"I thought I was learning to live. I was only learning to die." Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
Leonardo da Vinci was, of course, the first and foremost renaissance person. Yet, it's hard to know how to fathom his startling statement (made in the last year of his life.) With all the efforts we make at living, it's strange to imagine life as "learning to die."
Da Vinci was a supernova who exploded onto this earth five hundred years ago. His one life changed all of ours.
His far-ranging intellect expressed itself everywhere, from painting the Mona Lisa, to designing the first helicopter, to doing such ground-breaking work in human anatomy that his insights are still taught today.
I'm inclined to listen to him. Observing the life-death tension, Da Vinci saw that every energy must have its opposite.
Light must have dark. Black requires white. Love lives on the other side of fear.
Men and women are counterparts. Joy lives an inch from agony.
The more passionately we live, the more that passion's fire will both illuminate the holy and burn tears from our eyes.
The more loving we are as caregivers, the more likely our patient's pain bleeds into our hearts. No wonder many shy away from opening their souls all the way. Yet, the finest caregivers find a way to balance compassion and skill.
A brilliant scientist, Leonardo wanted art to be the queen of the sciences. He realized art and science were brothers not enemies. Art must inform science and vice versa.
As an architect (he tried everything) Leonardo designed a "shadowless" building – a structure where the sun would touch every room across the day. Honoring opposites, he also knew that once the sun walked from one room to the next, light's opposite would creep into the vacated space.
Da Vinci climbed art's pinnacle with another of his masterpieces, "The Last Supper." This iconic work was painted on the wall of a mausoleum. Befitting its gloomy location the painting has been decaying for centuries, fading into the surface on which it was expressed. But, it is alive in our hearts.
Those who quest for a shadowless life will miss this world's most heroic beauty. John Muir courageously embraced nature – in spite of enduring malaria and other ailments – so he could experience the ecstasy of Love's realm. He bequeathed to us the national parks. Mother Theresa bequeathed light to the poor. Martin Luther King endured shadows to shine light onto hatred.
Are we learning to live or to die? Here, the ancient Greeks, Jesus Christ, and the poet Rilke share the same view. It's not learning to live or die that matters. What means everything is that we leave the shadows and live Love's passion.
-Erie Chapman
*The re-imagined photograph, below, is an effort I made to express passion's fire.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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