Journal of Sacred Work

Days 88-92 - "And Jesus Laughed"

   It happened before before Jesus' last Passover. The disciples were seated about a dinner table praying. Suddenly, Jesus laughed. 

   "Why are you laughing at us?" The disciples asked. Jesus said that he was not laughing at them but at the way they were praying to the sometimes fearsome Yahweh of the ancient Bible, not the God of Love from whence Jesus came.

   The source for all of this? It is not the Catholic or Protestant New Testament. Instead it comes from the Gospel of Judas, a second century Gnostic text. 

   The quoted passage is startling. Jesus laughed? There is not a single reference in our Bible to him even so much as chuckling. Of course, the New Testament was not established until the famous Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) Many original books were cut. Should Judas have been included?

   Regardless, does it not make sense that the Jesus who wept would also laugh? Do you wonder if he danced & sang as well? (No lightning has struck me yet.)

   Part of the challenge of religion can be taking it & ourselves too seriously. If Jesus is seen as humorless it puts him further from us. We draw closer to one who shares the full range of human feeling.

   And the idea that Jesus imagined himself as the son of a deity more loving than the Old Testament God is highly appealing. It aims us to the God inside. We must first embrace the love within before we can enter the celestial.

   Beyond that, theologian Professor Elizabeth Pagels argues that Judas may not even have been the betrayer we thought. That Jesus picked Judas to turn him over to the Romans to fulfill Biblical prophesy. Holy Smokes! Our historic scapegoat may have gotten a bad rap.

   But, the Christian narrative requires betrayal, crucifixion & resurrection. If he had died in his sleep or by his own hand could we be convinced that Jesus sacrificed himself to save us?

   None of the "new" Judas story dilutes the divinity of Christ. The tattered fragments of this other "gospel" simply affirm something we can celebrate. In the days following Holy Week we can choose to believe that along his earthly journey Jesus, like the rest of us, laughed.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Day 87 Happy Easter

Days 86-87 Footsteps Ahead

Note: This Essay is written by the late John O’ Donohue

The Cross is a unique axis in time. It is where time and timelessness intersect.

All past, present, and future pain were physically carried up the Hill of Calvary in this Cross.  This darkness is carried up the hill so that it could face the new dawn of Resurrection and become transfigured. In essence, the Cross and the Resurrection are one thing. They are not subsequent to each other. The Resurrection is the inner light hidden at the heart of darkness in the Cross. On Easter morning, this light explodes onto the world. This is the mystery of the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is a fascinating place; it embraces Calvary and Resurrection within the one circle. In Christian terms, there is no way to light or glory except through the sore ground under the dark weight of the Cross.  The Cross is a lonely forsaken symbol. Good Friday is always deeply lonesome. There is an eerie and disturbing sadness at the heart of this day. On Good Friday, the pain of the world is returning to the Cross, awaiting transfiguration again.

The Cross is an ancient symbol. Expressed lyrically, there is cruciform structure to every pain, difficulty, and sadness. In this sense, the Cross is not an external object that belongs far away on a hill in Jerusalem. Rather, the shape of the Cross is internal to the human heart. Every heart has a cruciform shape.

When you look at the different conflicts in your life, you find that they are placed where the contradictions cross each other. At the nerve of contradiction, you have the centre of the Cross, the nail of pain where two intimate but conflicting realities criss-cross. To view the standing Cross is to see how it embraces all directions.  The vertical beam reaches from the lowest depth of clay to the highest zenith of divinity, the horizontal beam stretches the breadth of the world.

The promise to each of us is that we will never be called to walk the lonely path of suffering without seeing the footprints ahead of us which lead eventually over the brow of the hill where Resurrection awaits us. Behind the darkness of suffering, a subtle brightening often manifests itself. Two lines in a poem by Philippe Jaccottet echo this: “Love, like fire, can only reveal its brightness / on the failure and the beauty of burnt wood.” There is consolation and transfiguration here. The fires of suffering are disclosures of love. It is the nature of the lover to suffer. The marks and wounds that suffering leave on us are eventually places of beauty. This is the deep beauty of soul where limitation and damage, rather than remaining forces that cripple, are revealed as transfiguration.

