I encountered them in the store – three ordinary vegetables who looked
anything but ordinary to my beholding eyes and close touch. Beholding.
It’s an elegant and noble sounding word. Beholding the rapture brings
the weight of the religious since some think of the rapture as something to do with the
ascension of Christ.
But a more common meaning of rapture
describes it as a state of being transformed by a lofty emotion. A sort
of ecstasy. To behold such a rapture must be transforming in and of
itself.
Things and people are sacred and meaningful because of
the way we encounter them. Since we are the ones who bring the meaning,
then anything can be meaningful. Any anything may be a vehicle for transcendence
Thus my encounter with the trio of
peppers. It wasn’t that I wanted to taste them. It was that I wanted to behold them and to run my fingers around their whorls and over their
curves. To me, they are magnificent.
One of my colleagues at the
Trust spoke at our Monday staff meeting about the relatively new (to
America) concept of "slow food." It’s become a movement
described at the website: www.slowfoodusa.org.
Slow food is understood best by thinking of it in contrast to it’s
widely practiced opposite, "fast food." In the midst of a fast eating society,
a small cadre of Americans have begun to contemplate slow food as a
whole different way to live – a life of appreciation of safe, clean,
wholesome, fresh and carefully enjoyed food. It is a way of beholding
God, something that may seem hard to do in the rush of the local fast
food joint.
What does this mean for caregivers? Amid the bustle
of paperwork and tasks, behold the being before you! You are
witnessing the sacred quality of your work – the slow moments amid the fast.
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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