Journal of Sacred Work

Days 29-33 - Symbols of Love

 

Caregivers engage countless ways to relate to each other as well as to patients. Words are only one bridge. Symbols speak eloquently depending on how they are offered, shared & interpreted.

This Gulf Coast setting was beautiful before I photographed it. The small tree at the horizon drew me to this point of view - not standing at the beach but back far enough to include more.

The original photograph is not the actual sunset, of course. The camera is a filter that offers a representation of what I saw.

Adding fire, hawk, stained glass & misplaced waves creates a different experience. Every element & the image as a whole has the meaning we choose for it.

Stained glass symbolizes sacredness. We can worship here as deeply as in a formal church.

Symbology impacts caregiving. Pictures of loving caregivers lining a hospital's halls support both compassionate cultures & the confidence of patients. A cross, Star of David or the non-denominational symbols of Radical Loving Care reinforce loving missions.

Joseph Campbell defined a symbol as "an energy evoking and directing agent." Hospitals & hospices signal anxiety. The right symbols help Compassion defeat Fear opening the door to healing.

-Erie Chapman

Composite photograph, "Surreal sunset" - copyright erie chapman 2017 

[This column originally appeared here in April, 2017]

Days 27-28 Nature’s Light

Note: This reflection is by guest contributor, Terry Chapman

As I stepped carefully down a steep bank, beside a huge old Oak tree, into the cold waters of the Swift River in western MA, one fine summer day years ago, I leaned my favorite fly rod up against the massive trunk of an old Oak tree. My plan was to photograph the tree, near where, in previous times, I had caught several beautiful large trout, be-speckled with the colors, hues, and natural light, that only God can create.   

Wading against the strong current until I had progressed maybe 25 yards upstream, I turned and took only one photo of what I saw that early morning.  But when I looked at the photo, I saw a brilliant silver light captured and reflected exactly across my metal fly reel.   

There, shining with a presence beyond my understanding, my fly rod and reel had been transformed from mere useful items into a glittering image, full of the wonder of light in our world, and reminded me of how only one brief moment in our lives, can reflect God’s light into the lives of others.

Is fishing important? Yes, perhaps, in moments like this one, when normal turns mystical and ultimately, good!

Thank you, Terry Chapman for sharing and reflecting this Light into our lives as blessing!

Days 22-26 - To Savor - The Only Path to Gratitude

   A hyperactive child I remain a hyperactive adult. I never outgrew the high energy enthusiasm of childhood.

   This trait is freighted with side effects. It interferes with one of life's key practices: Living in gratitude. 

   We know we only have "now." Yet, living in it is deeply difficult. It is not just our contemporary society that yanks our attention a hundred different ways. "Now-living" has always been difficult for our species. 

   My lifelong (hyperactive, of course) search for ways to live in the now led me to one verb: To savor. I posted it on my mirror (a better thing to contemplate then my aging face.) It has been helped.

   Still photographs are avenues to "now-living." The girl photographed in 1981 is my daughter. Ten years old, she stands on the edge of Chapel Lake unable to see her future as a star athlete, class valedictorian, lawyer, wife, professional photographer (she stood next to me in the darkroom) & mother. 

   This picture becomes universal when we practice savoring. Let your eyes slow-walk & you will see grains of sand defined in ways only found in silver prints made from film negatives. Follow the sand below water & find feet. Travel the shadows that dress her legs & discover long hair, shy shoulders & the young face I know in all its ages.

   This is art appreciation. 

   This is also a way to learn that savoring beauty always leads to gratitude. In fact, we can only "now-live" through one verb: To savor.

-Erie Chapman   

Silver Print: "Tia Chapel Lake, 1981) by Erie

Days 20-21 Hope

Oh, not to be separated,
shut off from the starry dimensions
by so thin a wall.

What is within us
if not intensified sky
traversed with birds

and deep
with winds of homecoming?

~Rainer Maria Rilke, Uncollected Poems

A great many challenges confront us in our world today that cause us deep grief, worry and anxiety. Poverty, violence, human trafficking, prison injustice, environmental degradation, prejudice, immigration injustice and homelessness to name a few

There is no denying our problems are immense and so we down slump into hopeless inertia, thinking what can we do? Or maybe we think we have to get our own lives in order before we can take action. There is never a perfect time. We are all wounded in some way but "our cracks are where the light gets in."   How can we serve a meaningful purpose? Love propels us to action. No matter every small gesture does make a difference.

How many people feel shut out, left out, invisible, lonely, rejected and marginalized; sadly more every day.

Film maker Nic Askew creator of Soul Biographies has a gift of revealing the essence of people by capturing their stories. He has gleaned an important insight and sums it up in a few simple words. “Everyone wants to belong.” Images of the safety and security of  home come to mind. Nic has discovered home in the eyes of each person he encounters. How would it feel to be really seen without conditions. Namaste is the greeting of India, "when the God (Light) in me, sees the God (Light) in you, there we are One. There we are at home with ourselves ane one another. Rilke eloquently describes this as the, “ winds of homecoming.”

