Journal of Sacred Work

A rose is the curved shape of nature’s breath. Her gift, like love’s, offers petals, stem, leaves, thorns and a whiff of life.
–Erie Chapman

   The usual gift of romantic love is a dozen roses like those in the picture. Roses are the gift that comes with the ring of a doorbell, the happy embrace of nature’s beauty in this particular version of love’s expression.
   I send the gift of this rose to you today. She lives in our backyard. I send it to you as an image of gratitude, portrayed on a screen because I know no other way to send it to you. Be sure to click on the picture to enlarge it so you can appreciate her in a broader view. Although a rose can be a gift of romantic love, I offer it to you as something more: the gift of deep gratitude to you as a caregiver. Enjoy her many pink shades and her degrees of green all the way down to black and up to white. She is the curved shape of nature’s breath… 

   This rose is named "Touch of
Class." That is what you, as a caregiver, represent to me.
Caregivers are the classiest of people. I took several angles of this
rose at different times of day so you could reflect on the many shapes and shades of your loving work. 
   You, wherever you are today, drink in the aroma and the sight and the touch of this rose. It rises in my backyard to greet your eyes and to thank you for your many gifts of love. For you are the gift of God’s love
in this world.
    Look, now, at another angle of this rose. Again, click on the picture to enlarge its beauty into your eyes. Gertrude Stein famously said that, "a rose is a rose is a rose," perhaps trying to tell us that words could never encompass the beauty of this great gift of nature. Its petals, its curves, its thorns, its green leaves and stem, its aroma and soft/hard touch, all seem to encompass every element of beauty.

   Yes, the rose has thorns as well. They hide just below its soft petals and delicate skin. This is part of the perfection of the rose. Those of us that have committed our hearts to passionate caregiving know that loving care has
its thorns. Compassionate caregivers know that passion brings pain. That is the challenge to an open heart. We need to embrace pain along with beauty. "What a tiresome thing to say," you may think. Of course, you who know loving care know pain as well as joy. It’s so tempting to pull back when pain arrives. It’s such a natural reaction. Only with true courage can we continue to love in the face of the discomfort that an open heart can bring.
   But look, again, at what beauty this rose brings. Here she is from the underside of her petals. The way she looks
if you’re lying on the ground and searching the sky. What multiple dimensions a single rose holds. What multiple layers live within a single patient!  What we see is the surface of the patient – the injury, the disease, the broken spirit.

     And before us sits the opportunity for us to open, again, the deepest beauty of the human being before us.

    Here is how our same rose looks from a distance. I send you this view of her so you may compare it to how some think of their patients – tiny, far away, removed, the way the rose looks from afar. And I hope this meditation will reinforce something your heart knows. No thing has only one distance or one dimension. Draw close to your patient today.

   We have the capability to see in many dimensions. Yet, so often, we see patients as unidimensional. The more ways we can see a patient, the richer will be our caregiving experience.
   
May I offer to you yet another view? It is the light of the rose in the midst of arriving darkness on the evening before you see this. I am wondering, now, if we are able to remain present to this gift as she receives the mantle of night? For by now, many would say, "Okay, I get it. Why do you show me so many dimensions of the same thing?

   Caregivers caught in burn-out may start to think of a patient the way Stein wrote about roses:

A patient
is a patient
is a patient…

   That is part of the reason for this meditation on seeing with new and sacred eyes. From one angle, a patient is a patient. From another,

a patient is
a human being,
a child of God,
a gift of beauty.

   
Here is our rose up close, burning like a torch in darkest night. Inside the patient you care for today are so many layers of fiery light and deep darkness. The gift of great caregivers is their unique ability to see beyond the surface and into the heart of the being for whom they care.
   Mother Theresa did not see the poorest of the poor as unidimensional – as dirty, ugly, starving people. She saw them as gifts of God. She saw them as divine light obscured, while  so many others, seeing with worldly eyes, saw them as hopelessly poor people not to be touched.
   Theresa saw them as roses in need of love. She cared not for the fact that they had only a few days or hours to live. She saw them as children of God. That is why she loved them. She saw the face of Christ in them.  And that is why we must do the same – to give the rose of our love to the vulnerable.
   You have now seen seven views of the same rose. In a way its seven roses. I offer it and them to your eyes – to accept into your heart the gift of gratitude to YOU for the expressions of love you offer each day to those in need.
   From my heart to yours: Thank you for the roses of loving care you give each day and night!

-Erie Chapman