Journal of Sacred Work

Days 333-334 Twists and Tangles

 An ancient Chinese proverb shares the belief that we are connected to one another in a deeply meaningful way. It seems that when a child is born, an invisible red thread extends from the child’s spirit to connect her with all the significant people who will become part of her life journey.

 As the child grows the thread shortens drawing her closer to those people who have been, currently are or will be important in her life. Throughout life the thread may stretch, twist or tangle but it will never break.

 You may regard this as just an enchanting tale but it does hold an element of spiritual truth. For the people with whom our lives touch offer us opportunities to learn and we can help each other along our spiritual paths.

 In our youth, we set out with adventurous spirits to embrace life’s potential. Along the way we experience the joys and sorrows that accompany living. When setbacks occur we tend to shake ourselves off, get back up and  keep going. Often we avoid taking time to be with painful emotions that arise from loss, instead we shield our hearts from feeling hurt.

 You have heard it said that the people and situations that arouse our intense emotion or stretch us out of our comfort zone are our greatest teachers. When we let go of resistance, the pain of judgment falls to free our acceptance of "what is."

 Perhaps, we must wait until we are strong enough to begin to look within to forgive ourselves and others. We may not fully comprehend the reason or the lesson until much later in life. I imagine the red thread connects us in ways that surpass our earthly understanding.

Our encounters with each other have a way of coming full circle to surprise and awaken our hearts. Love opens the door to reconciliation and healing. This is the blessing to be discovered when we show up for one another.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandala by ~liz

Days 328-332 - The Mother Hand - "...too fine for speech."

   "In silence we must wrap much of our life, because it is too fine for speech." -Emerson

   Before she touches the stethoscope to her patient's bare chest Connie, a nurse for 42 years, does something remarkable. 

   "I have my mother hand and my work hand," she says. "Before I check a heart rate, I always touch the patient first with my mother hand. Then I apply the stethoscope."

   Connie knows that her left hand calms the patient. She honors something about her patient's humanity "too fine for speech." She thinks of her left hand as an anchor. She is a gift to the universe of healing as well as to the land of curing.

   Radical Loving Care is love beyond love & care beyond care - the extra effort that lifts caregiving from ordinary to extraordinary." Radical Loving Care engages an energy "too fine for speech." It is as indefinable as Love itself. 

   It takes a moment to find the horizon in my photograph of sea & sky. Arthur O'Leary, my ninth grade English teacher, said that the best opening line in American literature appears in Stephen Crane's short story, "The Open Boat." It reads, "None of them knew the color of the sky." 

   Shipwrecked himself before he wrote the story Crane found language that suggested the predicament of his crew as they bobbed in the Atlantic, a simple row boat their only refuge. 

   Great poets use few words. The finest caregivers do the same. 

   When Connie uses her mother hand she becomes a channel for her patient to feel the wordless touch of Love. 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Atlantic Horizon" Erie Chapman (2013)

Days 326-327 ...And Held Dear

 

We Give Thanks

 

We give thanks to our God.

for all the earth and all creation.

That are wonderfully made

and held dear in the heart of our God.

We give thanks for our friends

and for our families.

For those we love, 

those who love us

and for those without love, 

because we can love them.

 

We give thanks for the food we eat

and for the ability to feed those without food.

We give thanks thanks for our life :

that we have it;

that it goes beyond our death.

 

We give thanks for our freedoms

and the freedom to choose our own attitude

no matter what our circumstances.

 

We are thankful for our health

and pray for those without health

that they might be strong

in mind and soul if not in body,

and we pray that they

might share their strength of spirit with us

as we share our strengthof body with them.

 

We give thanks for the abiility to serve

and to reap the benefits of our service.

for all good things,

We give You thanks, oh God.

~Anon

 

I give thanks for you. Blessings to you and your family!

 

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Photo of Amber & Jade who were held dear in our avacado tree, 2010

Days 321-325 - Opening Beauty's Door With Patience

    If you only see "a naked woman" in this classic Renaissance painting (Lucas Cranach - 1530) you will miss the richness that patient looking discovers. Those uncomfortable with art's portrayal of nudes confuse art with pornography. As Rodin wrote, ""...for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning." 

   If you only see an ER patient as a drunk you will miss the beauty of the human. Objectifying patients is health care's pornography. 

   In Stephen Dunn's words, "...after a while/ you forget you're using half of yourself." Caregiving needs all of us. 

   Meanwhile, why are the sick called "patients?" Religious teaching honors patience in suffering. Our illnesses also mean waiting for caregivers to wait on us.    

   Patience opens the door to loving care as you witness sickness. Without such patience, the door to healing & her companion, Beauty, stays closed. 

   Caregivers live where emergencies alternate with this need for patience. Training focuses on technical skills. Patience requires a different discipline. 

   A cured patient is medicine's "good outcome." Healing is a spiritual event impossible to recognize if your goal is simply "fixing."  

 How do harried caregivers learn that Beauty's grace is only found through profound patience? Beauty will not show her face to eyes seeking information only. 

   Be patient & beauty will feed your soul. Mere data-seeking blocks the hearts of fast-looking museum goers & flower-glancers.

   Several studies demonstrate that most museum visitors spend just seconds looking at each painting. They identify an image & move on. 

