is the one that matters. 

  The Journal of Sacred Work honors caregivers. We also honor the sacred pain that our veterans endured so that we could live love in a free country. 

-Erie Chapman 

Days 187-189 - A Journey Within

“When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music.” –Rumi

Before starting out on any journey it is important to set an intention, to bring forward the sacred prayer of your heart. It is recommended that you pack light so that you are not encumbered by self-judgment or criticism of any kind.

This journey has many paths along the way. There is no road named right or wrong, so you never have to worry about taking a faulty turn because they all lead to home. What is required is that you and I listen and let go of our need to control the universe. Trust that we are not alone and with just a little willingness, guidance is offered.

Everything begins with a movement; a first step forward on the road of discovery. When the pressures of this world swirl around us with increasing intensity, a movement can be as simple as sitting on ones cushion to still the mind.

Begin on this page with one word that will lead you to another and another for there is nothing lacking here. Let a free flow of ideas stream forth in gibberish, spewing playful words with the freedom to invent themselves.

I begin with one brush stroke on this big white canvas; a splash of color forms a curve. There is no notion of talent or ability, no doubt of one’s worthiness or any consideration of validity here, for opposites join to form a whole.

I have but one question, “What can I offer that is of any value?” The only answer is clear, “There is but one purpose, nothing else shines through, nothing else is true but Love.

Offer only Love.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Painting by ~liz

Day 186 - Fourth of July Greeting

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

I hope all American's will find time to read  "The Declaration of Independance" and reflect upon its meaning during this celebratory weekend.

Go to:

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/

Have a great 4th!

-Woody Wessel