Journal of Sacred Work

Days 30-31 A Magnum Opus

What draws a man into an obsession or rather a love affair with sculpting underground cathedrals? To dig deep into the earth’s core and hollow out space for beauty’s sake. What a fascinating expedition on a deeply elemental level. To spend hours upon days, upon weeks, upon months, upon years until it becomes your entire life.  He is driven in creative solitude, digging with only hand tools, engulfed in the miracle of creation. Paulette mused, “The ancients dug caves looking for God.” Surely this must be his soul’s quest.

Seemingly an impossible human feat, who could muster this kind of stamina? Paulette regards his work as a dance.  His efforts, largely unrecognized (until recently), he has prevailed without fame or fortune because his passion and motivation  are not external but come from a divine source.

To most this strenuous work appears tedious and back breaking yet to Paulette he is mining a gift that is always present, if we have eyes to see and create space to be.  Through this process Paulette has uncovered his purpose and the desire to share a transcendent experience with others. He is unwilling to compromise and will not be swayed by outside influences. He views his art as a culmination and he hopes this gift “can be used as an instrument to connect people with the earth and their own inner sense of who they are.” Paulette lives in intimacy with his truest self, the Beloved, in union with God/Love. He now invites us into his inner sanctuary.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

 

Days 25-29 - The Accidental Teachings of Donald Trump

   Is narcissism a condition in need of caregiving? Psychotherapist Dr. Thomas Moore describes it as a personality disorder in which "a person does not love himself." What is worrisome is that, because of their feelings of superiority, sufferers become sadistic. "We know instinctively that someone who talks about himself all the time must not have a very strong sense of self," Dr. Moore writes. People with such a personality disorder are compelled to give false praise to some & to vilify anyone who criticizes them. 

   Does this sound like Donald Trump? Loving caregivers, laboring selflessly to meet our deepest needs, must be fascinated by the chest-beating of this now very public figure.

   This essay is not about Trump's political positions (although, not surprisingly, they shift like a man walking on slippery rocks in shallow water.) The question is do such people embolden others to act the same? Do they need psychologists to heal self-loathing? The fact that Trump would likely never consider hiring one is a sign of his illness.     

   Criticize a narcissist and you will instantly see the symptoms: 1) An immediate & always personal counter-attack (rather than a criticism on the issue.) Examples are easy. "You are an idiot, a failure & a loser." These are some of the weapons of the self-centered & their kin, bullies. 2) Narcissists never take responsibility because it is too painful. In fact, their egos lack the strength to admit blame so it is always someone else's fault. (Note: Psychologist also warn about the reverse: Always thinking it is your fault and masochistically taking the blame.)

   We all exhibit some self-centered behaviors. Many of us (including me) take criticism far too personally & talk too much. Yet, psychologists know that shyness does not automatically make you any less narcissistic than a politician. The question is whether you think you & your needs are central & everyone else is secondary.

   But, if you worry about being a narcissist yourself, you are probably not one. In fact, psychologists have trouble treating this disorder exactly because the patient typically will not admit the problem. 

   "Even though they are opposites, many people seem to have difficulty distinguishing narcissism from a proper and necessary love of self," Dr. Moore explains. Humility honors the self as a child of God. Narcissists think they are gods - a sun around which all planets revolve. 

   Unintentionally, Trump is teaching us valuable lessons. 1) Bullies retreat only when someone either stands up to them directly or, more effectively, 2) helps everyone turn their audience's attention elsewhere. Lack of attention sucks the oxygen out of narcissists, and 3) bullies attract the fearful.

   Bullies are way too common in healthcare leadership. The first step in dealing with them is to recognize their "terrorist" ways. The next is find the inner strength to stand strong. To love yourself enough so that the taunts of such people do not scare your heart or sap your energy.

   This is why, hardest of all, Love calls us to feel compassion for people engaging in such behavior. Like all of life's big challenges this one calls us to engage the strength that can only come from God's love. 

Reverend Erie Chapman   

Days 23-24 What to Do?

