Journal of Sacred Work

Days 179-184 - Portrait of Quicksilver

 For audio of this post click here:

Quicksilver portraits - audio

   If you are an intuitive you can tell a lot about the person in this singular portrait. Her performing name is Minton Sparks.   

   Like the fascinatingly changeable element, quicksilver (mercury's name & the root for the word mercurial), her persona varies like the weather. But it is anchored in her elemental soul.

   This image shows Minton's spirit soaring. Watch her perform on stage & you will see her switch from funny to heart-wrenching to your pal as the heartbeats of her stories vibrate to the music of guitarist John Jackson. 

   Science tells us what goes up must come down. Spirituality tells us what comes down must go up.

   The body's destination is earth. The soul's is heaven. 

   Children smile for the camera. As adults, that camera smile may turn plastic - a guard that our egos use to present its idea of our "best side." 

   In fact, our personality has far more "sides" than our face. 

   Portraiture, whether through photography, painting, sculpture, story or poem, succeeds when it opens a window to the subject's soul, not their smile. 

   Whether our expression shows it or not, we are all mercurial. A suffering patient may smile to fool us. A healthy person may fake pain to gain attention. 

   Caregivers use more than mercury to measure moods.

   Some patients are so stoic they never allow themselves to express the triumph you see on Minton's face. 

   Artists like Sparks succeed because they engage the full range of emotions. To do that, she has looked hard into the storms & thus has a deep appreciation of the shiniest mornings.  

   Which is brighter in this portrait, the sun or Minton's up-gazing smile? Married, they are a quicksilver portrait of universal joy. 

-Erie Chapman

Portrait of Minton Sparks "Caught by the Sun" by Erie, 2017

  

Days 177-178 Both Sides of Everything

 It has been said “we live our life forward and understand it backward.” This is true as we look back over this challenging global pandemic, complex disasters amid a marathon of effort, grief, isolation, change and the multiple stresses faced as a nation. Recognizing our need for renewal offers the opportunity for reconciling the emotional impact of COVID in these difficult times.  

Physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen writes, “Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability, and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power in response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity.”    

Dear God, Spirit, Divine Mother,

On this day I ask You to grant this request.

May I know who I am and what I am, every moment of every day

May I be a catalyst for light and love and bring inspiration to those whose eyes I meet

May I have the strength to stand tall in the face of conflict, and the courage to speak my voice, even when I’m scared

May I have the humility to follow my heart, and the passion to live my Soul’s desires

May I seek to know the highest truth and dismiss the gravitational pull of my lower self

May I embrace and love the totality of myself, my darkness as well as my light

May I be brave enough to hear my heart, to let it soften so that I may gracefully choose faith over fear

Today is my day to surrender anything that stands between the sacredness of my humanity and my divinity

May I be drenched in my Holiness and engulfed by Your love

May all else melt away

And so, it is

Amen.

Prayer by Debbie Ford

You will never know the far-reaching effect of your efforts that continues to ripple out in profound ways.  May the blessings you bestow return to you tenfold!

Liz Sorensen Wessel
Photo by Liz

Days 172-176 - Sequential Tragedies

   A Shakespearean tone attends the tragedies that have unfolded before my dear friend, Sue.

   Two days before Christmas, 2020, her husband of 56 years died. Barely five months later, she went to check on her fifty-four-year old son & found him dead on the floor of his apartment.

   Long ago Shakespeare warned of such sequential tragedies in Hamlet:

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies
But in battalions. First, her father slain.
Next, your son gone,..."

   A single tragedy strikes. Its enormity leaves us thinking we are immune from a second one. It can be like that in hospitals also. 

   Just before 5 pm, December 30, 1983 Riverside Methodist Hospital caregiver Pat Matix was stabbed to death in the research lab fifty feet from my office. I was the second person on the scene.

   Only twenty minutes after we had begun to shift to emergency operation status a senior executive I had left in charge of the murder scene called. "Erie," he said, "brace yourself." 

  What could be worse than the murder scene I had just left? 

   "The police just found a second body," he reported. It was Pat's co-worker, Joyce McFadden. 

   Obviously, hospitals deal with a range of disasters including fires, floods & murder victims. In 1983 there was no plan to deal with a murder that happened inside the hospital. 

   Six months later another nightmare call. "Erie, a prisoner-patient in the basement clinic got hold of a gun & has hostages."  

   Impossible? Tragedy has no quota. Those who think otherwise are often unprepared & may even feel cursed when multiple disasters strike. 

   We are stronger than we think. We are more vulnerable than we imagine. That is why citizens of stricken towns say, "I never thought this could happen here!"

-Erie Chapman 

*The Riverside Incidents are described in more detail in my book Radical Loving Care. 

Days 170-171 The Gift of Fathering

Fathers keep their children and family safe from all types of danger; from weather, wars, and any attacks from outside the home. They have provided family safety since Cave men guarded the entrance to their dwellings. They provide, often with a partner, a caring example for everyone by earning money for food, housing, and a decent level of living.  For their sons and daughters, they show how mature males serve others beginning with their nuclear family and help others in their neighborhood, State, and nationally in voluntary and paid work settings.  Being masculine does not mean you can lift 500 pounds, slay a tiger, or have a beard and  full head of hair. Each gender can offer fathering if their spirit conveys it by their actions.

