Journal of Sacred Work

Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take risks.  -Adolph Gotlieb 1903-74

  
I often reflect on how irrelevant both the arts and the notion of risk must
seem to the everyday lives of caregivers. Tending to those in need,
often both at work and at home, most caregivers come to private moments
in states of exhaustion. The shower or bath needs to be completed
rapidly because, beyond the door, a clock calls. When bed is
finally encountered, there may be no thought of graceful entry into the
welcome privacy of a blanket over the shoulders and a pillow beneath the
head.

   Instead, cranked through the machinery of life like Charlie Chaplin's character in Modern Times, we may miss the precious nature of our private times.
  
What feelings cross your heart in those few moments between entering
bed and entering sleep? Does your heart ever find room for the
transcendence of the kind of art called poetry?
   Spanning the nine verses of his poem ARS Poetica, Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz writes straight forwardly:

   In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
   a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
   so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
   and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

   Where else but in poetry might we find such evocative language? Where else do we read of the universal longing we all share?

   And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
   and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
   People therefore preserve silent integrity,
   thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors

  
Isn't it stunning how hard we work to preserve this sense of "silent
integrity" among our peers? Whatever size audience we choose to play
to, we want to be accepted and approved some place. In the course of
this striving for approval, do we lean away from our truest heart?

   The purpose of poetry is to remind us
   how difficult it is to remain just one person,
   for our house is open, there are no keys to the doors,
   and invisible guests come in and out at will.

  
Any art form we engage tugs us toward the center of our being – toward the core of the "one person" within us that spends so much time trying to be many different people to tohers. That is
some of what I felt yesterday while staring at a rectangular painting of
Gottlieb's that first appears solid red and then, upon further study,
reveals the presence of subtle red squares within the red rectangle.
What does our heart hear from such an abstract-seeming image? As my long-time friend Don observed, "One thing we know is that he is not trying to teach us how
to paint a square." The unspoken question: Was this art? Milowz offers
a similar meditation on this issue in the last stanza of his poem:

   What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
   as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
   under unbearable duress and only with the hope
   that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

  
In your private places and in your most personal moments, I hope for
you to be the kind of instrument through which Love's great spirit flows. Amid your
busy life, are you finding private places to refresh your life and to
hear the sound of your own, most sacred voice?

-Erie Chapman