Journal of Sacred Work

Days 301-305 - Autumn Sun?

We do not see things as they are.
We see them as we are. -Anais Nin,

A giant of literature, the late Ms. Nin articulated one of our most confusing existential issues: Why do you & I see the same picture in different ways?

Further, how can we have potentially opposite reactions? You may experience the light as comforting. I may find it lonely depressing.

How many candles are pictured? The "reality" is one is "real" the other electronic.

The painting is abstract. Thus, our viewing experience may diverge even more widely. 

How many kinds of light are portrayed? One viewer may count three. A second might add the window light. A third may include the painting as light. A fourth may say "infinite."

The tableau offers autumn hues. The vast majority of southerners love autumn. Based on life experience I feel the opposite. 

The most healing caregivers are those whose radical loving care honors the humanity of all beings, not just those like them. 

My current art exhibit at Vanderbilt Divinity School is billed as a visual essay of a new Messiah - what my imagination sees. It invites viewers to consider what they would like to see in a new Messiah, as perhaps contrasted with what I see.

Some love it. Others, failing to engage the exercise, insist my creations are narrow & wrong. Who it "right?"

"We do not see things as they are./ We see them as we are."

-Erie Chapman

Photograph, "Autumn Light" - Erie, 2019

Painting, Minton Sparks, 2017

 

Days 299-300 Hope In The Midst of Struggle

“Everywhere I looked, hope existed - but only as some kind of green shoot in the midst of struggle. It was a theological concept, not a spiritual practice. Hope, I began to realize, was not a state of life. It was at best a gift of life.”
                                                                                                                                                                                             ― Joan Chittister

 

As we move through the various stages of life or in my case the second half of life, we naturally begin a life review. Overall, I am hopeful that the good I have offered outweighs my lapses in consciousness. I confess there are a few painful remembrances that linger still. My greatest sin was a time of extreme exhaustion that left me in a trance like state and I did not stop to check on a someone in need. I will never know the outcome of that person’s fate and I was not even aware of my transgression until a long, long time after when I suddenly awakened to this realization.

Yesterday morning, I left for a meeting that as being held in Los Angeles. I was running a few minutes late and I anticipated the traffic would be bad. The GPS guided me unexpectedly to an alternate route but I decided to follow its lead. As I turned the corner of Chapman Ave. I passed a homeless man who was half slumped over and he looked very ill. Another fellow in a wide brimmed straw hat was walking nearby and would be passing by him. I looked in my rear-view mirror, he appeared to have stopped to check on him but I was uncertain if he really had or if it was an illusion of hopefulness.

I pulled onto a side street and called 911. I reported that there was a man in distress and the dispatcher inquired if I was with him. I said no, I was driving in my car and he kindly connected me to my neighborhood fire station, which literally just two blocks away. A female dispatcher picked up and I reported my observations that the man seemed very ill. She asked if I had stopped with a tone of judgement in her voice. I said no I was driving by when I spotted him. She said, "Okay, we will dispatch someone now." I thanked her and we hung up. 

 A bit rattled, I resumed my drive and inadvertently missed my turn and was taken out of my way. Annoyed I blamed the GPS for taking me off track and back to my starting place and I let her know with an unkind word or two.

It was not until I began to reflect on my experience that I realized my perceived inconvenience was a blessing in disguise. Perhaps, the invisible, intangible energy of Love had guided me off my normal path for a purpose. Although I wish I could tell you, as a Good Samaritan and I picked the poor man up and took him to St. Joseph Hospital but I did not.

Instead, I received a redemptive message of hope; do not pass by a person in need without attempting to assist in some big or small way. This is how I strive to live my life, albeit imperfectly, I am learning to forgive myself and to become receptive to the gift of Love's unconditional forgiveness in return. 

Blessing of Hope

So may we know
the hope
that is not just
for someday
but for this day—
here, now,
in this moment
that opens to us:

hope not made
of wishes
but of substance,

hope made of sinew
and muscle
and bone,

hope that has breath
and a beatng heart,

hope that will not
keep quiet
and be polite,

hope that knows
how to holler
when it is called for,

hope that knows
how to sing
when there seems
little cause,

hope that raises us
from the dead—

not someday
but this day,
every day,
again and
again and
again.

