Journal of Sacred Work

Days 56-57 Whoever Shows Up

 "The mystery is that whoever shows up when we dare to give has exactly what we need hidden in their trouble." -Mark Nepo
Weekend Essay by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

  Worldly love confounds.

 Sometimes it can seem that when we offer our love to another human being and give of ourselves in wide-reaching ways, even so, that one true need the other person carries is something we are not able to fulfill.

 This inability to give what is so deep down needed by another is not necessarily because we are selfish. It is a dynamic that so often plays out in relationships and can lead to frustration and despair or with developing insight, might offer healing and expansiveness.

 Let me offer a few examples in an attempt to share my thoughts. There is:

     ... A young child who longs for the attention of his mother and father but both parents are so preoccupied with chores or work, they cannot give their full presence. The parents try to compensate  for their guilt by buying lots of toys for their child.

    ... A lover who seeks intimacy with a beloved but instead is turned away because of the beloved's fear of surrendering completely.

   ... A friend who wishes to be seen as special in the eyes of another, yet, whatever lovely gifts are  offered in return they never bring full contentment.

   ... A caregiver who lovingly cares for everyone else while neglecting their own health and well-being, is seemingly incapable of giving self-care.

  So here we are in the muckiness of my inner musings. I hesitated to take you here as I would much rather offer you inspiration, but no, this is where I am and now where can we turn?

  Well, all faith traditions point us to the Holy Alter that lies within. We come full circle. How often I want to escape from the messiness of my life. Yet, spiritual wisdom encourages us to show up, or as Thich Naht Hahn suggests, " Be there with 100% of your self. In every moment of your daily life. This is the essence of true Buddhist meditation. "  Acceptance, offers us a gift of opening to joy and the pain of what is in front of us, and a chance to be surprised by what we discover.

  It’s a simple but profound truth.

 I can't help but to leave you with a little inspiration in the words of author and poet, Mark Nepo.

 

Winter Confession -by Mark Nepo
I’ve tried to follow every wind and
listen for its source. I’ve tried to follow
every light, and with my face in the sun,
all the things we carry that are afraid of
the light scurry to the back of my mind.
I’ve tried to find the truth and when I
have, I’ve found it’s everywhere, and that
I step over it in my pain or want for some-
thing I can’t have. Thankfully there have
been ordinary blessings. When I followed
your presence into what would be our love.
When I took a left in the path that led to
the sea and stayed there for days, putting
down all the names I’d been given. How
months later, while dropping a book of
poems by George Seferis, a wet clump
of grass stained his instruction to speak
plainly. And the small light that brought
me back while I was in surgery. It was a
crack of dawn promising so much, if I
could just get up and walk beyond death’s
slim tree. And here I am, all these years
later, mouth open, still in awe. Yesterday,
in the pines, my dog put her nose in the
snow. What a teacher. I slipped to one
knee and did the same.

 

Watercolor by ~liz

 

Days 54 & 55 - Example

   He's four years old in the photograph. The location is a courtroom in the U.S. Federal Building in Toledo. 

   It was 1972 and the occasion was my swearing in as an Assistant U.S. District Attorney.

   My son held the Bible for the ceremony.  He is now 43 and a trial attorney in Boston. Tyler sent me this picture recently to tell me that he keeps it on his cell phone to inspire him in his work.

   It's as fine a gift as I've ever received.

   Usually without knowing it, we are setting examples for others every day. We all watch each other to learn the traits we want to graft onto ourselves or to reject. 

   Most of us, like me, send mixed signals into the world. We speak what we believe is right and often fail to follow our own best judgment. 

   To an astonishing degree, our behavior is affected by the peers in our culture. We copy hairstyles and clothes and gestures and speech. 

   And we often justify our worst behavior by saying "Everybody else does it."

   We influence others by how we give care. Loving care is, by definition, never given in a vacuum. 

