Journal of Sacred Work

 The searing importance of life's penultimate moment burned itself into my soul this Christmas as it never has.

   The moment's significance is obvious. Subconsciously I had relegated our creation to merely evolutionary status. 

   In fact, the instant our umbilical cord is cut we are not only separated from our mothers. With blitzkrieg suddenness Earth also kidnaps us from God – not to be seen again until death. 

   Hafez provoked my epiphany: "Your separation from God." he wrote.  "is the hardest work in this world." 

   Life is a "separation from God." If you take my view we were with God before birth & to God we shall return. Thus Rumi urges "Since life is short as a half taken breath don't plant anything but love."  

   It is massively comforting to accept God as our ultimate caregiver.

   Consider Michelangelo's masterpiece again. God is surrounded. Adam is alone. The breath of life lives at the tip of God's finger. 

   Put aside this fanciful image to note a transcendent truth: No matter how surrounded by family & friends we always know that something is missing.

   We recognize our isolation. We are so plagued with separation anxiety that we spend our lives doing the "hard work" of scaling the mountain to the same God that cut us adrift. 

  Eventually, God sent us the caregiver we needed. Jesus reminds us of what we chronically forget. God is Love. Through Love's practices (including Radical Loving Care) we recapture glimpses of the God we left at birth. 

  We need new artwork. Instead of Death as the hooded horror with the scythe, Death would be God the Mother throwing us the lifeline of a salvific umbilical tethering us to heaven.

   My God gives what mothers offer – relief from pain, freedom from fear, healing of life's wounds & heaven's joy. God alone rescues us from Earth's kidnapping & restores what this world cannot give – unconditional love. 

  Our bodies go from dust to dust. Our spirits glow with finer stuff. 

Reverend Erie Chapman