Journal of Sacred Work

245-246 International Caregivers Day

"A golden thread of loving care connects us all." -Erie Chapman

August 26 was Mother Teresa's birthday and what better way to honor her memory then to celebrate Radical Loving Care and the contributions of caregiver's from around the world.

My mind is flooded with images so many caregivers who inspire me with their generous and luminous hearts. Family and friends come to mind who have faced their own illnesses with great courage or have lived their loved ones illness as they journey alongside of them. The day to day struggles of caregiving is often harrowing and caregivers efforts go unnoticed or may seem unappreciated by others. Yet, the rewards of living love do not come from an external source.

Today, my gratitude is extended to Erie Chapman for his visionary leadership in continually inspiring caregivers to see the Beauty that lies beneath the superficial. His encouragement to offer the greatest gift possible; our presence and to listen with the heart of compassion. A caregiver who enters an encounter in this way creates a mutuality of healing for the person being cared for as well as for the caregiver. For in truth, there is no distinction between giving and receiving as both persons are changed by alchemy of love. 

I would like to honor one of the quiet hero’s within our midst. Her name is Lillie Porter and she is a kindhearted home health aide. Her supervisor shared the following story;

"Lillie once cared for a woman who was terminally ill with a brain tumor.  This was Lillie’s first experience caring for a patient who was bedridden.  The women often spoke of the Huntington Library in Pasadena and how beautiful it was.  Lillie mentioned that she had never been there so the patient said she would take her there, and that she would drive, as she knew the way. 

This woman had always been in charge of her life so Lillie went along with her request.  She brought several items from her closet for her to wear and the patient selected an outfit, adding "Don't forget the shoes!” Lillie laid her pants on her legs and placed all her other clothes over her as she lay in bed.  Next, she put on her sunglasses and then they simulated the drive as the women explained to Lillie the different exhibits and the beautiful flowers in the gardens. 

While this was going on one of her daughters came in and asked "What is going on in here?" Lillie looked at her and whispered, “Please come along with us.”  At this point the woman was reliving her fond memories and taking Lillie and her daughter on a virtual tour. 

There were many times that Lillie went on these virtual journeys with this woman, such as the Sushi Restaurant for dinner and martinis (Lillie has never had a martini, so the woman advised that she should only have one, but she, however, was going to have two!)  They would wear wigs and sunglasses, etc. 

It just went on and on, she felt her life was still worth living, if only in an imaginary way!  Lillie helped her to continue to live and love life through the gift of reminiscing for as long as she was able to do so."

Thank you, Lillie for offering your heart as well as your hands in loving service. 

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Artwork by ~liz

Days 240-244 - International Caregivers Day & Ocean Magic

[NOTE: - Because August 26 is International Caregivers Day (created by the Journal to celebrate caregivers everywhere) we are adding this recognition to this week's essay on the ocean.

Please celebrate caregivers everywhere every day. The accompanying image was created by Liz Wessel and will reappear in the Saturday-Sunday edition of the Journal]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ocean Magic

“I was born by the sea…my first idea of movement of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the waves.” –Isadora Duncan

   The Pacific wave yanked my four-year-old self from my father’s hand & sent me under.

   Not yet able to swim, I struggled until a truth appeared: How could I, a tiny boy, possibly triumph against such overwhelming power?

   The moment I surrendered I felt the comforting presence of the divine.

   Only four years out of the womb, I was snatched from my earthly father & glimpsed my heavenly one. Those moments live as a candle that today illuminates tears in my spirit & helps them heal. 

   Were you born from the earth or is it the sea that brought you to life?

   Attend a birth & you will see a new being rise from water not ground. The baby sails from the womb & lands on an earth that (to our senses) stands still.

   Tides keep the sea in perpetual motion. Do babies want to be rocked because they miss the rhythms of water?

   Stand on a shoreline & witness the conversation between waves & sand that constantly shifts the boundaries of both. 

   My life has been informed as much by discussions with the ocean as it has been by traveling over land.

   When I am away from the water I long for it. When I am near the water or in it I feel traces of the comfort I experienced at four. 

   Isadora Duncan attributed her legendary dance work to the influence of the sea. Your caregiving has rhythms that are better understood by noticing the tides than by watching the clock.

   Time is stuck to the earth. The ocean is as fluid as eternity. 

-Erie Chapman

 Photographs: Erie Chapman

Days 238-239 - Beauty Unfinished

   The woman is exiting an elevator. To many eyes, the photograph looks "unfinished" - a mistake.