How would seeing each person we meet as our home change our worldview? Would fear succumb to love? Light illuminate our minds darkness? Enemy be seen as friend? The refugee become a guest of our dear Lord? Cynicism give way to hope?

Despite all the darkness, there a people who inspire hope by bringing Light and Love into our world. We are all called; the seed within is meant to grow into the God given gift of our potential.  

May this 2 minute video remind you of the hopefulness unfolding and expansiveness of Love to bring us home to one another.   

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Pencil Drawing by ~liz

https://www.facebook.com/bbcthree/videos/10155043827725787/
(copy and paste link into your browser)

Days 15-19 "One foot in front of the other"

   She sat unaware that her 12-year-old self reclined behind her, resting as did she after celebrating yet another year in her astonishingly long life. Is she an echo of that picture or is it an echo of her?

   She was born in a kitchen & has lived countless hours in a string of others. If annual photographs had been taken starting on that day 106 of them would fill the room behind her.

   I write a lot about mom not only due to  her age but because I continue to learn so much from her.

   This picture taught me more about shadows then it did light. One divides her face. Another blankets her legs & runs into the deep background where her cane hooks a chair. A third group cross-hatches the foreground linking her to her girlhood self. 

   She cannot have much longer. Does this trouble her? Once, nearly sixty years ago, she asked how I was feeling. "Depressed," I said.

   "One foot in front of the other," she advised. It seemed a simplistic solution to the crosscurrents lashing my heart. Yet, that advice has served both her & me well.

   She has put "one foot in front of the other" more times than anyone I know. The elegance & grace with which she has done that has kept many shadows at bay - for others whose lives she has illuminated as well as for herself.

-Erie Chapman

photograph by erie

Days 13-14 Keep Turning

Shared by Liz Sorensen Wessel

How the Stars Get In Your Bones

~by Jan Richardson

Sapphire, diamond, emerald, quartz:
think of every hard thing
that carries its own brilliance,
shining with the luster that comes
only from uncountable ages
in the earth, in the dark,
buried beneath unimaginable weight,
bearing what seemed impossible,

I tell you, this blazing in you—
it does not come by choosing
the most difficult way, the most daunting;
it does not come by the sheer force
of your will.
It comes from the helpless place in you
that, despite all, cannot help but hope,
the part of you that does not know
how not to keep turning
toward this world,
to keep turning your face
toward this sky,
to keep turning your heart
toward this unendurable earth,
knowing your heart will break
but turning it still.

I tell you,
this is how the stars
get in your bones.

This is how the brightness
makes a home in you,
as you open to the hope that burnishes
every fractured thing it finds
and sets it shimmering,
a generous light that will not cease,
no matter how deep the darkness grows,
no matter how long the night becomes.

Still, still, still
the secret of secrets
keeps turning in you,
becoming beautiful,
becoming blessed,
kindling the luminous way
by which you will emerge,
carrying your shattered heart
like a constellation within you,
singing to the day
that will not fail to come.

Excerpt of Poem by Jan Richardson

 

Excerpt of a pencil drawing by ~liz

Days 8-12 Morning Light

   Sunrise & sunset may seem similar as mirrors. We rarely experience them that way.

   Dawn offers a softer, often pale-skinned light at birth.

   Emily Dickinson wrote (in a poem Liz Wessel quoted this weekend) that sun unfolds its beauty "a ribbon at a time."

   As a congenital "night person" (Yes. That is in our DNA) I have seen day-old sun die far more than I have seen her baby sister rise & stretch her limbs  into the day. 

   Morning light hands us a gift. Tired caregivers may find this present hard to accept. 

   Does unwrapping morning's gift "a ribbon at a time" take too long? Only if we have decided that rushing is more important than living.

    -Erie Chapman

Days 6-7 I’ll Tell You How The Sun Rose by ~Emily Dickinson

Note: offered by Liz Sorensen Wessel 

I’ll Tell You How The Sun Rose

~by Emily Dickinson

I'll tell you how the sun rose,-- 
A ribbon at a time. 
The steeples swam in amethyst, 
The news like squirrels ran. 
The hills untied their bonnets, 
The bobolinks begun. 
Then I said softly to myself, 
"That must have been the sun!"

But how he set, I know not. 
There seemed a purple stile 
Which little yellow boys and girls 
Were climbing all the while 
Till when they reached the other side, 
A dominie in gray 
Put gently up the evening bars, 
And led the flock away.

Painting by ~liz

Day 365- Day 4 - Have a JOYFUL New Year

   Yes. A Joyful New Year to you & to caregivers everywhere.

   Happy is nice but joyful is better. Happiness is a bouncing ball that can careen out of bounds. Joy is a more enduring thing. It is the light that does not go out when storms blow in. 

   Happiness is fed by events without - the way the apples & oranges feed our body. Joy is fed by gratitude within - to be grateful in spirit for our food.

   Built on appreciation & sustained by love, it's joy we want above all else. Renew gratitude every day. Live a life of thanksgiving & joy will illuminate your days.

-Erie Chapman