Journal of Sacred Work

4 responses to “Day 182 – The Comfort of Fantasy”

1. 

   ~liz Wessel

   June 30, 2008

   Ah, Harvey…a favorite, what delightful magic in such an endearing friendship. Who is to say what is real or imagined? Humor is a great salve. I also enjoyed Jessica Tandy’s character as a forgetful woman in the movie, “Batteries Not Included.” I like the fantasy world of books, music, movies, and art. I take refuge in nature, prayer, meditation, and the intimacy of Loving relationships.

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2. 

   Karen York

   June 30, 2008

   I love revisiting my younger life when things seemed simpler – barefoot, backyard, tire swing, apricot trees. I also think ahead to my future life after my children are grown – smaller house, grandchildren, several corgi’s by my side. Like Liz, I travel into stories through books and movies and art. I think my dream life is a way that I live in my fantasy world. It’s always rich and alive.

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3. 

   ~liz Wessel

   June 30, 2008

   I agree Karen, dreams are full of vivid symbolism and wild adventures…if only we could remember them.
   I must confess, I don’t often find comedies all that funny but lately I noticed that they offer a welcomed levity when I am feeling sad. Recently, I watched Lucille Ball and Bob Hope in a movie called, An Affair to Remember.” I belly laughed at the scene where they are at the drive in movie. Other movies I fondly recall are Arsenic and Old Lace, Bringing up Baby with Cary Grant and Kathryn Hepburn, and the Philadelphia Story. Oh yeah…I am going to have to rent and watch a few of these classics! Anyone game?

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4. 

   Xavier Espinosa

   July 1, 2008

   It was not until recently that the DSM IV started including cultural perspectives about behavioral health that would have at other times have been considered pathological or part of another disorder. Many cultures frequently accept that you speak openly with the elders that have passed to another dimension. My mother who has been widowed for five years often has open conversations with my father, she has no dementia, but I figure that now she definitively knows she now has the last word.
   As a diversity trainer, I tell those who participate in my programs that in understanding the illness we have to realize several concepts. As care givers we see the patient who is lying in the bed and we say “The patient has the illness” but the person lying in the the bed says “The illness has me” Because the illness takes on an identity. It takes up space, it holds you down, it takes away your breath, it has heat, it pushes out of the bed, it scares you, it has a presence that only you who it has some control over, can see. So those who have this presence may choose to confront it, plead with it, be angry at it.
   What Harvey did to Elwood was not overpower or harm him, it gave him the opportunity to have a different perspective directly from a trusted companion. There in is the essence of the Sacred Space. It is in the building of the relationship where our patients look to us for strength and encouragement and the to be given the “permission to pass”. To ask freely, to question, to comment, to expect to be told- all without fear because we have become like Harvey- the trusted source.

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