Beauty lives in the language outside language. Where is the language that exists outside itself? It lives in the territory we call "indescribable." We sense that any language, even that of the most gifted poets, can never adequately communicate the beauty we may experience.
This does not mean we shouldn’t try. In fact, the more we try, the more we find the energy to educate ourselves to see beauty. And the more we try to express our own versions of her, the more we are likely to appreciate the language that lives in the indescribable.
Painters, photo artists, and musicians, to pick three examples, speak to us with a different language. What does photo artist Alfred Steiglitz tell us about beauty in his famous image below? What does the pianist tell us when she plays Chopin? What does Cezanne tell us about pears in his paintings that feature them? (see left)
Love lives in the language outside language. We try to describe her. But since Love is God, she cannot be captured except in the language outside words – the place where we feel something we cannot speak. The touch lovers give each other can speak ecstasy without words. When the lovers add words, like "I love you" those words can take on a meaning beyond the language used.
Agony also lives in the language outside language. This is why it is so critical that caregivers come to understand the language of pain…
Caregivers help heal pain through an unseen pathway we describe with a word: empathy. Patients in pain understand the gift of empathy. They know it when they receive it as they feel their pain ease a bit.
The typical American organization – whether a company or a charity, focuses enormous energy on things that can be counted and measured. But this obsession with measurement creates the dangerous illusion that the only important part of the world is that which can be measured. If it can’t be measured, some would say, it doesn’t matter.
We know that the opposite is true. How can we live Love in our lives? How can we create cultures of caring where everyone, starting with leadership, appreciates that, as Antoine de St. Exupery wrote in his masterpiece, The Little Prince, "It is only with the heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye"?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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