Journal of Sacred Work

   "It visits with inconstant glance/ Each human heart and countenance;/ Like hues and harmonies of evening,/…Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery." – Percy Bysshe Shelly

   Modern medical tools allow doctors to see through our skin. With this deeper vision, they can better diagnose and treat the physical illnesses that invade us.

   Contemporary computers empower artists to find new ways to touch the hem of Light's spiritual mysteries. These new views of color help artists reach more deeply beneath the hem of these mysteries to touch us and relieve our soul's suffering.

   Photos purport to record what is before us. Such images seen as art forms always signal more than what we think we see with our naked eye. Photographs approached as art may, for example, reveal blue coaxed from a woman wearing white, and orange teased out of yellow.

   The human eye struggles to make sense of the world. The heart's eyes see deeper.

   Are Love's colors visible? Where are they hidden?

   "The human soul is hungry for beauty;" the always-eloquent John O'Donohue writes, "we seek it everywhere…When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming."

   Everyone and everything holds colors often hidden beneath deceptive costumes. The elderly lady in the wheel chair holds the beauty of her child self within as well as the richness of her wrinkles without. The slurring alcoholic carries a gorgeous and wounded heart. Even the criminal holds God's colors beneath sometimes angry masks.

   Caregivers study science to learn how to cure the body's broken machinery. Healing caregivers study art to enhance their ability to bring the comfort of color to darkened hearts.  

   Each time we uncover more of Beauty's hidden hues we discover a powerful relief. Herein lies the strength caregivers must have to serve those drowning in Need's gray landscape.

   Now comes the chance for us to rescue sufferers with God's healing. Opening our sacred eyes, we can bring the needful Love's mysterious but always-present light.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph – "Hill Series #3" – copyright Erie Chapman 2011