Days 126-130 – Sacred Eyes – Journal of Sacred Work

The subject is nothing grand. It is just a salt shaker that fell from my hand, fanning his grains onto an oriental carpet my grandfather bought a century ago.

The literal mind sees a dropped object that has caused a mess. Your sacred eyes, on the other hand, can see art in such tiny occurrences.

These moments are nothing and everything. Such images can be the stuff of paintings or poems. They can ignite a song or an idea for a film.

Isn't it stunning how ordinary things can be experienced as pathways to hidden Beauty? Flowers hold obvious Beauty. How can other everyday objects become "flowers"?

In the last hours of his life, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, a paint brush lashed to his arthritic hand, struggled once again to paint an anemone. He used his final breaths to say four words, "Today I learned something."

Renoir knew that it was the everyday things in life, whether the color in a flower or the light on one of his nudes, that provide the stuff of art. Your life and your work hold so many transactional moments. If you never see Beauty in the ordinary your life may become flooded with the kind of boredom that leads to burnout.

Your energy goes where your attention flows. If you look through your sacred lens how would your caregiving be enriched? If you see your relationships as sacred rather than profane what would happen in your encounters?

I sometimes quote a famous poem that some find powerful and others see as pointless. It was penned by poet William Carlos Williams, M.D., a practicing physician who saw with sacred eyes.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

So much depends upon your choice to see with sacred eyes.

-Erie Chapman

Photograph: "Fallen Salt Shaker" – copyright erie chapman 2013

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Categories: Reflections, Holidays, Spirituality

Tags: caregivers, Erie Chapman, Renoir anemones, sacred eyes, so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams

5 responses to “Days 126-130 – Sacred Eyes”

Maria Doglio

May 6, 2013 at 10:58 am

Love this little vignette; how we see things depends on how we open into our consciousness, even into the smallest circumstance, like a spilled salt shaker that turns into art! I was thinking, how many stories can be written from this one photo……. The creative mind is endless. Thank you Erie.

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Cheri Cancelliere

May 6, 2013 at 11:52 am

Life can be so beautiful when we simply pause and look. Thank you, Erie, for your inspiring words and profound picture of “art” in the here and now. You have reminded me to look in wonder at the drop of water falling from the tree outside my window. There is an entire world in its reflection. May we all say with our last breath, “Today I learned something new!”

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~liz Wessel

May 6, 2013 at 11:18 pm

I think I veered off in a different direction with this but here is what surfaced for me.
“Fanning his grains onto the oriental carpet my grandfather bought just a century ago” So much is offered in these lines…meaning gathered in the weavings of this intricate carpet design.
As a child I grew up in the home that my father was raised in; the house that his father built. It was a Danish design from that of his homeland. My father’s parents died relatively young, within 6 mos. of each other and long before I was born.
We lived in New York. My grandmother had a Tiffany stained glass lamp that hung from the ceiling of our enclosed front porch. I would sit in the easy chair and gaze up at those opalescent hues with great appreciation.
As a young adult, I came across a stained glass lamp that reminded me of my grandmother. At the time it seemed expensive. I paid for it on lay away for 6 months before taking it home. Last year, I accidentally knocked it over and it broke. Finally, I am getting this lamp repaired and once again it will offer a warm glow in our home. Just a lamp, but what I realized tonight is that it signifies a much deeper meaning for me; a sacred thread that connects across time. And although I may not have met my grandparents, I have known them through their love, which has been passed on to me.

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~liz

May 6, 2013 at 11:25 pm

P.S. a fabulous image that grows in intrigue the longer I gaze at it…thanks, Erie for this delight!

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Atossa Araghian

May 7, 2013 at 8:14 pm

Thank you Erei for posting this beautiful picture and bringing up such an important and touchy subject:” Moments are nothing and everything!”. Sometimes when I walk around my neighborhood and see the beauty of nature, I wonder if I’m the only one who sees it and appreciates it, and if not then why we can’t live in peace and enjoy what god and nature gave us? But your post shows that there are still a lot of good people who haven’t blocked their inside eyes to the beauty of life.

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