Journal of Sacred Work

Days 60-64 - After Pain

   One thing we know for sure. The worst thing to tell a sufferer is that, "Pain is a great teacher." What we want is compassion not counsel.

   Shakespeare noted this in Comedy of Errors: "A wretched soul...we bid be quiet when we hear it cry;/ But were we burdened with like weight of pain,/ As much or more we should ourselves complain." Yes. We want the loving presence we once disdained. 

   Pain is simultaneously universal (from birth) & personal (everyone reacts differently.)

   There is often no cure for our broken fences within. Are there ways to heal? Some pathways out of hell?

   After half a century with a chronic illness I'm still confused about pain. As a compassionate caregiver you are the one who suffers next to profound discomfort & have had plenty of your own. 

   Pain is supposed to teach humility & faith as well as patience. But what about some other solutions?

   One wise friend says that a powerful choice is to become, as much as possible, an outside observer rather than an inside sufferer. This gives some sense of distance as well as freedom from your victim state. Some yogis are so good at this they endure staggering agony with no apparent response.

   It seems silly to address the complexity of pain with a few simple words. Still, for the rest of us trying to think our way through I wonder if these ideas might help:

   Doctors teach that the more we tense up, the more pain increases. That makes sense since blood flows to tensed muscle and away from the area that is hurting. That, of course, is why women using Lamaze are taught relaxation breathing techniques.

    Stress-pain is about control. I have noticed stress appears when I am trying to change other people rather than myself (although self correction can also be stressful.) I'm pretty good at "large" issues & frequently fail with smaller ones. When I succeed, it is because I literally ask myself: If the issue is small why treat it as large?

   For example, why self-inflict stomach acid while driving? This should be easy to resolve. After years of stupidity I react much better after gradually retraining myself to this wisdom: Traffic delays are not worth headaches (not to mention accidents & road rage.) The reptile brain is powerful. That is why I try to breathe and gain perspective as soon as I turn on the engine & reinforce that along the drive. 

   In every case cultivating acceptance & gratitude seems most effective. How, especially with big pain? Chronic illness always encompasses acute episodes. The disabled always carry wounds.

   Heart-love is also heart-breaking. Ask lovers how they feel when separated. Pain scars. We want to forget. And we can only learn if we remember.

   Job & Jesus suffered. Jesus did also & found a way through. 

   By now, you are a veteran of pain. I sure do not want anymore and I am also grateful for what it has taught. 

   Words can help. I have never read better ones about the tears the body sheds when it is splintered than Emily Dickinson's. Every line & phrase is genius: 

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

 

The Feet, mechanical, go round –

A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

 

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go.

 

  Strangely, just the writing of this causes some of my life pain to ease. I hope it does the same for you.

 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Days 58-59 All Through this Day

For many Christians the observance of Lent is a way of preparing the heart in celebration of the central mystery of Christianity; the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Whether or not you are Christian, or religious for that matter, we are all given an invitation to go a little deeper.

 Can we find a few moments to come into stillness, away from the frenetic activities of our day and offer our full listening presence? In this sacred space of reverence, we can acknowledge life's paradox. There are a thousand little deaths that we experience daily in the unfolding of our lives. 

As Whyte suggests, "Can you find the one line that is already written inside of you?"  Is there a word or thought that surfaces for you today? Be intentional. Let it accompany you throughout your day. 

"Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. John 14:27

All through this day, peace... 

THE JOURNEY

Above the mountains 
the geese turn into
the light again,

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything 
has to be
enscribed across 
the heavens

so you can find 
the one line
already written 
inside you.

Sometimes it takes 
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire 
has gone out

someone has written 
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light 
fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

From The Journey: in ‘River Flow: 
New and Selected Poems’
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

Contributed by Liz  Sorensen Wessel

Photo by my niece, Christina Maio

Days 53-57 - Yellow

   "The presence of color is at the very heart of human life," the beautiful John O'Donohue wrote.

   If that is so, our lucky eyes engage yellow as the brightest color on the spectrum of our spirit. 

