Journal of Sacred Work

Days 280-284 - A Unique & Sacred Gift

   The gift came a week before Christmas, 1990. The giver was friend June Ammons. Fully aware Death's Angel was flying near she took time to select it for my wife. 

   When June died four days later at 62 the unopened present became  especially meaningful because of an unusual choice. My wife decided not to open it.

   "Wrapped it remains an unforgettable memory of June & a mystery," she said.

   Thirty years later the gift still sleeps in the green box & red ribbon June tied around its waist.  One day she may open it. But maybe not.

   Imagine a friend spending one of her final hours buying you a gift. Opened, it may soon end up in the closet of the forgotten. Wrapped it could, in special cases, become unique, sacred & a holy expression of one of Love's sweeter mysteries.

-Erie Chapman

Note: Since I could find no picture of June here is her beloved husband, Reverend Edsel Ammons, who was Bishop of the Methodist District that oversaw Riverside Methodist Hospital & OhioHealth when I was President of both. 

   

    

Days 271-272 At One with Oneself!

Note: Guest reflection by the fabulous Terry Chapman PhD.

To be at one with oneself should be a primary life goal.  But getting to that point in one’s life journey requires the courage to keep moving toward a more integrated life, built gradually over time, by engaging in genuinely unique personal and sometimes professional achievements, launched by a dream of who we wish to become. 

At age 40, I heard the Lord say to me in a retreat to identify God-given gifts and possible ministries using them to make the world a better place for all of us. He had not spoken to me before or since that strikingly moving experience, now 38 years ago this fall!  But speak he did and said, “Help them Grow”. No specifics, just that directive that filled my heart with the decision to move ahead using my Ph.D. in Adult Education and Career Development to help as many folks as possible in the ensuing years. I never tire of hearing stories about life journeys!

My ministry has enabled me to spend time with very many wonderful persons with differing cultures, value systems, and in many US states, but with one thing in common: the sure conviction that what I was pursuing was what I was supposed to be doing over my lifetime.  And as has been said so many times, that decision has made all the difference.

Take time now, whatever your age or condition to think deeply about what your best skills, talents, and attributes are and then identify ways (ministries) to use them in helping others.  For one it could be changing from accounting to a theology degree and a formal ministry. For another, it could mean someone gifted in family affairs and organizational skills, arranging a large family reunion bringing family together for the first time in years. And for another still: it could be as simple as volunteering at a Veterans hospital to visit the sick or help with recreational events at the hospital or in the community.  What is your passion in life? I truly hope it includes helping others as an integral part of who you are and what you want to achieve and who you wish to become! Once you use those unique gifts, you will feel at one with yourself perhaps for the first time!

~Terry Chapman PhD

Days 273-277 "Provided we stay brave..."

Even though we have only seen each other a few times my dear cousin Terry & I share many similar passions. They include Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto, our respect for our ancestry & our passion for poetry.

Here is a gift from Wendell Berry, just the 3rd & 4th verses of his soul-piercing poem "The Country of Marriage":

III.
Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

IV.
How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

May we stay "brave/ enough to keep on going in."

-Erie Chapman

Days 264-265 Come with Me

This past week I've learned a little about the life of a remarkable woman, Maya Angelou.  So often our greatest hardships unleash within us our greatest gifts.

When Maya was seven years of age she was raped and had to be hospitalized. The perpetrator was well known to her family. 

The man who harmed her was arrested and soon after released. The next day he was found beaten to death. Maya thought that because she had revealed his name, she had caused his death. Thereafter, she did not speak for five years.

During that time, she began reading books and memorized the all the words of many famous poets and authors to include Shakespeare. When she finally did speak again, she had a lot to say.

One can only imagine the profound impact this experience had upon her life. She overcame great trauma and did not allow it to take her down or define her life.  Instead she discovered and embraced her innate Beauty and that of others, imbued with compassion and kindness.

Listen to this short 1.45 min video as she extends to us an invitation that is truly worth receiving. 

Liz Sorensen Wessel
Artwork by ~liz

 

Days 259-263 - A Stirring Profile in Courage

Genocide is the fruit of hatred.
   -Immaculee Illabagiza

   Each member of the coat-and-tied, finely-dressed crowd wondered the same thing: Could they have endured what the speaker did? All of us wanted to think that we were as strong as is she. I doubted my own strength as I listened to Immaculee back in 2007.

   She was a victim of the Hutu effort to extinguish the Tutsis more than a decade ago. In 100 days, one million were murdered. Immaculee survived by hiding with seven other women, in a 3 by 4 foot bathroom for ninety-one days. She is a modern day Anne Frank except that she lived.

    "There's a way for each of us to reach God," she told us. We knew that she had found that pathway.

   Immaculee's story is a stirring profile in courage. How could anyone endure three months sardine-packed in total silence in a 3 x 4 foot can,  the voices of murdering soldiers lurking near?

   "I wanted to run away from my mind," she said. Love's presence illuminated her heart.

   Is trauma the sole force that can jolt us out of lazy patterns? On the other side of hell Immaculee found herself wearing the finery of new grace.

   "What makes me smile?" she asked, projecting hard-won holiness. "It is because I know that God exists."

   Proof came when she encountered one of the captured men who had killed her friends.