John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes (U.S. – Harper Collins; U.K. Transworld)

Reading this reflection today spurred an epiphany for me as I gained  new insights on the crucifixion  & resurrection. The image of Christ's suffering & dying on the cross has often led to feelings of guilt and sinfulness. Yet O’ Donohue has transformed this symbolism in a meaningful new way.

John’s images discovered in the cross also connects with my spirit’s journey as expressed in drawing mandalas (sacred circle) or God, universal, all-inclusive unconditional love.

On this somber evening O’ Donohue’s words & images are so beautiful I wanted to share them & offer to them up as prayer.

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Photo: Ireland, 2011

Mandala by ~liz

Days 81-85 - Holy Week or Hell Week?

   “Listen to him shout. I like his strength and his passion,” an audience member said as he explained his reasons for backing the hand waving speaker in the red baseball cap.

   The omnipresent Donald Trump is accidentally reminding loving leaders & caregivers of something we sometimes forget: Shouting is not strength unless it is shaped by the eloquence of high purpose. Degrading others is the mark of a charlatan not a statesman. Simplistic declarations about walls & immigrants & bimbos & bombing are not the principles on which America was built, much less the teachings of Jesus.

   To listen to Trump during these sacred days causes one to wonder if this is Hell Week in America rather than Holy Week in the world. According to him nothing is right & everything is wrong. His opponents are "liars, cheats, low-lifes & losers" and America is "going down the toilet."

   Does Trump (uncharacteristically awkward discussing his Christian faith) sound more like Jesus or more like Jesus' Roman detractors? Do his crowds sound like the disciples of Love or the mob that called for Jesus' crucifixion? 

   Governor John Kasich remains the only Republican candidate to strike a note of civility by saying, "I'm not going to take the low road to the highest office in the land." He is in last place. 

   Passion is crucial to loving leadership. It is the energy in high purpose inspiration. Hateful rhetoric is not on the resume of any great leader. Fear speech is the language of bullies & dictators. Its fertile fields are the hearts of the weak and the cowardly that, finding no strength in themselves, turn to one who imitates strength.

   Loving passion courses through the veins of every committed caregiver. Passion is Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, Van Gogh’s, “Starry Night,” and Atticus Finch in “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

  Passion is Lincoln at Gettysburg (can you imagine Trump giving such a speech?) It is Winston Churchill in 1940 stirring Londoners to stand strong against Hitler’s bombs. It is Martin Luther King stirring dreams among millions in 1963. It is Mother Teresa speaking her vision to serve not simply the poor, but “the poorest of the poor.”

   It is also the surgeon separating Siamese twins, the nurse helping a newborn breathe, the ER manager encouraging a tired second shift and the Chief Financial Officer congratulating the staff on making budget.

   Passion and its sister Compassion are the arms of love reaching out for the hands of need. It is Jesus standing on the mountain to tell us that it is the poor who are blessed & the meek who shall inherit the earth. It is the passion of Jesus hanging from the cross, hungry, thirsty, bleeding from hands and feet and forehead, a wound in his side, suffering for all of us, offering us living water & the path to light.

   Since Jesus called us to love our enemies we can pray for those so fearful they respond to hate speech. 

   High purpose passion ignites the firewood of hope not the hellfire of hate. It alone illuminates the light of God’s love amid the darkness of despair. It is the resurrection from the cave as well as the passion on the cross. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Images from Library of Congress & Charis Ministries

Days 79-80 Stand Under the Stars

Erie Chapman, healthcare visionary and the founder of The Journal of Sacred Work, created  a sanctuary here for caregivers. A fount of respite & renewal; a sacred space that invites lingering & encouragement to see with one’s heart coupled with a desire to "live love,not fear" (Chapman). 