   Yellow. Glorious, thrilling, sprightly yellow. We crave the sun & children crayon it yellow. That's what my oldest granddaughter did. I added the bananas & was surprised when bananas & drawing merged as one in the photograph. 

   Dressed in white at the starting line sunlight gallops 93 million miles at 186,000 miles per second through an atmosphere that paints it yellow upon arrival.   

   Current wisdom is that nothing can fly faster than light. (If anything could, would that thing go backwards in time?) But, throughout the journey all colors hide in white until revealed by the prism effect or experienced individually. 

   The moment a color enters our eyes it instantly impacts our mood because it changes our life's vibrations. O'Donohue believed that because light alternately meets resistance & penetrates "the activity that gives an object its color has all the play and excitement of lovemaking."

   Yellow has the power to raise our moods. Goethe wrote how that particular color makes our hearts dance: "Yellow brings with her the nature of brightness and has a delightful, encouraging, exciting and soft quality."

   Since this is so why not add more yellow to the dull greens & harsh florescence that often illuminate the environments of the ill?

   Through what eyes do we see? When we experience God as light then holiness drenches everything. Even bananas paired with a child's drawing. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Days 51-52 "Museao Atlantico"

[NOTE: This post was written by Liz Wessel] Jason deCaires Taylor is creating a unique underwater museum that depicts the refugee crisis hitting Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The British artist creates a cast by covering human subjects with an alginate  paste. Each sculpture is made of eco-friendly marine cement that is anticipated to last 300 years.

 His incredibly moving work is about “the hope, loss and abandonment by society and a fight for survival that is happening now” he commented.

 Tragically in 2013, families desperate to escape the devastation of war and poverty in Africa crowded onto an unstable boat bound for Europe. Although many have made the arduous journey to safety, 366 refugees died in a shipwreck near the Italian island of Lampedusa (190 miles across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya.) This was one of the worst disasters in decades and thankfully has led the European Union to expand rescue operations.

It is easy to get caught up in our daily routines without giving much thought to the plight of thousands of refugees in dire need of help. Jason deCaires Taylor is using the medium of art to raise our consciousness  and to ask the hard question. As part of a global community and a collective member of the human family; what more can we do? - Liz

 

Days 41-45 - Gifts of the Prism

    This morning’s storm off the South Florida coast bore the classic characteristics of subtropical weather: mayhem. Wind bent the rain into waterfalls that punched holes in the skin of the Atlantic. Waves were drunken sailors in a barroom brawl. Dark skies threatened more anarchy.

   Suddenly, magic.

   The wind calmed like a theater crowd when the curtain rises. There on the watery stage a shaft of sun shot between the clouds. Voila. A rainbow.

   We have all seen them but every time those bands of color illuminate gunmetal skies I am as dazzled as when I first saw a magician pull a white rabbit from a black hat.

   Later on I recalled a prism experiment in 8^th grade science & my reaction when Mr. McCoy demonstrated that all color came from a single source: white light. We owe this discovery to Sir Issac Newton who did something all great scientists artists and leaders do: He noticed the way light traveled through a prism & began to make deductions.

   Aristotle thought the object owned its color. That light was colorless and the prism itself produced the color. This view persisted for centuries until Newton concluded that, “Light is color.”

   Standing in the classroom surrounded by Bunsen burners & drenched in the heavy smell of formaldehyde I gazed at the spotlight Mr. McCoy had rigged up. Every hue was hidden in that white light. He adjusted the prism’s position. As the beam struck the glass pyramid it transformed the sheet of paper on the lab table into a canvas painted with every color we know.

   I am fascinated by the idea that there is light & color beyond what our eyes can see. Light, like sound, vibrates at frequencies outside as well as inside our knowing.

   Are we prisms interposed between God & the world before us? Can we turn at the right angle so that all seven colors & the shades in between shine through?

-Erie Chapman

Days 43-44 Love One Another

John 4:7-8 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

I have heard it said that love is a choice. When I reflect upon this meaning I find it expands my perspective. Of primary importance in life are the loving relationships we cultivate with others. There are the conventional bonds we form with our family, spouse or partner, friends and coworkers or with a person who may inexplicably awaken our soul.

