Journal of Sacred Work

   My favorite holiday card thus far in this special season came via email from a friend who is a poet.
I love this card not only for the sweet picture of her infant daughter smiling out at us (left) but for the marvelous quote she included. It is by the famed writer and poet G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). Chesterton, in his book, Orthodoxy, tells us so much, in two remarkable paragraphs, about the role of passion in the Garden of Love:
   "A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony…

   "But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately but has never got tired of making them. It may be that God has the eternal appetite of infancy, for we have sinned and grown old, and God is younger than we."
   To find passion in the ordinary and the seemingly monotonous, to revel in not only moon and sun but in our own hands, resting in our lap, typing away, or reaching out to tend a wounded patient; to feel the presence of Love in things as mundane as washing dishes and tying shoes is to discover, like Brother Lawrence, that all things hold the potential for beauty.
   Whether we see Love in anything or anyone depends on us, not on the thing or person in front of us. With Love, anything or any person can become sacred. Love’s passion is what allows us to see more beauty in, for example, the eyes of a homeless man than we may see on the face of a rich movie star. And this is how someone like Mother Theresa can suddenly radiate a far greater beauty than the winner of a so-called beauty contest.

   This is also the message some artists may be seeking to convey when they put frames around blobs of paint or soup can labels and hang them in art galleries. What’s the point? some complain. The point may well be that the artist is calling us to see beauty in the ordinary. And this is, in my view, part of the power of modern art.
   If we are passionate about understanding and practicing Love, we will challenge ourselves to see her presence in places where we’ve never looked. How else are we, as caregivers, ever going to be able to express God’s Love to those so disfigured by disease or poverty or addiction that other’s turn away?
   The baby in the first photo, above, is darling and healthy by every standard we’ve ever been taught. And so, too, are her sisters in faraway lands who, at this moment, suffer disfigurement from the
weapons of war or from the ravages of disease or the savagery of starvation. The question becomes, can we find the same, or even greater, Love for the disfigured child at left as we may naturally feel for the happy baby in the greeting card?
   Passion calls us to thank God no only for "making each daisy separately" but for enabling us to find Love in the daisy crushed by a storm or scarred by insects. Passion calls us to gratitude for the way each of us has been made separately as a member of the world family. What a chance the seed of passion gives us to enrich our Garden of Love!

-Erie Chapman