   Love is contagious. Whenever we live Love, we can be sure that we have chased fear from the hearts of more than just ourselves.

   May we hope we are setting the example we would like. Someone we love is watching. 

-Erie Chapman  

Days 51-53 - By the Fire

    "No one but me by the fire,/ my hands burning/ red in the palms while/ the night wind carries/ everything away outside." - David Whyte

   The fireplace is the sunshine of winter.

   Across forty years in the north that small, light-filled cave sent more comfort and hope into the rooms of my heart than it did heat.

   Winter fires, like summer gardens, need tending. The flames flower with the scents and sounds that can transform any house into a home and can wreathe the soul with hope. 

   During the cold seasons, there is no better indoor place for reflection than by the fire. It is the soil from which David Whyte has grown some of his finest poems, including The Winter of Listening:

   "What we strive for / in perfection/ is not what turns us/ into the lit angel/ we desire," he writes.

   This is a confounding notion. Aren't we supposed to be pursuing perfection as hard as we can? Isn't "perfect care" what patients expect?

  But, I take a different meaning from Whyte's words. The "lit angel" is not born from what we desire. Rather, "...what disturbs/ and then nourishes/ has everything/ we need."

   Isn't that what every patient presents to every caregiver - something disturbing and then nourishing to us as our life work? Doesn't every empty canvas pose thorny challenges to the artist poised before it? And isn't every artist feed by the act of creating in that space?

   Can you bring healing into my body? the patient wonders.

   Will you fill me with Beauty? the canvas asks.

   And when we meet these needs we are filled with "everything we need."

   It's not perfection that fills the artist's frame with Beauty. It's the passion of a person who paints with the eyes of Love.

   And it is the compassion of one imperfect soul reaching out to meet the needs of another that blesses this world.

-Erie Chapman

Days 49-50 Unfurl Your Fingers

“Your heart is a muscle roughly the same size as your fist. But the trouble with fists is that they don’t hold very much. To hold more of this incredible world in your hands, unfurl your fingers (like a flag or a flower). To hold more in your heart just keep it open.” ~Pavi Meta

Contributed by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

It was an experience that caught me completely by surprise. I was sitting in the Sister’s Sacred Heart chapel. Filtered sunlight streamed through the high ceiling windows bathing the creamy walls in generous warmth. I was among many friends in solidarity to celebrate the life of an extraordinary human being, Jack Glaser; scholar, theologian, philosopher, champion of just and universal health care.  We listened as the essence of this man’s life crystalized in an outpouring of love which shined brightly through images, remembrances and in the poetry of our being together in community.

Sister Theresa invited all who were present to open their arms with hands extended in a receiving gesture as she sang a song. Although, our gathering was a tribute to Jack, she said her song was for each of us.  Her soprano voice was tender and loving, her words deeply healing. Tears streamed down my face, into a river flowing free.  My eyes focused upon a larger than life crucifix of Jesus on high above.

My heart is a muscle, my fist tightly closed, holding on, I am afraid to let go.

Gently, my fingers unfurled from around my contracted heart, as natural as a flower opening to sun’s first light. I had no will or control of this spontaneous opening in response. My gaze was transfixed on the radiant Light of Christ. Love flowed into my heart and for a moment everything insignificant melted away gifting me with a simple truth. Love is the only truth I know.

The Community We Are Called To Be

“To be a community that serves, that speaks, that celebrates and prays in such a way that others-regardless of their religious belief, encountering this community experience a revelation of life’s deepest truths…about human dignity, community, success, power, growth, sacrifice, love, suffering, debility and death. Experiencing a harmony between their hearts’ deepest resonances and this community’s character, persons go from this encounter more healed, more whole, more able to live, to love, to hope and to die.” -Jack Glaser

 

Days 47-48 - The Vibration That Consoles Us

"...staying put is nowhere." -Rilke

   The horse leaps and what do we experience in the grace of his flight?

   Apparently frozen in the photograph, he moves. For he can do naught else.