Relationships are assignments in the sense that they are our greatest teachers. We are called to love one another. Often our closest relationships subconsciously trigger our deepest wounds. Vision clouds over and we find it difficult to see beyond surface irritations, frustrations and the conflicts that inevitably arise. Noticing our internal thoughts, feelings and reactions are helpful in raising self-awareness, especially when approached gently with forgiveness. Loving imperfectly is still a choice to love.

Only as we forgive others can we experience forgiveness for ourselves. Last night I watched a poignant movie that illustrated this spiritual truth. "The Railway Man" takes place during WWII and is based on a true story about a young English soldier who is taken prisoner in Singapore.

While in captivity he experienced horrific torture. Years later he continues to suffer vivid flashbacks that are destroying his peace of mind. Eventually, he finds his perpetrator and plans to inflict unimaginable cruelty before killing him. He confronts the man about the atrocities and finally asks him "why are you still alive?" The man answers," perhaps for this day" when he expresses his grief and sorrow for what he did to him. Unexpectedly, the soldier experiences the grace of forgiveness. In time both men begin to find inner peace and healing from the years of inner misery. They remain friends for the rest of their lives.

At the core of every person is a goodness that is always there but may become clouded over; the essence of a person’s soul is beautiful. 

~liz Sorensen Wessel

Photo taken by my cousin, Ingrid Bond

Days 39-43 "I was killed..."

   On a summer morning in 1864 dawn's eye watched battalions of  Union soldiers outside Cold Harbor, Virginia doing something curious. They were calmly writing their names on pieces of paper & sewing them into their coats to ensure that family could be notified in case a Confederate Mini-ball found its mark.    

   After the shooting stopped a blood-stained diary was found on the body of one fallen warrior. "June 3, 1864 Cold Harbor," the journal read. "I was killed."

   Imagine that moribund soldier as he used his last life vibrations to scrawl that final entry.

   Deaths were higher in the Civil War than in any other conflict in U.S. history. But many more soldiers died of disease than bullets. If it were not for one woman, many more would have never seen home again.

   Dorothea Dix, Superintendent of Nurses for the Union Army, is forgotten or unknown by most. Her compassion & competence enabled much healing in primitive Civil War hospitals. Her Radical Loving Leadership shined clear in her commitment to care for Confederate soldiers as well as the Union men she had been hired to serve.

   It is so difficult to imagine the horrors of medical care in a time when legs were sawed off like cordwood by surgeons so beleaguered that they would no sooner finish an amputation than they would wipe off their tools on their aprons, turn to a line of waiting wounded & shout, "Next."  

   Amid the carnage, Dorothea Dix stood resolute. Compassionate care came naturally to a woman already known for her courageous championing of humane treatment for prisoners & the mentally ill.

   Dorothea Dix was a true champion of loving care. Life was not wasted on her.

-Erie Chapman 

Days 37-38 Lasting Impressions to Become Me

Please note: this guest essay is written by Jolyon Druce in response to Erie Chapman’s meditation, “Days 11-15 Footsteps and Other Signs of Presence” Jan 11, 2016. 

 Erie asks about footprints and other signs of presence. What footprints or impressions do we leave? For the last few years I have been doing a lot of spiritual searching, but maybe not what you think. I have been studying up on as many religions and their related philosophies that I have time for. It is a peaceful and fulfilling journey, following the footprints of others. The impressions these many humble people felt, in the happiness of knowing God. These servants would be astonished to find so many followers following in their footsteps in a path for knowledge. In many ways it is a Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation kind of search. Each stepping stone leads to yet another beautiful path to discover. That is one of the wonderful things about coming to the Journal of Sacred Work. To discover the many people who have left impressions on us in our soul travels. It is kind of like atoms combing to become a molecule. Separate; we our alone, combined, we can become the tears of a newborns joy.