~Jan Richardson

Reflection by Liz Sorensen Wessel

Mandala Art by ~liz

Days 294-298 - Different Kinds of Theft

This photograph portrays a 1974 armed bank robbery. Yes, the well-trained bank teller handled the assault calmly. Yes, both men were caught. Yes, I won convictions of both while serving as a federal prosecutor. 

Across three years as an assistant U.S. Attorney every case I saw involved theft of one kind or another: embezzlement, kidnapping, counterfeiting, attempted murder, bank robbery, extortion, explosives,  syndicated crime, drug offenses.

Although I only lost two of the thirty cases I tried it always seemed to me that the felons I prosecuted had suffered "thefts" of their own: their childhoods stolen by abuse or neglect or poor parenting. or, most commonly, growing up poor.

America's gardens of poverty grow crime. 

Thefts of life? There were 85 men & one woman on Tennessee's Death Row when I began ministering there. 100% of them were poor. Although rich people commit crimes I never had the chance to prosecute a single one. The wealthy hire the best lawyers. 

One of law school's core teachings is that a crime is defined as breaking  a written law. Other wrongs: auto accidents, malpractice broken contracts, for example, are resolved through civil lawsuits.

Too many leaders ask, "Is it legal?" Not, "Is it right.?" So many of  our worst wrongs are technically legal but morally wrong - including mistreatment of both the sick & their caregivers

In 1955 that Montgomery bus driver enforced a law when he ordered Rosa Parks to move to the back. Should whites have blocked blacks from coming to their churches or using their bathrooms because it was legal? No white hospital CEO or caregiver has ever been prosecuted for withholding medical care because of race. 

We need rules. Yet countless leaders have caused suffering by hiding behind laws, not choosing love. 

It is still happening. 

-Rev. Erie Chapman, M.T.S., J.D. 

Days 292-293 "The Whole of Who We Are"

“The only way to become whole is to put our arms

lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving

and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous,

treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves

and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’ If we can’t

embrace the whole of who we are — embrace it with transformative

love — we’ll imprison the creative energies hidden in our own

shadows and flee from the world’s complex mix of shadow and light.”

No longer afraid… Let us be this alive...

Parker Palmer

These instructive words from Parker Palmer are worth contemplating. For how long have we pushed away the less admirable than  unwanted aspects of ourselves because we are afraid to look deeper? Through the lens of compassion, we can offer a gift that only we are able to give; self-acceptance and forgiveness. In opening our hearts and minds to receiving Grace, we in turn we gift others. This is a deeper truth of who we are, for we are "called to the more" (CSJ Charism).

Reflection Offered by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Artwork by ~liz

Days 287-291 - Angels or Ghosts?

 In her final days my mother gazed back through the telescope of her mind's eye. Across a century-wide ocean she spied herself at five & savored her favorite recollection: "The family gathered around our dining room table," she said. "I loved it. But everyone left the table too soon."

   Through her looking glass she could see 1917 more clearly than 2018, the year of her final spring. At 105 she knew that everyone had left that table but her. She would join them soon. 

   Many children link ghosts with fear & angels with protection. Every adult wants a guardian angel. Ghosts live with each of us.

   Those we wronged or who wronged us haunt us at midnight. The zephyrs of ancestors hover at midday.

   My father's & mother's ghosts appear to me each day. Lucky to have had loving parents, their presence is far more angelic than frightening. 

   Fortunately, ghosts can shape-shift. By reimagining our life stories we can disarm Fear. Bullies that terrorized & betrayers who disappointed can become scared beings who found no other way to act. 

   New stories can light our way across Fear's bridge to Love's lake, home to the only water that can heal. 

-Erie Chapman 

"Peekaboo with Mom, 1944" by Dad. 

Days 285-286 Graceful Receiving

"When I walk outside the studio and a child comes up

and gives me a hug… I know that is the field I want to be growing in.

