Journal of Sacred Work

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love." – Monet

   The eyes of the nurse meet the eyes of the patient in pain. "I feel so terrible," the patient says.

   "I understand," the nurse replies. But, does she? Can we truly understand the complex pain of another when we are not experiencing it ourselves?

   When deep pain is an agony of body, mind and spirit it is difficult to reach through simple analysis. Heartbreak does not appear on any EKG. Fear does not register on an MRI. It may be easier to meet pain with understanding than it is with Love. For Love asks something beyond understanding.

   Doctors try to fix pain by diagnosing it and relieving it with various kinds of treatment including medication. Yet, pain often creates another kind of attack on the spirit. The agony of heartbreak and melancholia can generate a kind of isolation and loneliness that lives in some deeper part of the forest.

   Claude Monet invited us to the image on the canvas. Others ask us to love the words shaped as poetry, or plays, or novels. This love seems to mean accepting, appreciating and embracing. Most of all, it may mean loving what we do NOT understand.

   Do we truly understand why we feel love for some person or some experience with art? Indeed, reducing an encounter to something we need to "understand" may mean that intellect can sometimes dilute love. Think of the way most medical school professors describe doctor-patient relationships by warning doctors to maintain "professional distance" from patients. To maintain such a distance may imply to medical students that they will need to objectify patients – to treat the disease, not the person.

   Similarly, converting a painting to an analytical model may be like dissecting a joke. Jokes that are explained, analyzed and "understood" have been drained of their ability to make us laugh. Think of the response you hear when you explain a joke someone else doesn't "get." After the other person undestands your explanation, do they laugh at the joke or do they say, "Guess you had to be there."

   Love does not ask us to understand every aspect of someone else's agony or sadness. It asks us to love the sufferer even more because they are experiencing deep pain.

   When we can do this, when we love beyond understanding, we have given the gift of healing.

-Erie Chapman