Journal of Sacred Work

Days 318-323 - "The Divine Blueprint"

   What shines through when we express our truest self? As always, John O'Donohue points the way. "The mystery and magic of being an individual," he writes, is "to discover and realize the divine blueprint in the soul."

   This is the life challenge for all of us just as it will be for my oldest granddaughter. Here, she gazes skyward as do all of us when we search the air for answers. 

   She bears the natural naïveté of her age. It is remarkable how many seas she will sail & disguises she will wear before she will know if she has found her way back to truth & fulfilled her individual calling. 

  If the blueprint of her soul is radically different from others she will still need to adapt to some of society's demands. Patterns will tempt her towards complacency. She may fall victim to hiding her finest talents in favor of safety. Hopefully, she will live her truest beauty. 

   The more variegated & unusual our soul's blueprint, the more courage it takes to live it. And the more dazzling the result if that courage & that destiny are embraced. 

-Erie Chapman 

Photograph: "Autumn Girl" -by Erie

   

Days 316-317 Your Gifts

Note: This reflection is offered by Liz Sorensen Wessel to celebrate Erie Chapman; a man with a brilliant mind, sensitive heart & creative spirit. What better way to honor the Beauty of his soul than to share a few of Erie’s own thoughts and words.

"Some of our most beautiful secrets are unknown even to us."

As a child I lay on my bed while
My mother fluttered just-cleaned sheets..
“They’re like parachutes falling from the clouds,”
she said.

In the Sanctuary
You live inside
a sacred mist
where only the eyes
of the heart
can see

Give up
your expectations
for others.
Does it help for you to suppose others
Will fit the mold you have crafted for them?
Embrace them now as they are and they become
Someone to love.

Today you become a guest at your own table of Thanksgiving
Sit with all your different shaped shadows.
Celebrate each with open arms.
Pick one to revisit awhile.
There they are-all your gifts, all your best angels, all your beautiful shadows carved
From light and gathered in the circle of your love.
Come, rest rejoice in love’s glorious invitation.

"There is more potential power in a single human spirit than in any atom bomb."

Lord who is Love, bring your strength
To the suffering. Let the river of your
Grace flow across the skin of the burned
To cool their pain. Bring your light into
The eyes of those who care for these
patients. Bless them, love them, bring
the peace that comes only
through you.

"The call of beauty is not a cold call into the dark or the unknown; in some instinctive way we know that beauty is no stranger. We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness."

 

For love will always return,
Circling through every grey
To pink again the world.

 "We never speak our deepest gratitude because it cannot be spoken.

 

Blessings to you, Erie with love on your birthday (10/31)!

Liz Sorensen Wessel
Ribbons of color - top & bottom of page by ~liz

All quotes, Poetry & Photos by Erie Chapman, (except for pictures of him as a child, the globe hands and Good Samaritan) 

Days 310-315 - The Body Electric or the Electric Body?

    Recently, I said to my iPhone , "I am sad."

   "Its OK to cry if you want to," Siri replied, "My aluminosilicate glass surface is tear resistant."

 

   In 1855, long before robots were imagined, Walt Whitman spoke to us through his Leaves of Grass, "I sing the body electric..." he wrote, "And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?/And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?" 

 

   One hundred sixty years later the questions still earthquake our hearts. Would we prefer a reliable "electric body" over a passionate but vulnerable "Body Electric?" When will we become more robot than human? If the robot crushes humanity "what is the soul?"

  

   Science fiction is now science possibility. Thoughtful people probe the core of compassion. Is love truly unique to humans? 

   

   Caregivers labor to cure disease & relieve pain. They have a third role: to offer healing. Do we wish we had an "aluminosilicate glass surface to catch our tears?" Who among us would not sell their souls for a body free of disease, injury & pain?

 

   Can love's healing be replicated? Love is grounded in intent & only we can form such a complex emotion, right? I asked my son-in-law, a computer engineer with a genius IQ, about this. His answer stunned me. "Maybe," he said.

 

   The camera aiming at us in the picture is a computer. Are the body & soul of the photographer replaceable? Can a robot paint a masterpiece or write an immortal poem?

   

   The Japanese have been testing caregiver robots. Programmed to say kind things they provide comfort to the elderly & the autistic. 

 

   Scientist Prakash Presad writes, "many a time we are unable to tell if the human to whom we are speaking really cares about what we are saying." He wonders if a robot could be a better listener.

 

   We can argue our uniqueness. Still, the "electric body" might, within this century, so threaten our humanity that we may ask: Where is our soul? 

 

-Erie Chapman

Photographs 1 & 2 by Erie.

