"No one but me by the fire,/ my hands burning/ red in the palms while/ the night wind carries/ everything away outside." – David Whyte

   The fireplace is the sunshine of winter.

   Across forty years in the north that small, light-filled cave sent more comfort and hope into the rooms of my heart than it did heat.

   Winter fires, like summer gardens, need tending. The flames flower with the scents and sounds that can transform any house into a home and can wreathe the soul with hope. 

   During the cold seasons, there is no better indoor place for reflection than by the fire. It is the soil from which David Whyte has grown some of his finest poems, including The Winter of Listening:

   "What we strive for / in perfection/ is not what turns us/ into the lit angel/ we desire," he writes.

   This is a confounding notion. Aren't we supposed to be pursuing perfection as hard as we can? Isn't "perfect care" what patients expect?

  But, I take a different meaning from Whyte's words. The "lit angel" is not born from what we desire. Rather, "…what disturbs/ and then nourishes/ has everything/ we need."

   Isn't that what every patient presents to every caregiver – something disturbing and then nourishing to us as our life work? Doesn't every empty canvas pose thorny challenges to the artist poised before it? And isn't every artist feed by the act of creating in that space?

   Can you bring healing into my body? the patient wonders.

   Will you fill me with Beauty? the canvas asks.

   And when we meet these needs we are filled with "everything we need."

   It's not perfection that fills the artist's frame with Beauty. It's the passion of a person who paints with the eyes of Love.

   And it is the compassion of one imperfect soul reaching out to meet the needs of another that blesses this world.

-Erie Chapman