   What have they missed?  In the "elbow" photograph your eye may see only a nude. Turn away too quickly & you will miss the richness offered by soft skin against hard rock & the curves & triangles in both. 

   The image of the lilac also holds more for your eye then the color purple. 

   Never be satisfied labeling a flower as "pretty" & rushing on. Speed causes labeling.

   Brains diagnose illness. Love facilitates healing. 

    Radical Loving Care goes beyond the ordinary. Beauty requires patient presence & an open heart not random glances & rapid stereotyping.

  -Reverend Erie Chapman. 

Days 319-320 A Small Dose

 

Please watch. The effect is guarenteed to be good for your health and well-being.

I am not sure about you but it has been a stressful week for me. So when I watched this video the release of pent up emotions was a welcomed relief; a small dose of love culminating in the joy of spontaneous connection.

A seed of laughter ripples out on a sea of feeling good. Even more intriguing is that the "why or what" is irrelevant when we connect on a level independent of words. 

An eruption of laughter can bring us to the brink of tears, whether laughter or tears, both are therapeutic and healing in nature.

My wish for you... a blessing by John O'Donohue

Now is the time
to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder
of your life.

Open your eyes and see the friends
Whose hearts recognize your face as kin,
Those whose kindness watchful and near,
Encourages you to live everything here.

See the gifts the years have given,
Things your effort could never earn,
The health to enjoy who you want to be
And the mind to mirror mystery.

 

 

Liz Sorensen Wessel

 

Days 314-318 - Life & Death in a Single Building

   Candlelight illuminates the face of the magic-filled child & his equally enchanted sister. And he will not remember this first of his birthdays.

 "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," Wordswroth wrote in Intimations of Immortality. "The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star."

  Bathing in the glow of the single flame we assume this one-year-old recalls nothing about his short past & less about the life ahead or the death that will one day spirit him from this world to the next.

   Still, as Wordsworth also observed, "Heaven lies about us in our infancy!" Perhaps babies know more than we think.

   The candle of life burns in the smallest child & remains until life's last moments when, many believe, we enter eternal light.

   What fascinated me about my decades leading hospitals was the continuum of life within a single building. For example, during my tenure as CEO of Baptist, Nashville's largest hospital, seventeen new lives entered the world each day & two ended their earthly journey.

   Babies were spending their first day ever with us. The dying, their last. 

   In between were all other patients in various states of deep need. Broken, they came to us for healing & relief. 

   What work could be more sacred?

   This is the drama of caregiving. It is also where holiness resides.

   It would be well if hospital caregivers honored arrivals & passings with ceremonies that exceed medical protocols. Rituals elevate everyday work.  

   Everything depends upon our ability to be fully present to life. The rituals of birth & death & the moments of agony caregivers attend are always important &, in spite of their frequency, never to be taken for granted.

   The gift to those who practice Radical Loving Care is that each moment holds meaning.

-Erie Chapman 

The In Between Spaces

“There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self-love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.” -Alan Watts

Alan Watts suggests that the world we see changes based on the magnification of the lens through which we gaze. He offers the illustration that if we enlarge a photo we see a bunch of dots but as we adjust the lens, patterns begin to emerge as the person’s face come into focus. On the other hand, if we look under a microscope we can visualize the life in a cell or the universe in atoms and particles.   

The Mandala (Sanskrit word or sacred circle) is a symbolic lens through which, I view the world. The circle represents the whole of life without beginning or end. In nature, everything has a polar opposite and one cannot exist without the other; night without day, winter without summer but together they form a whole. At the core of our being is this union of opposites as pure spiritual light.

As humans we could not experience joy without sorrow, new beginnings without endings, life without death.  Yet, the lens through which we see ourselves tends to be myopic. The space between one person and another creates an illusion of separateness. However, Watt's contends that individuation is not separation for space actually connects us.

In caregiving sacred encounters seem to manifest in a realm of unknowing. In the in between space, we can let go of our need to fill the silence and open into the fluidity of the moment. When we listen wholeheartedly, our encounters with patients and family members offer little openings into more meaningful communication and connection. Perhaps a patient shares, "I do not want my family to know." This cue with an open ended response such as, "What concerns you most about telling them?” can be the bridge to deepening awareness and understanding.

In the in between spaces we are attuned to life’s natural rythms as we participate in the dance of life. Here we realize that you and I are intricately connected to each other and all that is through Love.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandala by ~liz 

Days 307-311

   

   The rock wall climbs from the lake. Or is it the lake that climbs the wall?

   Stage left a fallen tree parallels plunging green. Both shoot angles across the lake's skin.

   Stage right another tree defies stone by penetrating it. Follow the tree down to his reflection & find his defiance repeated.

   The eye immediately seeks the dividing line between solid earth & watery reflection. Both are real. Their parallel truths reflect Beauty. Female water energy rounds off the penetration of male-rock strength.

   Each holds its elegance. Joined, they create a transcendent integrity. 

   Love is always a circle.

   Reflections speak to those tuned to the sacred. Listen lovingly instead of randomly & hear life's music. 

   Whatever you express as a caregiver returns to you in a circle. 

   Love brings joy because the beloved reflects Beauty back to your heart.

   A clip from one of my films (click on link below) reflects a world in a cascade of hair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooDZWN3Q_FY

-Erie Chapman  

*Still photo & video by Erie