Photograph 3, Shutterfly

Days 308-309 An All Inclusive Love

Note: This reflection is offered by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Metaphors enable us to express divine ineffable truths. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is a Christian understanding of God. One that invites us into a relational experience of love. 

Richard Rohr describes God as “a circle dance; a total outpouring and receiving among three intimate partners, who receive their Total Self from another and then hand it on to another, who repeats the self-emptying act of love to a third …”

“All is a constant changing of forms through a nonstop process of loss and renewal, death and resurrection, losing the self and finding a larger self – just as in God and in the teaching of Jesus.” (Rohr)

Theologian and musician, Jeremy S. Begbie explores art as a means of enlivening the gospel beyond the confines of words. He views the integration of art and faith akin to learning a new language; a bridge between our limited perceptions and world view  to new understanding and the discernment of meaning in our lives.

The delight of self-expression through art has been universal throughout the ages. This can be seen in ancient cave drawings, the composing of music, of painting beauty in vibrations of colors and prose and in dancing to the movements of life (to name a few).

 Begbie suggests that we consider the notes that form the C Major chord as an analogy for the trinity. When the solo note of C is played it fills the entire air with sound. As a second E note is added, the two combined notes fill space so that you can’t tell where one note begins or the other leaves off. As the G note joins in, the complete chord vibrates as one integral sound, yet with distinctive parts.

Berber exclaims, “What could be more apt than to speak of the Trinity as a three-note-resonance of life, mutually indwelling, without mutual exclusion and yet without merger, each occupying the same ‘space,’ yet recognizably and irreducibly distinct, mutually enhancing and establishing each other.”

Rohr shares the revelation of Saint Bonaventure, “For God to be good, God can be one. For God to be loving, God has to be two because love is always a relationship.” But his real breakthrough was saying that “For God to be supreme joy and happiness, God has to be three.”

God is relational, and love is revealed in our relationships, our suffering and in our joy. When we see ourselves as separate from one another, we feel cut off; isolated.  Yet, we can gift each other along the way by offering an outstretched hand. We can  awaken to the divine truth that we too are a  part of this all-inclusive love.

Pencil Drawing on black paper by ~liz

Days 303-307 - Slow

   The Rilke poem & the photograph of an autumn-drenched Vermont posted in the weekend Journal by Liz Wessel caught my heart. Autumn is, like all seasons, a sacred time. Poets rhapsodize about the fall almost as much as they do spring.

   Of course, the colors are thrilling. Of course, fall's new air (referred to predictably as "crisp") sweaters our skin while autumn light makes every death-spiraling leaf a shooting star.

   And fall can be devastating. The change of seasons, especially summer to fall, is a fragile time for those vulnerable to depression.  

   Where is salvation? The Dalai Lama says he believes "...that the only true religion consists of having a good heart." And Jesus pronounced that "God is Love."

   Having a good heart allows us to love the shadows as well as the sun that creates them. That love can only be found in slow breaths. 

   Speed tramples compassion, destroys Radical Loving Care & causes spiritual blindness. Race through your days & you will miss the world's beauty. 

   "I went and sat in front of a Turner for hours and I realized something profound," artist Catherine Clancy wrote, "-that the vanishing point in the work does not vanish so that you have the feeling that love, truth and beauty go on forever." 

   The "good heart" needs regular visits to the private forest of Slow. 

SLOW

Space sprouts satellites.The world spins speed. The sky grows jets. 

Inside Slow live Hemingway, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, grass just mowed.

Inside Slow the widow in the windowed corner of her second floor bedroom sews kitchen curtains, raises her eyes to review rows of corn, harvests the caws of a murder of crows.

All gifts hide inside Slow.

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Autumn Daughter" by Erie

Days 301- 302 Autumn

 Note: Shared by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

as if orchards were dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling

away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.

And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands

infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

By Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

Photo: Vermont Country Road, Oct. 2016

Days 296-300 - The Impossibility of Love

   "We are beasts bounding through time," Charles Bukowski wrote. The persistent question is, Can Love exalt us above the rest of God's creatures? Can what we interpret in a pair of tomatoes & an avocado differentiate us from other life beings?

   Love's seekers may briefly touch the hem of her dress. Still, earth's love is fraught with fire. Most are burned by the encounter as well as illuminated. 

   Love engages excruciating pain. If we pursue her we will be locked in conflicting desires.

   She offers the best life can give. Can we survive her challenges? 

   Pioneers push boundaries the furthest. They meddle with the alchemy of our being & sometimes, after harrowing explorations, they stumble into the secret forests we covet. Laboring to bring back hard won gifts they return scarred. 

