SLEEPERS ‘WAKE CHAPTER EIGHT

February 2025

1) Click here to read chapter one 2) Click here to read chapter two

3) Click here to read chapter three 4) Click here to read chapter four

5) Click here to read chapter five 6) Click here to read chapter six

7) Click here to read chapter 7

This is a continuation of my Sleepers ‘wake series. Sleepers ‘wake is my ongoing art + writing process which helps me to meditate on what God says about “staying awake” throughout the bible. In this chapter, I will work through how others can wake us up, and how we can wake each-other up. 

Visually, a Sleepers ‘wake typically is simple on the bottom, it goes up one time, the top part reaches down to almost touch that part, and then the top part is more elaborate than the bottom. My standard interpretation of that formula is that the bottom part represents a person who is asleep (spiritually), the part where the two points almost meet represents the moment when that person wakes up, and the top part represents that person, now awake, living their life fully. I will reference that part as “the awake portion” throughout this reflection. You can see how most of my Sleepers ‘wakes follow that formula here. But in this chapter, most of these pieces will be focussing on a new interpretation, which overlays the original interpretation. It has changed my life and encouraged me to work hard to participate genuinely, openly, and regularly in my thriving community. Enjoy : )

This is Sleepers ‘wake L - A Lost Sheep, Found. It’s the final piece in Sleepers ‘wake chapter one. I gave a brief reflection about it there, but I’m going to process it a little further here. There is a lot to say about this piece. Maybe one day I’ll do a chapter solely focused on it. But for now, we’ll see how it has accidentally contributed to the inspiration of a whole new wave of Sleepers ‘wakes, a year after its initial creation.

When I look at this piece, it signifies more than a typical Sleepers ‘wake. Oftentimes the points and peaks along the bottom of a Sleepers ‘wake symbolize moments in a journey of one person. But in this instance, each triangle signifies a different unique person. The peaks reaching down each represent a shepherd, who has the choice to help a person come out of despair. There is only one place where the two points almost touch as they do in a typical Sleepers ‘wake. That is the dark blue triangle meeting its top peak reaching down, which is also dark blue. That dark blue triangle symbolizes me, and the dark blue peak symbolizes God in the moment when my heart stopped during diabetic ketoacidosis in 2014. There is more about that in chapter one as well, but for now I will say that I was experiencing a great deal of despair during that time.

All of the other triangles are people who were suicidal. Each shepherd they took their anxieties to was a doctor, and he or she saw the despair in that person, and deemed them to be worthy of physician assisted suicide. The doctor could have reached down farther and attempted to offer a loving hand and pull the person out of despair. But they kept their distance and instead offered a “solution” to their despair. So that triangle on the bottom never reached the top peak. This wasn’t an interpretation that I envisioned and then created. It just happened as I made it, and then I looked back at it and saw that it was different from all of my other Sleepers ‘wakes. It was during a time I was deeply contemplating the sad reality of physician assisted suicide and thanking God that I didn’t come into contact with one of those physicians during the darkest chapter of my life. 

Instead, I had the support of many very loving people who God used to reach down and pull me out of despair. I still see one of those doctors every three months. She still notices when I’m at risk of falling back into despair and quickly pulls me out. She, my husband, and many other people, carried me and my despair as I woke up from the darkness I had been in, and began to live my life again as a person with hope and joy once more. 

I made that piece in April 2023. Then, last June 2024, I found myself attending a celebration in honor of the director of the Wind Symphony from my college. His name is Doctor Richard Fischer. My husband and I met in that wind symphony and are deeply thankful for the 50 years that “Doc” has served at Concordia University.

It was an incredible weekend. The two things I will always remember most are playing a piece called Alleluia Laudamus Te and Doc’s passion with regards to his faith. The combination of those two things made me feel like I was playing my flute amongst the host of heaven, every time we played it. We played that piece every year while I was at Concordia, and I loved it the whole time. Playing it again was so nostalgic and joyful. It is one of Doc’s favorite pieces. He passionately described the various sections of the piece and how they repeat and thread together. It felt like a Sleepers ‘wake. In fact, one day I’m hoping to create an Alleluia Laudamus Te Sleepers ‘wake. We’ll see when/if the time arises : )

A week after Doc’s celebration, I traveled to the 2024 Institute on Liturgy, Preaching and Church Music in Seward Nebraska. This conference has about 500 people in attendance and many of them are professional church musicians, so the worship services are incredible. I was still on a high from playing Alleluia Laudamus Te with the host of heaven while Doc proclaimed his unceasing love and thankfulness to God. The first night at the conference, I attended a worship service. I don’t remember what we were singing, but we were singing a lot, and it was beautiful. I felt like I was, once again, submerged in the host of heaven. And while I was, I accidentally made Sleepers ‘wake LXXXII - ‘wakers wake sleepers (I’m often working on Sleepers ‘wakes during church services).