 Together we have come to cherish beauty; reflect light, offer hospitality, compassion & acceptance for ourselves through others. We share a unique camaraderie that affirms love. We experience mutual vulnerability as we explore life’s deeper meaning in the revelation of truth. 

 As another work week winds to an end,  Sabbath offers us the gift of a pause from all the doing… (For those who are working the w/e your Sabbath can shift to another day.)

 Perhaps, you will gather at table to share a meal & conversation, exhausted yet ready to celebrate life by showing up.

 Find rest on the ebb and flow of your breath & just as waves crash upon a shore, release your worries, frustrations & anxieties, at least for this moment.

Let go of all the white noise, step outside your door & “stand under the stars.”

"Stand under the stars and say what you like to them. Praise them, question them, pray to them, and wish upon them. The universe will not answer. But it will have spoken." -Timothy Ferris

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Watercolor by ~liz

Days 74-78 What keeps you safe?

[We are honored to receive this essay by Minton Sparks. Sparks is an internationally known performer, winner of the prestigious Southern Writers Association award for Best Spoken Word Artist & regular performer at the famed Bluebird Cafe, Ryman Theater & Grand Ole' Opry]

   I rain answers to her question, “what keeps you safe?”

   When I get buried in the jail behind the bars that the monkey paints I come out shooting with a truth or two and the heart’s resonance shouts back at me, “I’m scared too”. He’s scared too. We’re all scared too.

   I gain strength from others whose resilience keeps me safe, whose dedication to family keeps me safe. The speed limit keeps me safe -- most days, the mere thought of the wondrous cross keeps me safe.

   To tell you the truth it’s mostly forgiveness that keeps me safe. When I wind my way into the next unforgivable, Forgiveness stands there in a white gown, or blue shoes and nothing else.

   Hell, how should I know what forgiveness wears? I’ve watched her cast her eyes toward the ground. Forgiveness knows she’s powerful but does not necessarily want to be famous for it. She’s sweeps up glass shards after drunken all night parties, she touches my back when my skin is hot with shame, she lives in that broken middle distance between two who used to love, just singing, singing in a beckoning way ”come back, I’m sorry” and she never stops.

   I swear to god that Forgiveness never stops singing and I can prove it. We are still sitting here across the table from each other. “Because she lives, I can face tomorrow, because she lives all fear is gone.” (a bastardization of the Baptist Hymnal.)

   Forgiveness isn’t dull. She is razor sharp. Though she squints into the sun, so as not to taunt the glare of the facts, facts maul Forgiveness’s buzz like nothing else. She water colors most days, prefers the blues; while I trade dancing for self -disgust, or trying to nail you for what you have and haven’t done for me, make a mockery of that pale light coming up over the morning of your eyes.

   You, my friend, have taught me about forgiveness. I dance with you into that pale light shy and shining from your eyes.

   We may be weary now, bloodied and broken. But watch how forgiveness wraps us in her silken robe, and rocks us to sleep. Her sacred stones beneath our beds soak up our memories of real and imagined injuries.

   What keeps me safe is forgiveness. May we drink from her silver chalice kept in the golden saddlebags she wears like a perfect vest to the dance?

-Minton Sparks

Days 72-73 Door of My Heart

Recently I shared a meal with a friend, a blessing and a Holy Communion of sorts. She is a light filled being who is kind and generous of heart. Eventually our conversation deepened to things that hold meaning.

We talked about some of the challenges we encounter in life. Faithfully, my friend shared, “God knows and there is a reason for everything.”

For me, I see things from another angle. I recounted a situation in which, I bared witness to the anguish of a fellow parishioner. Her teenage nephew was in a horrific accident and one of the passengers in the car, a young girl, was killed in the crash. She praised God for sparing her nephew and in thanksgiving said that God must have had a reason to spare her nephew. There was a reason he lived.