It’s not the fancy people in this world who seem to nourish my soul- I want

to learn how to be the best receiver that I can ever be

because I think graceful receiving is one of the most wonderful gifts we can

give anybody. If we receive what somebody gives us in a graceful way

we've given that person a wonderful gift”

-Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers was a man of fine sensibilities and truly an enlightened being. If you have not seen the movie, "A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood," I highly recommend it. 

The above photo was taken of my granddaughter, Starling at age four. I was visiting my son and grandchildren in S. Dakota for Thanksgiving. I have the best memory of that particular day. We were going to the neighborhood park. As we strolled along towards the playground, we encountered a young couple and their small child in a pram. Starling immediately started a conversation, "Hello" followed by, "Can I tell you something?" They responded in the affirmative in a charming English accent, a clue that they were not from around there. They listened with an air of surprise as Starling shared the glorious wonder of her wide-open heart. She expounded on all sorts of interesting little thoughts in a free flowing a stream of consciousness. 

After five minutes or so of her light-hearted, sing song chirping, we bid our goodbyes. Then Starling enthusiastically told me how she had just made a new best friend (the baby girl in the carriage). It was like that on the playground too or wherever we went because every person Starling met became "a new best friend." It was such an enchanting, carefree age of enlightenment and a beautiful gift to receive.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 290-286 - A Person of Value in a Culture of Meaning - The Thread That Holds Your Life Together

For our lives to matter we must believe we are people of value in a culture of meaning. These two elements determine your thread. You can control the first. The second may sometimes be difficult. That is when you discover the importance of the thread. 

 

Background

by Sam Hitt:

'William Stafford’s journey with words began most mornings before sunrise. This simple poem was written 26 days before he passed. The day before he wrote “Haycutters” and four days later on August 6, 1993 he wrote “November” in honor of Hiroshima Day.
One of his students, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, wrote, “In our time there has been no poet who revived human hearts and spirits more convincingly than William Stafford. There has been no one who gave more courage to a journey with words, and silence, and an awakened life.” '

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

By William Stafford, from The Way It Is, 1998

 

I use my concept of guardian angel, above, instead of words, to describe my thread. I carry it in my coat pocket. 

 

If it is difficult to identify a single thread that holds your life together keep trying. Find one that, more than anything else, helps you see yourself as a person of value in a culture of meaning.

 

-Erie Chapman

Photograph, (c) "Guardian Angel" 2019, by Erie Chapman

Note: This poem was posted in a previous essay and is re-posted here in a rearranged presentation due to the life changing nature it offers. 

 

Days 289-290 On Any Given Day

As I read Erie Chapman’s meaningful reflection this week it sparked and rekindled a cherished memory. I recall caring for a kind and gentle woman who I shall call Helen. She accompanies me on my life’s journey. The beauty of home care is that when you cross the threshold into someone’s home, into the personal surrounding of their world, there is an intimacy that informs the encounter.

Over time through visiting Helen, we developed a good rapport and a trusting relationship that created a bond. In a therapeutic relationship with someone in the last phase of life there is an unspoken covenant that expresses, "I am here and I will not abandon you."

Helen was a person whose life was informed with a heart of gratitude and she enjoyed inquiring about my pregnancy. I’d share my joy in feeling the baby move and the miracle of carrying a new life within. Helen expressed a desire to buy a gift for my baby but she was too ill to go shopping so she wanted to give me money to pick out a gift. Graciously, I let her know how much I appreciated her thoughtfulness but that I could not accept her money.

Helen died at home not long after and I was saddened but I found comfort in knowing she was comfortable and at peace. A few months later my baby was born and I was captivated by the new little spirit that had entered our lives. Then I received a letter from Helen's daughter with an accompanying baby book from Helen. Apparently, before she died she had arranged for her daughter to buy this precious gift for me.

To receive Helen’s gift after her death and the birth of my son was an indescribable experience. I felt as though she had reached out to me from the unseen world and daughter was the conduit that enabled her message to reach me.

I think that is the opportunity before us on any given day, to bring forth the intangible unseen Love that is ever present in our lives, yearning to be seen, felt, heard and made known.

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Above picture is from a page in the baby book; a Beatrice Potter Illustration