I encountered them in the store. Three ordinary vegetables who looked anything but ordinary to my beholding eyes and close touch. Beholding. It’s an elegant and noble sounding word. Beholding the rapture brings the weight of the religious since some think of the rapture as an ascension of Christ.
   But a more common meaning of rapture describes it as a state of being transformed by a lofty emotion. A sort of ecstasy. To behold such a thing must be transforming in and of itself.
   Things and people are sacred and meaningful because of the way we encounter them. Since we are the ones who bring the meaning, then anything can be meaningful.
   Thus my encounter with the three peppers. It wasn’t that I wanted to taste them. It was that I wanted to stare at them and to run my fingers around their whorls and over their curves. To me, they are magnificent.
   One of our staff at the Trust spoke at our Monday staff meeting about the relatively new (to America) concept of "slow food." It’s become a sort of movement described at the website: www.slowfoodusa.org. Slow food is understood best by thinking of it in contrast to it’s widely practiced counterpart, "fast food." In the midst of fast eating, a small cadre of Americans have begun to contemplate slow food as a whole different way of life – a life of appreciation of safe, clean, wholesome, fresh and carefully enjoyed food. It is a way of beholding God, something that may seem hard to do in the rush of the local fast food joint.
   What does this mean for caregivers? Amid the bustle of paperwork and tasks, behold the being before you! It is a way of witnessing the sacred quality of your work.
-Erie Chapman