   The snapshot, with its ghost images & shower of hair, is more appealing & mysterious to me in its "imperfection". An odd observer of the world, I take pictures like this all the time.

   John O'Donohue writes that we naturally associate beauty with perfection, "but there can also be great beauty in something that is imperfect and unfinished."

   He cites Durer's Salvator Mundi. It shows Jesus with his right hand raised in blessing. O'Donohue suggests, "This unfinished painting achieves the happy accident of enabling the beauty and radiance of a divine face to shine from a human body."

   Shubert's Unfinished Symphony is a masterwork. It might be better than if "completed."

   At the end of any given day you may leave behind unfinished work. That will be true of your lifetime.

   Some things, obviously, must be completed. Yet, art does not always need our hand's punctuation.

   Perhaps, at your life's end, others will discover beauty in your incomplete as well as finished work. Also, are you also creating something now that calls to you to stop lest you damage the beauty already there?

   Is anything you do ever truly complete? How many things have you discarded as unfinished & thus missed the muffled voice of their song?

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Woman Exiting Elevator" - Erie Chapman

Days 233-237 - Salvation for what is hard to bear?

In forth grade Larry Anderson, noticing I had forgotten my belt, sneaked up behind me and tried to pull down my pants. The whole class stared. Then the whole class laughed.

Today I laugh too, of course. Back then, I was closer to crying. It was my first public experience confronting the hyena named humiliation. 

Sentient beings, we carry scars as we walk the world seeking healing in kindness, in a gentle dawn or in the soft bed of evening.

You know that if you do something wrong or foolish before others they will dress you in sackcloth. Under the guise of the myriad lynch mobs society creates, they will target you with one of life's most painful conditions.

Other than hopelessness, humiliation may be the hardest brew to swallow. Its fiery taste scalds the ego & burns the skin red.

It scares the heart into hiding. Yet, this agony can enable nobility. 

Power-holders know myriad ways to demean. Organized religion has demonstrated a peculiar talent at creating methods of humiliation. It needs supreme punishments to keep its perceived miscreants in line. 

The Puritans favored casting heretics into stocks, branding adulterers with a red letter & dunking witches in ponds. Amish & Mormons, Catholics & Protestants, Jews & Muslims all have their ways of humiliating "non-believers."

Hospitals unintentionally degrade the ill with patient gowns. Society intentionally punishes convicted criminals with striped uniforms.

Where is Beauty? Where hides God's Love? 

Two millenniums ago Romans (& some Jews) wondered how to humiliate a heretic of heretics, a man who arrogantly claimed to be the Messiah.

Since Jesus claimed to be God's prince, Pontius Pilate's minions mocked him with a crown of thorns & made him carry his own cross to his own crucifixion. Above his head they nailed a sign ridiculing him as "King of the Jews."

Jesus met calumny with nobility & his death with grace. He replaced humiliation by men with humility before God and thus offered a supreme example of strength. Thus, Peter chose to be crucified upside down.

Shelley wrote, "Thy light alone - gives grace and beauty to life's unquiet dream"

Can that light above anchor your boldness against the dark of a sometimes unforgiving world below? 

-Erie "Chip" Chapman 

Snapshot: "Top row - Chip & Ronnie. Bottom row - Martha, Wheelis girls & Jill"

Days 231-232 Love Holds Us

“You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars.”  From August Rush; Robin Williams

Music is its own prayer. Love holds our universe together; love holds us… 

The "Our Father", Aramaic version from the Rosaries of Divine Union by Fr. M. Keating

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos, focus your light within us—make it useful. Create your
reign of unity now; Your one desire acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms. Grant what we need each day in bread and insight. Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strand we hold of others’ guilt. Don’t let surface things delude us, but free us from what holds us back. From you is born all ruling will, the power and the life to do, the song that beautifies all; from age to age it renews. Amen.  

 

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 226-230 Love & Murder

   Lucky me. I grew up with a mother who loved her four children. 

   Unlucky Patricia Krenwinkel.

   We extol love here not murder. Sometimes love is better understood by observing its opposite. 

   In 1969 Krenwinkel chased down actress Abigail Folger and stabbed her to death. Later the same night she helped murder Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. On the same evening she participated in killing four more including, most famously, actress Sharon Tate, wife of movie director Roman Polanski. She knew none of her victims. 

   This slaughter of seven people by the infamous "Manson Family" is now considered one of the most sensational crimes in 20th century American history.

   Was the real culprit a lack of love?

