Journal of Sacred Work

  "You who promised our forever now kindle the flames of despair." – Dane Dakota, Woman as Beauty (2010)

   Within the forest of God's Love lives a wild animal called romance. Romance is unpredictable. Love never ends.

   Professional caregivers have a hard time with this. Their divorce rates are unusually high. Is it the long hours? Is it that caregivers are too sensitive?   

   In the months after my son and his wife divorced, I could only imagine the despair that must have stalked his life. Eight years of marriage, including a happy wedding, a joyful birth experience, shared family and friends,  all lay wrecked on the shoals of bitterness.

   Must this be true for every broken relationships?

   How can lovers who once shared the sacred land of intimacy leap so suddenly to opposite, unbridgeable islands?  What happened to all the warm hope and sweet memory that attended the bonds of commitment? Where are Love's promises?

   The world is littered with the embers of broken hearts, the wreckage of betrayal, the frozen bones of disappointment, the ugly edges of ridiculed dreams. In our hours of lead, we walk the forest alone. Rotted limbs fall through us to an earth that no longer cares.

   Since no marriage exists in a vacuum, there is "collateral damage."  Family frets. Friends jump to ascribe blame. Work, including our caregiving, may suffer and those we care for may suffer as well. 

   Perhaps, it doesn't have to be this way. Our worst energies come to bear when we feel the glass of trust slip from our hands and hear it shatter. A once-smooth shape explodes into shards that scar our hearts.

   But, Love heals. 

   My son and his wife have each experienced a wonderful recovery. "The best advice I got," my son tells me, "was to get over the bitterness. Just imagining that helped me to move on to a much better place."

   On this new, firmer ground, he knows he will find a relationship much better suited to him. In many ways, he feels grateful to be free from a relationship where both were drowning.

   Betrayals come in many forms. Some are not to be tolerated. Others must be endured if real love is to thrive. Lovers will endure anger, disappointment, and sometimes a time of separation. They must search for their song, wait for the air that bears love's sweet scent, listen for the music only they can hear.

   "And will the world allow you to return to me, to live once more the love-filled life?" Dakota asks in his poem "Turning Still?"  His answer comes in "Postscript."

   "Love will always return, circling through every gray to pink again the world." 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph – "Angela Alone" – 1978 –  copyright Dane Dakota 2011