The Community We Are Called To Be

“To be a community that serves, that speaks, that celebrates and prays in such a way that others-regardless of their religious belief, encountering this community experience a revelation of life’s deepest truths…about human dignity, community, success, power, growth, sacrifice, love, suffering, debility and death. Experiencing a harmony between their hearts’ deepest resonances and this community’s character, persons go from this encounter more healed, more whole, more able to live, to love, to hope and to die.” -Jack Glaser

Home care is unique. Unlike any other healthcare setting, when a clinician crosses the threshold he/she is entering into a very personal story of the person in need. We are guests and at times we are greeted as revered professionals, as family or occasionally perceived as unwelcome strangers.

Home care offers a potential for all-inclusive care. The best clinicians approach their work holistically. They look at the big picture and take into account much more than a task at hand. These skills develop over time as patients and family members teach us so much about life, love, living, and dying. Seasoned professionals intuitively respond to not only to physical needs but the emotional and spiritual needs of the patient and family.

The reality of home care can be cold and hard. We see the best of worlds and at times the worst. Perhaps, it is an elderly woman with failing memory who has lived independently all her life and does not recognize the need for in home support. No sooner than her daughter hires a caregiver, she will fire them. Her home becomes a health hazard with pet excrement all over, infestations, and unimaginable clutter.

Sometimes we are confronted with ethical dilemmas. What to do when you find a person in a deplorable situation. What do you do if the person cannot speak or make their needs known and is totally dependent for all care? Yet, their spouse has mental health or an alcohol problem and the patient is being neglected. What do you do when you try to intervene but there is a complete denial of the problem or that their loved one is in their last phase of life. What to do when he becomes belligerent or threatens to harm staff.

Even harder is when you know that the family member has good intentions but the situation has become unmanageable and extreme. It is a no-win situation. To remove a person from their home would be devastating. Even worse is to leave a person who is vulnerable in a condition of neglect;  a no win. These state of affairs are not taken lightly. Every alternative is considered, explored and every benefit of the doubt given before taking drastic measures.

Last night as I lay awake I thought of the possible consequences of taking action or not…sometimes we find we cannot live up to our aspirations. It leaves you in a state of moral distress. We don’t want to pull out and abandon a person, nor do we want to foster a dreadfully unsafe situation. There is no happy ending but in this particular circumstance, I believe we acted in the best interest of the patient and the home care clinicians.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

 

 

 

 

Mandala by ~liz

Days 18-22 - A Muscular Kindness

     In order for the story of his kindness to speak to us across the ages he needed to be more than nice. He needed to enlist the sinews of courage & the gristle of persistence to risk helping a stranger from a radically different background. He needed to recruit his muscle to lift the wounded man, shoulder him onto his animal, walk him to the inn, pay for his care & return to check on the man he saved.   

   Jesus created The Good Samaritan to teach us, particularly caregivers, that real compassion is a muscular marriage of strength & kindness. Sweet gestures require brave action to become true expressions of love. 

   Humanity's sun shines when tenderness glows with strength. 

  "That my kindness exists comes not simply by choosing kindness," poet Anis Mojgani tells us, "but by choosing it over the cruelty I am capable of."

   Martin Luther King, Jr. modeled this choice. As others clamored for cruelty King campaigned for tough-minded tenderness. 

   It takes bravery to overcome our basest desires: our lust for revenge, our ego's instinct to counterattack when feeling hurt, our temptation to take advantage of the vulnerable. And there is the blindness of raw arrogance - that priest who ignored the pain of the wounded man in favor of his own self-importance.   

   The most gentle sunlight is born from the most powerful blazes. Even fireplace flames rise from wood split with strength.

   Love is so inconvenient. Storms & stridency threaten it at every turn. That is why no path is more challenging to walk each day than the one burning with love's heat as well as its light. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Days 16-17 I Love You More

Please note: This essay is dedicated in loving memory to Candi Maio.

Vibrant, charismatic, lover of life and giver of joy; her name, Candida Maio but everyone knew her as Candi. She greeted this world on February 17, 1933 and was born into eternal love on Jan 10, 2016.

