Journal of Sacred Work

By following autumn’s purple thread, we may come to appreciate even more of the beauty of nature and of life.  –Erie Chapman   

   Beyond the fluorescent lights under which so many caregivers work, autumn births colors rare in the sterile environment of hospitals. In all the falls I’ve lived, I never noticed until this one how much purple emerges in October. I always think of this month as gold and red and yellow. But it’s the purple I see this year.   

   Meditation allows us to see what we may not have noticed when we’re in a hurry. CBS Sunday Morning recently presented the story of a National Geographic photographer. He spoke of traveling the world capturing stunning images for the magazine and the prizes he had won. Then his face softened. "My career was going great. But I was gone from home a lot. Then my wife found a lump. It was cancer. Everything changed."
   This story has a good ending…

  In the backwash of the horrors of of chemotherapy, husband and wife rediscovered life and each other. And a father rediscovered his children. "Sometimes," he said, "my wife and I just sit outside at dusk and watch the night come on. We don’t always say much. We just enjoy nature and each other." His wife will live. And they’re both going to live differently from now on.   
   Why does it so often take a shock for us to discover the true beauty in life? Why haven’t I ever noticed all the shades of purple that live in every autumn of every year? All of the images in this reflection (except the last two – below) I found and photographed within a hundred feet of my house.
   Purple is a regal color. In ancient times, it was hard to come by purple cloth. Thus, its rarity raised its significance. Only royalty was permitted to wear cloth of this special color.
   One shade of purple called mauve happens to have a fascinating little history. The color did not exist in clothing until an odd incident in 1856 that ended up affecting medical as well as fashion history. A young scientist, William Perkin, was trying to develop a cure for malaria. In the course of trying to invent a synthetic form of quinine, he stumbled upon an oily black substance that, when purified and dried, became a lovely shade of light purple. One can estimate that barely one in a million scientists would have had the insight to recognize that this accident had the potential to create a whole new kind of cloth that would transform fashion – not just clothing, but cosmetics. Perkin was wise enough to keep his thinking open. The spark of his genius even led to discoveries in photography and in medicine. All because he stayed present to an "accident" in his experimentation and had the brilliance to recognize what was before him.
   Mauve has always been present in nature. So has the deeper purple of autumn. Human beings seek to dress themselves in various shades found in nature – as if we were all chameleons seeking to blend with our environment.   

  Yet it is the experience of autumn’s purple we may reflect on today – not because we’ve never seen it before, but because it calls us to nature. In the midst of all the complex treatments we offer to patients trapped in illness, beyond all the blood and pain caregivers must face, this is a moment to sit back, breathe, and enjoy a special part of nature’s show – her velvet displays of purple – in trees, in flowers, in precious stones, in the leaves we drive by on the way to work, in the sun’s setting and in its rising.
  Purple. It’s just a color. But it provides a chance for gratitude – for our eyesight, for nature, for fall, for the rich, silk quality of this regal shade. God’s beauty is present in this world. And we may pause, today, to be present to this glory.

-Erie Chapman