Journal of Sacred Work

   "Listen to your life." -Frederick Buechner

 
    Early this morning, I was studying a new photograph: A cardinal-red freighter sleeping in the sky as well as on the sea. Instead of listening to the peace in this image, I found myself analyzing if it was as good as I wanted it to be.

   My three-year-old granddaughter sat on the floor nearby.

   "Why are we doing?" She asked. Of course, she meant What. 

   " Why are we doing?" In the last chapter of my life, am I still spending too much doing rather than listening?

   "Listen to your life?" How could I not be listening to it? But, I know I often grow deaf.

   What deafens me are everyday worries, tasks, watching the lives of others in movies or on the news, or on the  strange, yakety world of Facebook.  Most troubling may be my preoccupation with how other people hear my life rather than how I do.

  Beyond that, there comes my endless effort to figure out my life rather than appreciate it for what it is. Boechner writes: "See [your life] for the fathomless mystery that it is."

   But how can I "see" into the "fathomless?" Of course, I can't with ordinary eyes. I can only celebrate or suffer (or live some admixture of the two) with the eyes of my heart. 

   "In the boredom and the pain of it no less than the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it…?" Buechner wants us to push our senses, not let them go dead.

   Imagine tasting your life. What would it mean for me to touch my life. These are new ways to imagine our existence as well as that of those for whom we care. 

   In our rare moments of privacy – in the shower, sitting and waiting (like the woman I photographed waiting in a museum lobby), or in the moments before we travel to the land of our midnight dreams (below).  Might we listen to our lives in a way never experienced? My granddaughter still sees the world with the fresh language poets envy, "The ocean is "wrinkly," she advises us.

  Can we take a breath, let go of our usual patterns, and rest within the wrinkled currents of our life?

   Why listen? Can't we just live our workaday world without troubling ourselves with questions of the spirit? This is what so many seem to do – move from one task to another, steal a moment here and there to drink a glass of wine and glance at a sunset (or, more likely, the television screen) go to sleep, wake up, do it again…unless some horrible tragedy intervenes to shock us into a different consciousness.

  The poetic philosphers and theologians share great wisdom. If we listen to them, we have the chance to hear the Love that lies within. Once again, Dr. Buechner "… all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

*all photos copyright protected