This past week I asked myself more than usual: Am I a "better" Christian than I was ten years ago before I was ordained or another five years before that when I had not yet graduated from Vanderbilt Divinity School? 

   The answer was discouraging. Instead of behavior change, my last years have taught me how far away I live from the practice of the Radical Loving Care that I preach. For example, instead of living in the lodestar of Jesus' light, my moods too often driven by Fatigue's turbulent brain chemistry.

   Fortunately, you are likely a more loving caregiver. No doubt, your commitment is high. Thank you. 

   In "Exposure," Nobel Prize Winning poet Seamus Heaney crafted lines both comforting & troublesome. "If I could come on meteorite?/ Instead I walk through damp leaves…Rain comes down through the alders,/ Its low conducive voices/ Mutter about let-downs and erosions/ And yet each drop recalls/The diamond absolutes."

   Does Irritation's pesky presence often interfere with your daily encounters? Surely I feel Love's dismay when I cannot keep my garrulous tongue from interrupting the sacred stories other's share.  

   "Woman Sweeping" (above) has been a favorite photograph for nearly forty years. If only regrets could be swept away as easily as stairway trash. Although no one can do our heart-sweeping for us, I love Heaney's interstellar perspective: "Who, blowing up these sparks/ For their meagre heat, have missed/ The once-in-a-lifetime portent,/ The comet's pulsing rose."

-Erie Chapman

"Woman Sweeping" by Erie, 1978, rephotographed from, Woman As Beauty (Westview, 2010)