I was thankful that her loved one survived. Yet, I struggled with the idea that God spared him and took this young teenage girls life. Was her life any less valuable? Does God intervene in such a way, condemning some and sparing others?

My concept of God is not help for some and not others but rather to offer us the strength of Love in difficult times and in all times. In every tragic situation, God’s love is revealed in mysterious unique and unexpected ways.

The deeper our religious convictions we gain a sense of belonging but risk excluding others. I doubt that this was ever the intention of enlightened ones who have guided us along us various paths, which all lead to union with our Divine  Source.

My friend said to me, “We are so fortunate to know God. How do people cope who do not have God in their lives?" Several weeks have gone by and today an answer came…

But wait…God is present in all things; light and dark, our perceptions of good and evil, right and wrong, connection and separation.

A mistaken idea is that God is present in some and not others. Rather, we harbor a distorted world view of scarcity and loss. We bear the armor of self-protection. We need to give ourselves a break. Unhook the thread of guilt we carry. Our biggest barrier to Love is the lens through which we see.

God/Love is all encompassing. Love is in all things and in all people, religious or atheist, saint and sinner, friend or enemy. There is no space that Love cannot enter. Love is eternal and can never be lost.

The door opens from within. Forgiveness is the key.

“Nothing real can be threatened. Only Love is real” (ACIM).

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandala by ~liz

Days 67-71 - The Secret of Gratitude: Timeless Celebration

   In 1973 neurologist Oliver Sacks gave us a timeless gift (one of many.) He penned the book Awakenings. Seventeen years later it became an Academy Award nominated film.

   Patients frozen into silence & immobility receive a new drug. After years of paralysis each patient blooms, reborn briefly into our world.

   One powerful exchange captures the center. It comes from Leonard Lowe, an "awakened patient." 

"Lowe: We've got to remind [everybody]...how good it is.

Dr. Sayer: How good what is, Leonard?

Lowe: Read the newspaper...It's all bad. People have forgotten...what it is to be alive. They need to be reminded...of what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!" 

   Dr. Sacks heeded his character's advice, “My predominant feeling is one of gratitude," he wrote, "I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege & adventure.” 

   Can we not choose the same, to honor the goddess of the handless clock & commemorate this moment?

   Maybe gratitude's secret is that celebration, timeless celebration, is the pathway to joy.

   Still, I often find other ways to live, expressing discontent with everything from a morning ache to the seasons of the year.

   When I mourn autumn it affirms my grief. When I bemoan winter as a metaphor for death it agrees with me.

   Each year spring seduces & winter's fear tricks me into thinking she will never come.

   Just as my labor exhausts me into despair spring crowns, pushed from the same earth-womb where you & I once hid. A wild celebration breaks out in the garden of gratitude.

    Sachs described gratitude as his "predominant feeling," He knew as do we that grieving & disappointment are as certain as sunset. It is hard to trust that if we make love to every season each will reciprocate.

   Amid my wiser moments I lean into trust & from that cultivate the gratitude that lifts us to grace & can transform any moment into a festival of celebration, a time when we can be glad "to have loved and been loved." A time to rejoice. 

-Erie Chapman

photographs: "Timesless" (2015) "Wild Woods" (1978) copyright 2016 by erie

Days 65-66 For The Journey

The Lenten season invites us on a soulful journey of self-introspection. We travel light without all the customary amenities that will only serve to distract us from our real purpose.

Perhaps we have forgotten. Through the years, our heart becomes clouded over. I’ve heard it said that we think we have many problems but we really only have one; the thought of being separated from God/Love (ACIM) Yet the One that loved us into being sees only our true essence.

Beloved Is Where We Begin

If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise
this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger
or thirst,
from the scorching
of sun
or the fall
of the night.

But I can tell you
that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you
that on this way
there will be rest.

I can tell you
that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace

Contributed by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Mandala By ~liz