Childhood is the world of
miracle or of
magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new
and fresh and astonishing. -Playwright Eugene Ionesco, Present Past/Past Present
Yes. It's the very last day of the year. And tomorrow, of course, will be the first. In the spirit of staying the present, how have you felt about these last days? Have you gazed into the glass of these three hundred sixty-five days and reflected on what they have meant to your life and the life of those around you?
These kinds of questions can be helpful, or they can feel tiresome. On this last day of the year, my temptation is to dive back into the world my grandson occupies in this photo. He is living the early months of the human journey. Still four years old (although fast closing in on five) he clings to a belief in magic and miracles. Coins still appear magically from behind his ears. Superman and Batman live.
The experiences we express with the word "cozy" are happy things for little Miles. He created his fort over this holiday vacation time by constructing the kind of thing I remember happily from my childhood. He pushed the backs of four chairs against each other and established his own fort. Inside this fort, I saw him looking happy, comfortable, and cozy – the way he does in the photo, above.
When I played this game, all I did was drape a blanket over a card table. Instantly, I was enclosed in what seemed to me like a safe place. The world, for that time, was held at bay. In a much scarier way, the power of these card table forts was portrayed in the movie The Sixth Sense. The child in that film, frightened of the ghostly images he sees, hides his little tent surrounded by religious icons.
Where do caregivers go to feel safe and cozy? Exposed to the endless agonies the body can bring, loving caregivers seek to relieve pain and anxiety, to dissolve the toxins of disease, and to introduce into the lives of their patients the unique comfort that only Love can bring.
For adults, Love is the only pathway to miracles. Caregivers can ring their patients and co-workers with Love's energy so that they feel, at least for a time, as happy and protected as a little four-year-old in a makeshift fort in the middle of his grandparents living room.
As we celebrate the last day of the year, I wonder how you create "forts" of Love for yourself and others? Happy New Year!
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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