   Nor can any being.

   To be alive is to be in motion. 

   Perhaps this is why an ineffable desperation lurks within each of us.

   In our quietest moments, our energy twirls and spins and, at its core, vibrates.

   We enter our bodies bearing Love's energy. We existed as vibrations of God before our birth. Our spirit, our energy, will continue in another form after we leave our bodies.

   The most sensitive among us know the presence of these other energies. 

   Meanwhile, the world constantly tosses our lives this way and that. 

   For example, what happens when our bodies are bent with pain? Our hearts scream for the help of a caregiver - some earthly angel that will bring us relief.

   Yet, when relief comes, our inclination towards fear lurks close on its heels.

   Within the intimacy of love hides the fear of losing it.

   Anxiety lines the silk of Beauty.

   Doubt circles every anchor of Faith.

   The most courageous among us still hears the howling of the hell hounds.

   In the first of his Duino Elegies, Rilke signals a source of consolation available to any of us who open our hearts.

  Although he references a mythical character, Rilke might as well be alluding to Christ when he describes what filled the void when the god among us "quit the earth."  

   After the death of the body, the emptiness, "resonated with the vibration that now enraptures, consoles and helps us."

   In faith, we don't, of course, need to "see" Jesus in human form. We can experience the rapturous healing of his energy as powerfully now as could anyone walking beside him in 30 A.D. 

   The question is not Jesus' presence, but ours. 

   I had never, until now, thought of Jesus' death as a "void." For a void is literally nothing.

   But, none of us, certainly not Jesus, can ever leave a void.

   In the wake of our passing from this earth, our energy will remain in other forms.

   Do you not feel, right now, the kindness you experienced from your long dead grandmother or the laughter you heard from a friend who has passed on?

   Consider the illumination that Jesus brought to this earth. Imagine the enduring power of the Love he brings to us in this very moment. 

   We can deflect this Love. We can say we don't trust it. We can complain that Love doesn't give us what we want. We can insist that Love is useless.

   Or we can accept the power of the consoling vibration that will always enter a heart that softens, opens and receives. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph - Screen Capture #1a copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 44-46 - Beyond the Candle's Glow

     Always interested in the way caregivers remain steady, I asked my therapist once, "How do you stay strong?"  

   "I believe in the light within me," she answered, offering, indirectly, all the inspiration I needed.

   At the end of one encounter, I told her with trepidation that I would be traveling (she knows I fear long distance journeys.)

   "I will tend your candle if you wander past the edge of its glowing," she assured me. Her poetic way of speaking helps healing.

   Her "tending" told me someone cared enough to nurture my candle of hope if I drifted into shadow and further that I am never truly past its glowing. We all carry hope with us wherever we go IF we can just recall that Love's candle is always aglow.

   Whether or not we venture out, we are certain to wander into fields of darkness where it can be hard to remember that Love's light exists within not without.

   Faith reminds us that Love is always present, whether we notice her or not.

   "God give me strength to lead a double life," Hugo Williams writes in his poem, Prayer. "Cut me in half./ Make each half happy in its own way..."

   Of course, we all live way more than two lives. But, caregivers often divide their worlds as work life and home life. 

   What if there is trouble at home? What if work feels like a fearful place?

   Can we learn to find hope in both halves of our lives, even when one half or the other seems beyond the edge of our candle's glow? 

   "When it's time to go to bed in one of my lives," Williams prays, "go ahead of me up the stairs, shine a light in the corners of my room...If you can't oblige me by cutting me in half,/ God give me strength to lead a double life."

   When others wander into darkness, can we remember to "tend their light" until they return? When we fall into night can we remember that on Love's table the flame burns bright.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photograph - "Candle & Darkness" copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 42-43 "A Crystal Rim"

Contributed by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

Recently the events of my day, which sometimes accompany the onslaught of change, left me feeling ghostly alone and alienated. The accompanying sadness I experienced led me towards a disheartened retreat home. In an effort to avoid diving into a pool of sorrow; I took a step back to just notice my thoughts and assumptions.

