Journal of Sacred Work

Feeling troubled? Fear not.

All those gorgeous saints await your invitation. They wing above us in their white robes & their outstretched arms & calm hands ready to be of service. We need them amid the chaos & cacophony & raw pain that often attends our mortal selves.

The poets are saints to me. Saint Shakespeare & Saint Emily Dickinson bring me as much peace as does Saint Bartholomew.

Saint Michelangelo & Saint Mozart & Saint Rodin are a big help as are the geniuses of still & moving pictures.

They are the ones who dove into their own suffering & found beauty for us. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "We are made immortal…by the contemplation of beauty." So why not read John O'Donohue & Mary Oliver & Billy Collins & my friends Claire Bateman & Minton Sparks into your bones?

Poems are prayers, fine photographs are meditations & music is a bed on which to rest the tired heart.

Comedians are fine friends & laughter is a great pathway out of pain. But, it is hard for humor to penetrate the marrow.

The finest saints & artists lead us out of shadows. They hear our most intimate whispers & anguished groans. Great poetry is always worth the hard work to discern it, as here with Shakespeare:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. 

No one can create "abundance" during our cruelest "famines" better than Jesus. His eyes are the kindest. His hands are the strongest.

His arms are the ones that can lift the prisoner from his cell, the drug addict from her ghetto & even bring sweet serenity to the soured soul of a rich man. 

Reverend Erie Chapman

Photo by Erie