The dialect of the scrub in the dry season
withers the flow of English…
-Derek Walcott

   I know people who talk with paintings and others who listen to sculpture. I don’t mean that they speak out loud to the canvas or that the sculpture speaks back in clear words. I mean that these wise individuals approach great art with the appreciation that any sacred encounter involves a dialogue. Artists work hard to create that which will speak to some mystical part of us not easily reached by words alone. Our job is to work just as hard to listen a deeply as we can.
   Caregivers experience this kind of opportunity every day…

   The unconscious patient, the baby without speech, the demented elderly all speak to us of their need. How do we hear them?
   The best caregivers I have known engage the sick in a dialogue that is only partly out loud. They ask questions of the illness and reflect on what the answers to their hard questions may be. We all know of fine physicians who treat disease as a mystery. They know the secret will reveal itself to them if they only if they approach it as would an artist or a cleric engaging the sacred – with awe, respect, skill and a carefully tuned ear.

   What is the dialect of a terminally ill grandmother’s folded hands, or a sick child’s turned body? What is the language of closed eyes? Loving caregivers spend their days reading the words of other’s bodies and hearts, sometimes responding with exquisite acts of healing.
   Some part of us understands what the great Derek Walcott means when he references "the dialect of the scrub in the dry season." Later in his poem, he speaks of how "the rain begins to come in paragraphs/ and hazes this page, hazes the grey of islets,/ the grey of eyes, the rainstorm’s wild-haired beauty."
   The more we can be present to poetry like this, the better we will be able to read the language of life. What do leaves and bushes say in the dry seasons? Beyond, "I am thirsty" they tell us "Be careful how you touch me, for I am fragile. I am holding all my remaining energy close as I wait for water. Help me if you can."
   This is the language of the ill patient. From behind closed eyes, they ask for help. Much more, they hope we will approach the mystery of their illness with awe, respect, skill, and a carefully tuned ear.

-Erie Chapman

Spiritual Practice

Sit with an object or some image of art like either of the ones above. Engage the work long enough to ask what the artist, or the work by itself, may be saying to you

* The first image, above, is a photo of coastal sage. The second, entitled "The Sick Child," is a painting by Edvard Munch