 But what about impressions?  the first or the lasting? Are they a noun, verb, adjective or emotion? One thing I have noticed is how very limited the English language is, and how badly words are translated from other languages. This is especially true for the more ancient languages. Did you know there are over 54 different Sanskrit words for the English word ‘impression’? Add in the potential bias of the translators and what started out as a word for love can be its opposite. Or maybe the word for fear, pass it down for generations upon generations without the looking at the teachings, you lose Love.

 Erie asks about footprints, footsteps…impressions. So do you recall some of those that caused you to be you? Not just your relatives but some of the people that crossed your path for a few days or hours. I remember a lady I met after high school. She was about 19-20 years of age. Her dad was very successful, a well-known business man and engineer. He had recently been diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa and was having to give up his way of life and idea of his future. And with Retinitis Pigmentosa being an inherited disease, she was out front with those around her and not afraid for the future. For me, though I only knew her for a short time, it caused me to think about a life like she was heading into. I started closing my eyes and practicing the darkness, or the tunnel vision effects of Retinitis Pigmentosa.

To this day I still educate myself to this possibility, decades later, because I met this family. Where I grew up my back yard play area got taken away by the construction of a very loud freeway. Those that could sold their homes and moved away, looking for quite locales. Some like my father, installed sound deadening windows and tried to put up with it for a while. Next door, a new couple was moving in. “Who would actually want to move in to a house next to this loud freeway,” I thought? Probably someone just trying to find a home that was cheap and then turn around and rent it out like a lot of the houses. But this was different. Yes, the house was cheaper and the school district was great, but the noise did not bother them. The new neighbors were deaf. It was their new home. What was a detriment to some was an opportunity to others. And to this day I get up in the morning, put the television on, but without the sound for a while, enjoying the quietness because I want to, not because I have to. But just in case…

 These were not first impressions I remember, but they lasted…to become me. I truly feel blessed.

Jolyon Druce

Photo by Rev. Erie Chapman

Thank you Jolyon for your soulful contributions to the Journal of Sacred Work!

Days 32-36 - Called to Lead - The Power of the Prism

   Pour white light into a prism at the right angle & watch it disclose its coat of many colors. Send white light into a wall of granite and nothing emerges from the other side.

   When God's light shines, even violence cannot disturb the creation of a rainbow. That was true when light passed through the prism of Jesus' body.

   And consider another story about a boy whose father whipped him regularly until he was fifteen. That father told a friend, "I'll make something of him even if I have to beat him to death." At age twelve, the same boy had jumped out of a second floor window because he felt responsible for his grandmother's death.

   Fortunately, Martin Luther King, Jr. survived to become one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century. 

   When do we know whether we are called to lead? Did Lincoln know when he was still a child chopping wood outside his tiny Kentucky birthplace? Did Florence Nightingale know when as a small girl playing with dolls?

   Robert K. Greenleaf wrote that, "It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then the conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead."

   There is long-running problem with leadership in healthcare. It comes from the fact that many nurses & doctors are pulled into leadership jobs they cannot do well. 

   Great doctors do not automatically make great leaders. Professional schools do not train for leadership. Nurses & doctors seek to heal people, not to lead them. 

   The skills needed for great leadership are drastically different from those needed to become a neonatal intensive care nurse or a cardiac surgeon. Medical professionals need to be detectives to diagnose cancer & precision performers to bypass blocked arteries. What does taking charge of a patient's illness have to do with taking charge of a hundred people? Leaders need to be big picture visionaries who chart courses dozens or thousands. They need to know how to inspire teams to peak performance.

   Would you want a business executive to repair your broken leg? What qualifies an orthopedic surgeon to oversee the complex operations of a modern hospital?

   Fortunately, some nurses & physicians have "that natural feeling" to serve & make "the conscious choice...to aspire to lead." Tragically, there are many others who were never meant to lead in the life-saving milieu of healthcare organizations.

   We are mediums for God's love. Pour white light into the heart of a called leader & a rainbow appears. Spray white light through the heart of a true caregiver & a different rainbow emerges.

   Beauty needs the right prism. 

-Erie Chapman

Note: The Seven Powers of Radical Loving Leaders is available from Amazon or as an e-book on Kindle & other e-readers.