Perhaps, it was because she was the mother of
my best friend since childhood, or that she shared the same birthday as my mom, or that grand open heart of hers, but no doubt... because she loved me that I thought of as my second mom.

Candi’s vivacious personality exuded warmth with a robust laugh that affirmed her love of life and of people. Anyone in Candi’s sphere was influenced by her positive energy. She was generous in fun and you naturally felt good in her presence. She was genuinely interested in how you were doing and she connected instantly with people in a bond that lasted a lifetime.

In 1981, Susan, Candi and Matt & Alex traveled cross country in a motor home from New York to
CA (and Pickles from Oregon) to attend my wedding! What a gift of loving friends and family!

Yet, I will never forget the spiritual support Candi offered me during my late teens. You see, I was faced an important decision and I struggled over a dilemma. I confided in Candi and she told me that whenever she needed guidance she opened the bible to a random page and God answered. She suggested I might give it a try, I prayed earnestly, opened the book and to my amazement the answer was clear.

In later years, Alzheimer’s stole much of Candi’s memory along with her life but sparkles of Candy’s beautiful essence endured. Susan’s devotion to her mom was unsurpassed and she did all in her power to see that her mom was nurtured in love. Candi loved Frank Sinatra and Susan would engage her by playing all her favorite tunes. Candi would come alive in these happy moments, singing, whistling and tapping her feet.

Perhaps, I should not mention, but a year ago August, my mom entered her last phase of life. One night, while I was in the depths of despair, Susan instinctively called me.  My dilemma was to decide when to go home again so that I could be by her side in the end. As we talked, I remembered what Candi had told me all those years before.

The next morning, I opened to a random page in the Good Book but the Genesis passage did not resonate. I tried again and opened to another page but still no inkling. Disappointed, I closed the book when a sudden of wave of peace spread over me. My answer came, and I booked a flight home that same day. It was not until sometime later that I realized the connection between the birth of the universe and my own birth Mother, the sign I needed was there all along…

The night before Candi died Susan said to her mom, “I love you.” and in a moment of clarity, Candi responded, “I love you more.”   The next day was cold, grey and dreary.  The rain poured down from the heavens in mourning. Shortly before Candi took her last breath, the rained stopped and the clouds opened to reveal a double rainbow. I've heard tell that the meaning of a double rainbow is transformation. The first rainbow symbolizes the earthly plane and the second the spiritual realm. Candi may not have been able to tell us in words but her heart surely sang out to us.

With love and gratitude for one so true.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Rainbow Photo-Internet image

Days 11-15 - Footprints & Other Signs of Presence

   It is a ritual of childbirth. Shortly after we enter this world a nurse takes our left foot, inks it & presses it onto a sheet of paper. Thus the loops, ridges & whorls that become part of our body's signature etch their first marks into the landscape of this world. 

   At high noon on Sunday, October 31, 1943, as bullets & bombs screamed death in Europe & Asia, Lassie came home on the silver screen & The Little Prince skipped into the world, my mother & I met for the first time.

   Both of us cried. Then the image of my left foot was duly recorded. 

   At age one, I rose to walk on that foot matching its stride with its partner. Since then, my feet have taken millions of steps. A band on my left wrist tells me I average more than 8000 per day (about four miles) down from the 20,000 or so I took when I was a high school distance runner.

   If you walked just one mile every day you will have circumnavigated the globe by age seventy-one. 

   You have taken millions of steps. Some caregivers journey down hospital hallways into the chambers of people who would be grateful for a single precious stride unaided.

    For the rest of us, the number of our steps counts for little. What matters is where your spiritual feet have taken you on your outward odyssey & inward expedition. How has your heart changed since the nurse first pressed your foot on paper & how has your presence affected the lives of others?

   "Every step, even a tentative one, counts," Anne Morrow Lindberg wrote in Gift From The Sea. "For we are, actually, pioneers trying to find a new path through the maze of tradition, convention and dogma."

   What footprints have you left behind? Where will love lead you in the balance of your years?