   In 1969 Krenwinkel was unrepentant. Today, the London Daily Mail says: "Patricia Krenwinkel... says she took part in the cult killings because she was a 'coward' and  'wanted to feel loved,' ...'I wanted to please, I wanted to love, I wanted for the first time to feel safe. I wanted to feel like someone was going to care for me because I hadn't felt that anywhere else in my life."

   We can write off Krenwinkel's comments as just another criminal blaming her upbringing. Yet, how many times have you heard miscreants and other failures complain that no one cared about them?

   Those of us that campaign for Radical Loving Care often encounter a frustrating phenomenon. It involves people who say love matters but cannot figure out how love impacts  medical care. They are stuck on the idea that curing is about delivering ten cubic centimeters of demerol or five radiation treatments for cancer.   

   Medicine can cure. Only love can ignite your greatest energy - the healing power that lives in your heart. 

   What would your life have been like if you had never felt loved? 

-Erie Chapman 

Days 224-225 Her Blessing

 

 Magdalene’s Blessing

You hardly imagined
standing here,
everything you ever loved
suddenly returned to you
looking you in the eye
and calling your name.

And now
you do not know

how to abide this ache
in the center
of your chest
where a door
slams shut
and swings open
at the same time,
turning on the hinge
of your aching
and hopeful heart.

I tell you
this is not a banishment
from the garden.

This is an invitation,
a choice,
a threshold,
a gate.

This is your life
calling to you
from a place
you could never
have dreamed
but now that you
have glimpsed its edge
you cannot imagine
choosing any other way.

So let the tears come
as anointing,
as consecration,
and then
let them go.

Let this blessing
gather itself around you.

Let it give you
what you will need
for this journey.

You will not remember
the words—
they do not matter.

All you need to remember
is how it sounded
when you stood
in the place of death
and heard the living
call your name.

~Jan Richardson

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Photo by ~liz

 

 

Days 219-223 - Ego vs. Arrogance - Does your ego get a bad rap?

   "The ego is not master in its own house." - Sigmund Freud

   What fills your heart today? Does joy live primary or are you one of the millions who thinks you not worthy of such a gift?

   If you are in the latter category maybe your upbringing taught you that you are a sinner. Perhaps you punish yourself for being "egotistical."

   The definition of ego arrived in the early 20th century via Freud. He believed that the ego ideal was simply the natural heir to the apparent narcissism of childhood.

   Children are innocent recipient's of narcissism (what could be more innocent than a sleeping child?) Yet, you are asked to stuff that innocence leaving you with a challenge: How to do that? A choice is to accept rather than deny this natural human energy rather then to beat yourself up for something that is just an automatic outgrowth of your earliest being.

   Still, it is crucial to distinguish ego from arrogance. We all look at the world from our point of view. We want the things humans desire. But, some gain those things and migrate to the arrogant conclusion that they are better than others and thus deserve more.

      Arrogance is as insidious as ego is natural. Arrogance seeks attention at the expense of others. Ego appreciates attention honestly earned. Wisdom does not allow joy to be determined by praise or blame.  

   How do you find the wisdom that dilutes the temptation of arrogance? Eckhardt Tolle's insightful statement helps: "You are not your ego." This means you can step back, observe and decide not to accept the pain the ego collects. 

   Freud offered a richer answer: "Whoever loves becomes humble."

-Erie Chapman

Days 217-218 Two Languages

“What if it turns out that faith is truly existential, not a leap of faith, which is actually a leap to belief, but a reality, already there for us to notice and accept?”  Paul Martin 

As I read Paul Martin’s thought provoking essay, his question struck me as an epiphany. Our thinking mind is always trying to solve the puzzle rather than to keep company with mystery. We strive to define and rationally explain life to fit neatly within the confines of our understanding.

Yet, what a marvelous notion of faith. What if we let go of seeking concrete answers and relaxed into the ease of acceptance?  Try as we may, distorted perceptions and fear based thinking patterns block Love. As we begin to notice, like shards of light breaking through a cloud cover,  awareness creates a new reality.

It is not so important to understand as it is to open our minds heart. Acceptance can transform fear into love.

There are only two feelings.
Love and fear.
There are only two languages.
Love and fear.
There are only two activities.
Love and fear.
There are only two motives,
two procedures, two frameworks,
two results.
Love and fear.
Love and fear.

 -Michael Leunig

 Contributed by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

 Photo by my beautiful & talented niece, Christina Maio

Note:to read Paul Martin’s essay, “Revelation In The Whirlwind Of Existence” go to www.onbeing.org