   The same is true with our saintly caregivers. To paraphrase Henri Nouwen, caregivers rush into burning buildings to save those in need & sometimes are burned themselves. 

   This is the challenge of Radical Loving Care. Bukowski describes it as "the impossibility of being human." He lists the tragic endings some artists found,

"...the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops...

...These champions
these mad dogs of glory

moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly.”

   Many risk the journey but, like some daring mountain climbers, fall from the peaks.

   Admire the seekers. Admire the caregivers who risk everything to "move this little bit of light toward/ us/ impossibly."

-Erie Chapman 

Photograph by Erie

Days 294-295 An Essential Truth

“If your only goal is to love, there is no such thing as failure…” St. Francis of Assisi

According to the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, Saint Francis offered an alternative way of life that recognized God’s presence in our midst and the sacredness of everything that is.

The lived experience of St. Francis was one of opening to love, and of loving God wholeheartedly through love of all God's creation.

Francis understood “an essential truth about God, that there is no separation between matter and spirit. Knowing our true identity- one with God- frees us from fear of death and allows us to let go of our small self to live more fully as embodied love.” (Rohr)

Rohr encourages us to seek the inspiration of St. Francis through a contemplative way of being, forging connection, rather than judgement. In the sacred realm of relationships we  can explore, find and trust our gifts and use these gifts in the service of others.  

We can create bonds of healing in communion with one another and our community. This requires a willingness to see differently, to awaken to the common thread of our humanity and not turn from suffering but rather to embrace our true calling. 

 Liz Sorensen Wessel
Photo: Huntington Gorge, Vermont-Oct 6, 2016

Days 288-293 What Caregivers Want in Leaders

   As America's vast legions of caregivers work to meet our deepest needs I wonder each day: How well are they led? 

   Some leaders shine with the light of loving support. They understand that their top responsibility is to take care of the people who take care of people. Baylor's Chris York (pictured) is like that in numerous brilliant and Godly ways. So are George Mikitarian at Florida's Parrish Medical Center & Laurie Harting at Dignity Health in Sacramento. These are among America's Radical Loving Leaders.

   Too many leaders are failing our caregivers. Instead of offering encouragement, compassion & strength they peddle fear & incompetence. My heart breaks for every caregiver who comes to work each day afraid of their boss.

   This is one reason I worry about Donald Trump's relative success, not as a political commentary, but as a reflection on leadership temperament. Will his bullying, boastful & abusive behavior encourage bad leaders? Make them think their own failed behavior might actually be the best approach? Meanwhile, Trump's leadership is splintering relationships in ways not seen since The Civil War. If leaders believe in love for themselves & their children they must turn their backs on such fear-based approaches.  

   Long ago, Gandhi proved that "Power based on love is a thousand times more effective & permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment."

   Caregiver satisfaction & energy often flow from the caregiver's feelings about their boss. The truth is as clear: If want positive outcomes engage positive energy. Leaders who practice this must be affirmed. Those who do not must be retrained or removed.

   It is the responsibility of leaders to care for caregivers not bully them.

-Erie Chapman

Days 276-277 At the End of the Day: A Mirror of Questions -by John O'Donohue

At the End of the Day: A Mirror of Questions

What dreams did I create last night?

Where did my eyes linger today?
Where was I blind?

Where was I hurt without anyone noticing? What did I learn today?

What did I read?

What new thoughts visited me?

What differences did I notice in those closest to me? Whom did I neglect?

Where did I neglect myself?

What did I begin today that might endure? 

How were my conversations?

What did I do today for the poor and the excluded?

Did I remember the dead today?

Where could I have exposed myself to the risk of something different?

Where did I allow myself to receive love?

With whom today did I feel the most myself?

What reached me today? How deep did it imprint?

Who saw me today?

What visitations had I from the past and from the future?

What did I avoid today?

From the evidence, why was I given this day?

                                                      -From John O’ Donohue’s Benedictus, A Book of Blessings

 

The late John O’ Donohue offers an inquiry that invites us into a deeper reflection into the unfolding of our lives. In this age of technology, where machines have us whirling at ever increasing speed, we do not know the ultimate effects this will have on our neuro-biology. I’ve heard our situation described humorously, as information terrorism. Just imagine the rapidity of which our neurons have to re-calibrate in response to our attention flitting from instantaneous flashes of information. Amidst the wonder of innovation and the exhaustion of full throttle we need to pause.

We need to seek out the sacred spaces to reconnect with our spirit. O’ Donohue offers a lovely mirror to enter into a more intimate relationship with ourselves and the meaning of this life.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandala by ~liz