They prove they can be adventurous yet happily alone; can fight in wars yet be kind to all.  In other words, fathering is the male version of a well lived, caring, productive life, and not a super hero facsimile. Fathering has changed from siring children to a multi-faceted array of behaviors, attributes, and commitments.  There could be no one picture representing fathers.

In our caregiving missions, always be grateful for what fathering can offer in promulgating, protecting, and enriching the lives of all human beings on planet Earth. To do less would be a travesty of a large order. Send a thank you to all fathers you know; especially yours!

By Terry Chapman 

Days 167-169 - "...the seam of glue that binds us"

Love is the dust stuff   (CLICK ON THIS AUDIO FILE TO LISTEN TO SPARKS' POEM)

 The best poetry always has universal appeal. An open heart watches the words fall into the soul.

   It has been a gift to know three poets I admire. The first is Clare Bateman, a Greenville resident who won the Pushkin Prize for Poetry & taught others (including me) across her career. The second is my sister-in-law, Karen Updike, who also wrote & taught with searing brilliance.

   The third is my friend, spoken word artist Minton Sparks, whose stunning answer to the question, "What is love?" redefines our experience of the word:

Love is the dust stuff under an angel fingernail
after takeoff and the ground grows small.

Love is memories, the curl of smoke suspended behind the magic carpet moments after the rug with the dragon driving leaves town
wearing a coat of wonderful "what once had been".

Every night we ease into our chairs, eat a meal, weighted mortals,
hearts of stone and water, the bowl of our mouths gaped like baby birds. Waiting.
(to be filled)

Love is glue drying between two bodies who've practiced the ancient art of longing. Martial artists guarding each other's borders.

And so I will gather your dust, inhale the curl of smoke, and eat. Fingering the seam of glue that binds us.

What is that "seam of glue" that binds you to another? Does its strength ease your longing?

-Erie Chapman

Portrait of Minton Sparks ©Erie Chapman, 2019

Audio of Poem by Erie 

Days 163-167 An Awesome Place To Be

 

Shoulder Taps.

How often to we listen to that small voice within? Especially when, this requires us to move outside of our comfort zone. We feel compelled… but we may hesitate and then dismiss the message.

I can’t help but wonder how many of these shoulder taps that I let slip on by because I didn’t want to feel foolish or feared how the person might respond or I was in too much of a hurry was not paying attention.

As a nurse, I’ve served in Home Health for the majority of my career, 30+ years in various roles at my current organization. When Kimmie, who works at the reception desk, receives a call and is at a loss for who to send the call to or how best to help the caller, she will often route the call to me.

We have an ongoing laugh about this and we tease each other back and forth regarding what call she is going to send me next. Yet, beyond that she knows that I welcome these calls and that she can count on me to be of help to the person who had a unique need, inquiry or concern.

For me, these are my “shoulder taps” and I listen carefully because I interpret them as “Hello, this is God calling” and I know I was meant to receive that person’s call.

As Bill Hart describes, it is an extraordinary feeling when you respond to “the call” and allow the Spirit to work through as you discover a double blessing in the sacredness of the encounter.

Reflection: Think of your own shoulder taps experiences, how have they informed your life, were you changed by the encounter in any way?

Liz Sorensen Wessel

Days 158-162 The Imagination Behind Gifts & the Journal's 15th Anniversary

   Gift giving can haunt us. Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, can raise specters of obligation rather than joy. They can drive us to giving anything, just to cross that duty off our list - maybe something we want to give more than they want to receive. 

   Sure, the thought counts. But, David Whyte adds, "even more it is the imagination behind the thought that counts, made tangible through gifts that find their definition through being twice blessed."    

   The first blessing is any gift honoring another. The double blessing comes when we open gifts that are "perfect" because the giver recognized some special wish of ours & granted it.

   My daughter is especially good at this because she listens carefully to what her friends treasure. Her mother does the same. When birthdays arrives, they are brilliant at picking presents because they already know what the person values. 

   Liz Wessel gives us a gift every weekend with both her essays & with the exquisite art that always accompanies her writing.

  We both prefer creating cards rather than buying them. In 2016, I spent hours photographing a friend, Lynnie's, gorgeous garden. One outcome was this picture of flowers & ferns dripping over a barrel. That is my gift to you today - tones of pink & blue, ferns leaping & leafing out of their container.

  Finally, June 4, 2021 was the 15th anniversary of the Journal whose columns are written, now, by three people who work for free. Thank you Liz Wessel & Terry Chapman.

And thanks to you readers for your endless & sacred gifts of caregiving.

NOTE: Starting today, you can to listen to some issues of the Journal as well as read. Here is an AUDIO links. This is our first try so we are unclear if this will work but it should. Thanks for trying.

Journal 6-7-21 - Gifts

-Erie Chapman 

Lynnie's Garden, 2016

Today's quote: I do not know You, God, because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside. - Flannery O'Connor

 

Days 156-157 A Warm and Tender Hand

In Honor of All Caregivers

 “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” - By Henri Nouwen  

Nouwen offers us a beautiful understanding of what it means to accompany another in their time of need. Yet, too often we can't help but sprint forward "to fix" what is beyond our control. Inadvertently, the hurting person is left with their feelings discounted.

Caregivers offer one of the most precious gifts imaginable, their full listening, loving presence.

 

Liz Sorensen Wessel
Artwork by ~liz