 Then I happened upon, Erie Chapman’s essay, “Gifts from the Sky” (2/9/12.) Each word and image floated as manna from heaven to nourish my soul. When one of us risks opening our heart to share of the pangs in life; we can all benefit.

The encouragement in “We have to try... Or maybe we don't” struck a resonating chord of recognition. In naming the discomfort, being present to our least desirable feelings, and knowing this too shall pass provides comfort. To share in our vulnerability, is to share Love.

Suddenly, I no longer felt separate and alone; for we are never alone.

 A Crystal Rim 

by -Hafiz
                                                                                                                        
The Earth
Lifts its glass to the sun
And light -- light                                   
Is poured.

A bird                                                      
Comes and sits on a crystal rim
And from my forest cave I
Hear singing.

So I run to the edge of existence   
And join my soul in love.

I lift my heart to God
And grace is poured.

An emerald bird rises from inside me
And now sits
Upon the Beloved's
Glass.

I have left that dark cave forever.
My body has blended with His.

I lay my wing
As a bridge to you

So that you can join us
Singing.

Note:polyprint watercolor by~liz

Days 40-41 - Gifts From the Sky

"...we don't love like the flowers, all in a/ single year; for us, when we love, immemorial/ sap rises into our arms." Rilke

   Mid winter, flowers hide in their usual places. In their season their beauty will rise like an ocean wave leaping for the sun.

   The flower cannot renew itself. Our love can.

   In the leaden hours when longing floods our hearts we can remember that hope lives in Love's embrace.

   In our flattest moments we can yet sense the "immemorial sap" waiting to be summoned.

   But, amid exhaustion and disappointment, it's easier to retreat into indifference. 

   All that matters is Love. But, living Love can hurt us into exhaustion and bloody us into retreat.

   I hate to be reminded when I'm acting unloving because I know that that charge is usually true. My lawyer's habit is to rush to my defense. It's so painful to yield to Love's truth rather than fight it.

   The flowers live worry-free. The iris touches her hands together to pray to the sun and to thank the raindrops. The light illuminates her swirls and curves and colors and reveals some of the intricacy of her complex beauty.

   She has texture and taste and scent. All of it flows effortlessly through her veins.

   We have to try.

   Or maybe we don't.

   The hardest lesson I've learned is the most obvious one: My worst moods will pass. When my soul loses its way in the dark I imagine I will be trapped forever unless I lunge up some hill and return with a shadow-killing flame.  

   But the light is never at the top of the hill.  

   During a gray moment last autumn, I went into the woods, laid back on the grass and, amid my gloom, was startled to discover a stained glass window carved into the sky.

   The ground became a church pew. There I began to worship the gifts of the heavens - the ones that are always there.

-Erie Chapman   

 

Days 37-39 - Where is The "Divinity That Shapes Our Ends?"

   In Act 5 Scene 2, Hamlet delivers to Horatio one of Shakespeare's most oft-quoted lines: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will."

   Why worry about mistakes? Hamlet tells us. Everything is already predetermined by God.

   The reason I don't accept this view is that it seems to defeat our humanity. If there is nothing we can do, for what are we responsible?

   Life is a partnership between God and us. Love opens the door to God's light. Our role is to walk through it. 

   Our choice is whether to open to God's Love or to ignore it.

   How do we "find" Beauty? It's already here, of course. 

   The "divinity" isn't in the dish rag or in the sun. It's in the way we notice and celebrate the relationship between the two. 

   This doesn't mean we can't create. It means our best creations appear because we listened for Love's song, trained our voices to sing it, and acted to serve up this music to ourselves and others.

