Journal of Sacred Work

My plan was to write about letting go of goals – how goals can become obsessions & how obsessions can crowd out the sweeter side of life. 

   When a friend asked what I remembered about my childhood bedroom I fell into such a reverie that I let go of my goal to advise you about goals.

   Sandwiched in age between two sisters I shared a bedroom with my younger one until age nine. Upon our little brother's birth the dining room became my sleeping quarters.

   But the bedroom I shared with Martha housed the sweetest memories. During afternoon naps the walls were California sunlight. Venetian blinds striped my bedspread with gold bars. Always-open windows bore scents from the lemon tree just feet away.

   Nighttime sometimes hosted ghosts dressed as the teachers that regularly dispatched my restless self either to a hallway chair or to the principle's office for another tongue lashing for not holding mine.

   A lifetime of remembering my dreams began in that first bedroom – a nightmare that my father had died & everything was up to me. Another one that I was seventy-five & felt relieved to wake to the news that I was five.

  Now I am seventy-five & grateful for it. In spite of those childhood nightmares I felt safe & happy in that sunny place. 

   As you return to your own first room I hope you rediscover a place made safe by a mother who was like mine – one that tucked me in, read me stories & listened to my prayers.

   This will be my first Christmas without her. I miss her. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman 

Snapshot with mom – 1946