Journal of Sacred Work

It’s not whether magic happens or not. It’s whether we notice its occurrence. To be fully present is to be fully alive to ourselves and to others. It is in this presence that the magic of love appears.       – Erie Chapman

   My colleague, Cathy Self, told me recently that she happened to notice an autumn leaf at the exact
moment it separated from the tree that bore it. "I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen that moment before." Karen York shared that she noticed for the first time this autumn the way leaves stain cement like "ghosts of themselves who have left their imprint." She even had the sensitivity to photograph what she saw (click on her photo to enlarge) and to email it to me. She is a person open to the magic around her – to seeing in new ways life becomes visible by her willingness to be present.
   The question is not whether magic occurs, but whether we, as caregivers, notice its daily occurence in our world and appreciate it into our lives…

   Presence to life helps us see beauty that is always there. Where
attention goes, energy flows. It is our attention that allows us to
appreciate what is gorgeous in our world as well is what is painful and unfair. Too often, we simply ignore these phenomena.
Even more often, we observe beauty at a surface, Hallmark-card kind of
level. We see green leaves turned red and say, "Oh, isn’t that pretty." And we quickly move on to the next thing.
   During the three years I worked in Florida, I noticed this phenomenon around sunsets. I was with others watching the sun, as it fell like an orange coin inserted into some distant slot in the horizon. "Look how fast it’s moving," people would say as the sun seemed to descend more rapidly against the baseline of the horizon.
   The remarkable thing is what happened after the top-knot of the sun vanished. At that moment, almost everyone would turn and walk away. "Show’s over," some said. But the best magic was yet to come.
   During my Florida years, I divided the sunset into four stages. Stage one
was the sunset itself. Usually a pleasing experience, it was just the beginning.
    Stage two became the magic in the sky as the heavens turned shades of orange and red -especially if clouds hugged the horizon. Stage three occurred when the ceiling of the world turned from red to purple.
   I have not yet mentioned the water, which reflected hues different from the sky it was trying to copy. A light-red sky might create a crimson face in the water. A yellow one might send a telegram more orange than gold. And the skin of the water would gradually become more silken.
  Because, from the place where we lived, it was possible to see both the sunset in front of us across the Florida intra-coastal and its echo in the ocean behind us, we got to see magic simply by shifting our attention from the sight in before us to the ocean behind. The purple sky at the western horizon created a navy blue ocean astern.
   But this is a Hallmark Card, isn’t it? I don’t think so.  The pretty cards made by companies offer us conventional views of beauty. I am asking for a deeper look. Not the look of the sunset alone but of its afterglow. Not to stop at the setting of the sun but to sustain our presence as the sun sends its later shades into our eyes and our heart.
   Stage Four of the four stages of sunset viewing calls us to stare into the black night. As the water
oils our eyes, what do we see in the near-darkness? All the sun’s light is gone now. Yet there is hope in a light so faint that we can barely make out the textures of water and palm trees and a handful of tiny lights turned on in homes.
   A patient dies in a hospice, hospital, or nursing home. Do we turn away at the moment of death, or do we linger to notice the afterglow – the stages of light post death, the lingering presence of the life for whom we have cared? How quickly do hospital caregivers shift from the life of a person to the business of disposing of their bodies and the business of caring for the next patient? Our lives are like journey of the sun. Hospice caregivers are particularly gifted at appreciating the afterglow. They are willing to endure the pain of the stages that ensue post-death.      

   The late Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was an expert at denoting the stages we go through as we hear the news that our death will come soon. There is denial, anger, bargaining, grief and acceptance. But what about the stages post death – the stages the survivors must endure?
   Nurses may write mechanical notes about last moments. But it would be nice if they were asked to chart their own feelings about the loss of the person for whom they have cared. And part of the purpose of this meditation is to call us to look past one ending and to open our hearts to the pain and beauty of post-death experience.
   The whole notion of presence calls us to travel beyond our usual ways of looking and experiencing to begin to see with sacred eyes, to listen with our heart, to be open to the touch of the soul. This is what can happen if we stay present to an experience when everyone else has turned away.

   In a Presence Training Retreat my colleague, Cathy Self, conducted recently she asked the group to take half an hour just to walk through the fall day and experience it. Afterwards, one of the participants said, "I saw more in the last thirty minutes than I’ve seen all year."  This is the startling teaching of Presence Training. And it is the reason why caregivers become more effective in using their healing skills after such a retreat. They have discovered the magic of presence and have learned how helpful they can be when they chose to cultivate a deeper presence to their patients.
   To be fully present is to be fully alive to ourselves and to others. And in this presence, the magic of love appears.