   I didn't manage the cloth in the photograph to catch the light. I simply noticed it and photographed it. A painter could express this beauty. A musician could convert this image to song. A poet could describe it. An entire novel or film could be inspired from the way this cloth turns to catch a slice of sun.

  An example appears in the 1956 movie "The Red Balloon." In it, a balloon follows a small boy through his travels in the streets of Paris. The film succeeds because we see the divine in the relationship between balloon and boy. 

   We can train our hearts to see divinity. We can do the same with others we love.

   As you and I create together, the divine can appear. Two people in love can nurture divinity in their lives so that their relationship becomes more and more sacred.

   Yet, we often do the reverse. We may take both ourselves and those we love for granted. The more matter-of-fact we are, the less we are likely to experience the divine. 

   The more violent and disrespectful we are, the more we desecrate of Beauty. There is no divinity in the human acts of rape or child abuse or murder.

   Similarly, pornography degrades everyone involved. Pornography, of course, does not mean nudity. Otherwise, great works of art like Michelangelo's "David," Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" or Edward Weston's photographs of nudes would be banned instead of celebrated.

   The power of these examples is that they teach us not how to "rough hew" divinity but how to  let God guide our efforts.

   Look at the photograph. 

   How could such a thing be divine? How can your life celebrate divinity in our relationships?

-Erie Chapman

Photograph- "Dish Towel 1a" copyright erie chapman 2012

Days 35-36 Living Grace

  Essay by ~liz Sorensen Wessel

If aging is an inevitable course of living and if I happen to live a long life, then my hope is that I might do so gracefully.  I once thought I’d like to live to be a hundred, but more recently I’ve decided that the quality of my life is much more desirable than quantity. My late friend Claudia once said to me, “Liz, I’m not afraid of dying; it is the loss of my independence that scares me.”

I wonder, what does it mean to live grace-fully?

Here's one definition of grace as defined in the dictionary, “To get a better perspective, seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement or proportion".

Immediately, the woman who comes to mind is my mom. Through my years, I’ve watched her emulate a most amazing grace that is both understated and unassuming while manifesting a rare but simple Beauty. Aging for my mom has unfolded quite naturally. I like that she never felt a need to dye her hair nor was she lured by cosmetic promises to a fountain of youth. I’ve admired the way in which she continually greets life with acceptance of the good, the heartbreak, the challenges; the harder still.

 My precious mom, Elizabeth Dorothea Sorensen or best known to her kin as "Lilla" and her friends as "Lee" will be 96 years old on February 17.  Although of late she is encountering physical challenges she perseveres in her steadfast independence, doing for herself as best she can.

I wish to share this prayer by Joyce Rupp coupled with this marvelous video of a woman by the name of Maia. Her friend created this video in honor of her 95th birthday. I learned that they met on a plane and that Maia was once a Russian ballet dancer. She and her mom used to exercise with dance movements together long before it became popular. As I watched her graceful movements, I experienced a spark of renewed optimism for our human potential to Live Gracefully.

 

May I Have This Dance?

 

Beloved Dancer of my Heart, thank you for being a faithful presence and a

loving partner on my journey of life. Your grace-filled movements

continually teach me fresh inner dance steps. You invite me to trust you

more fully as you direct my whole self to the music of continual growth.

 

Remind me often that the more easily I glide along with you, the freer my

heart becomes. When my days hold distress and discouragement, encourage me

to draw near to you. Move me gently across the dance floor of my unwanted

experiences. Twirl me around joyfully when my heart yields to the wonder and

delight found in positive events, loving people and the beauty of life.

Guide me through the unknown steps of confusion and mystery-laden

transitions when I am not sure which way to move.

 

I will listen to your invitation as you daily invite me to join you in

partnership. May my inner footsteps be ever more in sync with yours. Each

day as your voice calls to me through the melody of your love, I will

respond: “Yes, I want to be one with you, Beloved Dancer of my Heart. Come,

be my partner. I will follow where you lead.” ~Amen.

 

Watercolor by ~liz