Journal of Sacred Work

 Romans saw Venus and Mars (painting) as the source of energy. I look to God, whose wisdom tells us, "Where attention goes, energy flows." Everybody likes that rhyming line. Nobody, including me, absorbs it until they consult certain life experiences.

   I sure didn't get it at seven when my dad, watching me act like a jumping bean, said, "I hope you never lose that enthusiasm, Chip." My teachers, however, frequently expelled me from the classroom. 

   Across high school I was a "three-sport" jock because Maumee Valley was small. Football and basketball were fun. Track was not. But, "Chapman's don't quit!"

   Why no fun? My body type doomed me to an agonizing event: the mile. 

   To ease my suffering I adopted a three-part strategy: first lap fast, middle laps slow, final lap run like crazy. My coach hated it. "Chapman! Where was your energy in the middle laps!" he always complained, even though I won come-from-behind-to races so often that I set the school record. 

   Where was my energy? My attention on pre-race fears of pain kidnapped it. It also stole appreciation of many spring days.

   Today, people still ask "Where do you get such unusual energy." adding a shadowed qualifier, "at your age?"

   Part of the answer? This is the final lap or final hundred yards of my life's mile run. No one would say I loafed through the middle laps. But I'm running like crazy now. 

   Ringing in my head is another life-changing line: Viktor Frankl's reminder, "He/she who has a why can bear almost any how."*

   Mine is the caregiver's "why." To serve. Even though I have often over-served myself, so long as health remains I will use my luck to help those who have lost it.  Sometimes I even overwhelm others.

   The hundred yard dash is not a run. It is a sprint. 

-Erie Chapman

*quoting: Friedrich Nietzsche 

Venus and Mars, Metropolitan Museum,  Paolo Veronese, 1570s