   "You can do anything you want to him," the guards told her. "You can kick him, punch him, scar him. It's fine with us."

    What would you do? Kick him or, as Jesus said, pray for him? Immaculee chose a third pathway.

   "I wanted to free him of thinking of me as an obstacle between him and God," she said. "As people, we need to love each other."

   Does peace arrive only when we choose to surrender, to let go of longing?

   Immaculee weighed 65 pounds when she found freedom & something more important. In the wake of humiliation, pain, starvation and near death she describes a peculiar & transcendent compassion. 

   Can we find such without such suffering? I doubt it.

   Most caregivers live astride suffering. In some moments perhaps this brings a grace that Immaculee exudes all the time.

   After her speech to four hundred I watched some waiting impatiently for valets to bring their cars. Had they already dismissed the message of the the saintly woman, still inside signing books, who prayed for months trapped in a 3 x 4 foot bathroom with seven others?

   Immaculee waited not for her car, but for Love's rescue. Her wait was not in vain.

-Erie Chapman

[This re-edited column appeared in the Journal in 2007]

 

Days 257-258 Gift Yourself

As we greet this day, I wish for you moments of quietude, to simply breathe, a little space to release the stresses, the worries and the to dos. Pause for a moment with me. Breathe in deeply. Let that breath expand and release a lingering anxiety…just for this moment. One moment… that leads to another. Gift yourself with these momentary pauses throughout your day. This one simply extraordinary day.

"Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it can we see, hear, or feel it when it comes to us. Let's not be afraid to receive each day's surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity." Henri Nouwen

Thank you for accompanying us in a momentary respite, here with friends on the Journal of Sacred Work.

I dedicated this reflection to you.

Liz Sorensen Wessel
Watercolor by ~liz

Days 250-251 A Reversal of Thought

I am discovering that in sharing ones' story, which often stems from adversity and the wisdom gleaned from the experience, a persons' light filled essence is revealed.  This is a true gift to behold. To share our truth with another, requires a willingness to be seen in an exquisite, mutual vulnerability. This is where our humanity mingles with the divine. Where we risk speaking of things that are meaningful…to allow space for all that needs to be expressed, released and healed.

I am surprised by the moments when my heart suddenly closes in on itself triggered by fear and ancient hurts. A reversal of thought resurrects hope carried on the current of every loving thought. To share in a common light hearted laugh or a willingness to go deep within another’s grief, we find the courage to greet ourselves.

I seek forgiveness from every person I have ever met, for the protective shell that I have donned, for the hurts I have blindly caused but see more clearly now, for the need of forgiveness that is the door to healing of every human heart, for I know we are meant for so much more.

I am learning that your story is not so different from my own and that our separateness is only an illusion. Our thoughts, the stories we tell ourselves become our beliefs but are not necessarily true and are often distorted perceptions.  We can choose a new story and a new way of being that blesses others and eases the immense, unnecessary suffering in our world.

I see that kindness is a most precious gift; one that is sorely needed, for we are surely all wounded healers; one to another. The problems of this world seem so complicated but the answer to every problem is extraordinarily simple; to give and receive even the smallest of kind gestures has the power to change the self-destructive trajectory of our world.

I understand that every thought I think creates war or peace. I choose my thoughts, I can choose anew in every moment.

Lord, let us choose peace.

 Shalom ~ Namaste ~ Shanti ~ Mir ~ Aloha ~ Anyoung Haseyo ~ Paz ~ Paix ~ Pace ~ Peace

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Artwork by ~liz

Days 245-249 - "I hurt, therefore I am."

   Her presence was so eloquent she did not need to speak. When she did, her words were often memorable. 

   On the first day of Divinity School she lingered after class & stared up at me curiously. She was a poor black woman, the seventh of eight children & attending Vanderbilt on scholarship.  I must have looked like an alien to her as I buckled up my brief case. Simultaneously President of Baptist Hospital & a full-time student, I was the only one in a business suit.

   "So," she said, "are you one of those anal-retentive white guys?"  She always spoke slowly, her speech labored due to the sarcoidosis that also hampered her gait. 

   "I hope you will find out that I'm not that uptight," I laughed.

   Over the next three years Michelle Jackson & I became best friends & that friendship included her partner, Lillian.

   It could have been the suffering of her illness, or growing up poor, or growing up black, or discovering her lesbian orientation that enabled her to offer compassion of a kind beyond my privileged life experience.

    A year into our friendship she informed my I was not "anal-retentive after all" by declaring, "Erie, you are the blackest white guy I ever met."

   One day during a class, someone referenced Descartes' famous line, "I think therefore I am."  Instantly, Michelle leaned over & whispered to me, "I hurt therefore I am."

   In 2003 Michelle graduated with her Masters. Somewhere I have a great picture of her in her mortarboard laughing & smiling. Three weeks later, at 38, she was dead. A heart attack stole her in the middle of the night.

   Twenty of us gathered in a circle to honor her. Michelle's words spoke for each of us: "I hurt, therefore I am."

   On September 19 a two-month show of my art, honoring the idea of a female messiah, opens at the Vanderbilt Divinity School Gallery. It is dedicated to Michelle. 

-Erie Chapman 

Image: "Tryptic of Suffering" - Erie Chapman, variations on a theme by Murillo