 -Erie Chapman 

Days 9-10 Wise Owl Pays A Visit

Winters chill invites solitude. Come in from the cold she beckons and cozy down with a good book in the quietude of evening with an imagined fire in the hearth to chase away the cold. A Friday night, Sabbath; all is peaceful and calm. Yet, my thoughts roam the night sky in circles, as I dawdle to elude the enormity of a blank page.

What is so daunting? Perhaps, just beginning and so I offer this ramble as my starting point. Readers might wonder, why procrastinate when there are infinite topics to explore. Most things seem easy when you are the observer but relatively more challenging when you actually  take the wheel.

I remember in college when I needed to write a paper. Precipitously, I would feel this strong urge to clean the house before I could settle in and begin typing. Suddenly that disorganized closet needed my immediate attention when the disarray had never seemed bothersome before.

My late mother-in-law, Helen seemed to have an affinity towards owls. She had a funky pine cone owl and a couple of ceramic relics that adorned her kitchen shelf. Overtime, I began to associate Helen's wisdom with that of an owl. In her impoverished early beginnings and many hardships endured along the way, she grew in authenticity until she no longer lived for herself but instead loved her life away in service to others.

 It was not until she had left this earthly plane that I recognized this wise woman in her pain riddled body, bent and crippled by arthritis, yet still reaching out to help others in humble and unassuming ways, was Christ in our midst. What strength and courage she mustered to face life’s adversity and wonder with a deep abiding faith. Through the power of Love she walked in the footsteps of her Lord and she blessed my life abundantly, as well as many others.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Photo of Vermont owl by my brother, Tom Sorensen and a New Hampshire owl taken by my friend, Laura Cassidy

Days 4-8 - "Is God Blue?"

   Why would a five-year-old wonder if God was blue? Guessing the answer means thinking your way into a child's point of view.

   Thank God that I asked my youngest grandson why he inquired.

   "Because the sky is blue," he replied, uttering volumes about the image he must have conjured of an azure-skinned God ruling from a complimentary-colored sky. 

    More truth bubbles from little kids than from most adults. This is strikingly true of children aged two to six. Listen sincerely, rather than dismissively, to these recently-born people. At five, my grandson is a genius. By ten he will (as did all of us) lose many of his dreamy ways of being. 

   Except that we adults still imagine that God is up there somewhere, don't we? Don't we pray to the heavens & imagine God hanging out above the clouds?

   Some also insist on personifying God as "he" (consider Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction.) Concrete thinkers demand rectangular answers to elusively oval questions, "Where is God? What does God look like? How can people hear words from a disembodied source? they ask, as if it could all be explained on Power Point slides. 

   Then, we remember. Caregivers can engage the spirit of the patient before them & pray in that direction. And why not pray into your own heart since God lives there as well?

   The Apostle John offered the best definition, "God is light...God is love," he wrote in his first letter.   

   In the first century, people yearned for God in human form. Perhaps, that is why they found comfort (as do we today) in the story of Love's enfleshment in Jesus.

   Is God blue? Since Love is every color & no color the answer must be yes. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman 

Related articles

Days 13-17 - Creative Blaming

Days 1-3 May I live this Day

 

I arise today

By John O'Donohue

In the name of Silence

Womb of the Word,

In the name of Stillness

Home of Belonging,

In the name of the Solitude

Of the Soul and the Earth.

 

I arise today

 

Blessed by all things,

Wings of breath,

Delight of eyes,

Wonder of whisper,

Intimacy of touch,

Eternity of soul,

Urgency of thought,

Miracle of health,

Embrace of God.

 

May I live this day

 

Compassionate of heart

Gentle in word,

Gracious in awareness,

Courageous in thought,

Generous in Love.

 

 

 

 

On New Year's Day a friend wrote to me, "This morning I found this poem from John O’Donohue and for some reason I just wanted to share it with you." I receive her gift of Grace and in turn wish to share it with you. Blessings be upon thee in this New Year!

 

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Photo by my niece Lisa Gayle , Chester Springs PA

 

Days 364-365 We Bless This Year

Blessing for the End of the Year
By John O’Donohue

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;

 When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

 Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

 The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

 The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

 Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.

 

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Photo taken in Guatemala, 2011