I say accidentally because I didn’t choose to make all the bottom points almost touch all the top points. It was not an intentional decision. So much so, that when I realized what I’d done, I almost deemed it a mistake. But I don’t see mistakes in my Sleepers ‘wakes anymore. Not after I almost threw away Sleepers ‘wake L - A Lost Sheep, Found (there’s a little more info about that back in chapter one). So I wondered if this was something new that I should think about. 

Pretty quickly I envisioned that each point reaching up was a person sitting in that sanctuary with me that day, proclaiming our love and thanksgiving to God. And each point reaching down was a member of the host of heaven reaching down to participate in worship with us. This might be getting kind of swirly for people reading this who don’t believe in God. But I do believe in Him, and when I talk about ‘the host of heaven’ joining us as we worship Him, I legitimately believe that angels and saints are there, singing praises to God alongside us. It is the most comforting experience in the world, and if you’ve never had it, I hope you do one day. But this idea is important to imagine right now, because it should come back around in a real solid way later, as long as this reflection all threads together as I’m hoping it will.

I made seven Sleepers ‘wakes during that week. 

It was a pretty emotionally, and physically exhausting week for me. I’m an introvert, so being around that many strangers + acquaintances + old friends + new friends was one of the most exhausting experiences I’ve had in this decade of my life. Overall it was an incredible experience and I’m really glad that I went. But I wasn’t processing my Sleepers ‘wakes necessarily in the way that I might if my whole brain had been available.

Anyway, despite the mental fatigue, I did manage to visually process this new idea a tad more in Sleepers ‘wake LXXXVI - ‘wakers wake sleepers You’ll notice this one also has points that only reach all the way up to top points. Not sure what the colorful lines are or what is symbolically different between them and the black swirls. For now, I’ll just leave that one open to interpretation. But I can say that when I made it, I was trying to work further through the mysterious Sleepers ‘wake LXXXII - ‘wakers wake sleepers which had appeared on the first night of the conference.

Throughout both the experience of the conference and Doc’s celebration, I continued to experience grief from the loss of my miscarried babies. There was one day right in the middle of the conference when I was hit with an exceptionally large wave of grief which shook me for the whole day. So this idea of the host of heaven began merging with my regular internal question, ‘how does one grieve well?’

A month after the conference, my bible study class was focusing heavily on the verse “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” Philippians 1:6. 

This is an extremely comforting verse to meditate on as a woman grieving a miscarriage. And it fused so beautifully into my processing from chapter 2 and chapter 4, with regards to the word “carry.” I ended up writing that verse on two of my Sleepers ‘wakes as I thought more about how God carries us, and how we can carry each-other’s griefs. 

At some point as I was processing this out loud with my husband, I recalled how I had been angry with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Having learned of her pregnancy, she sang an incredible song of thanksgiving to God. We call this song The Magnificat, and we sing it a lot in the month of December leading up to Christmas. I had to sing it especially a lot, being a member of multiple choirs. It’s a really hard song to sing if you just found out that you’ve miscarried. I know from experience. 

One of the emotions that is very loud during grief, is anger. But when it comes to miscarriage, your anger doesn’t have a very obvious place to go. But it is there, so it either has to come out or be suppressed somehow. I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but for me I often found it wanting to flow out of me toward women who were rejoicing over pregnancies. I wasn’t actually angry with them. And ultimately, I was genuinely happy for them. But the anger would just well up inside of me. So, in an attempt to not feel that anger, I began putting up walls of non-emotion and dissociation in many scenarios where I would otherwise typically be highly engaged. I imagine this is a common thing for many of us grieving miscarriages. If you’ve never had one, please have grace for us. It’s very complicated and difficult. 

Anyway, when I found myself angry with Mary, the mother of Jesus, it was such a strange sensation. It was kind of calming, in a way, because I knew that Jesus could take it, and that He understood. That’s why I wrote the short story Passenger in chapter 4. This short story summarizes how He took my sorrows and carried them.

As I was reprocessing this with my husband around the time I made Sleepers ‘wake LXXXIX and Sleepers ‘wake XC, he posed an interesting thought. He wondered if Mary also could be carrying my sorrows. This seemed foreign to me, as a Lutheran. My husband is also a Lutheran, but he hangs out with a lot of Catholics and is sympathetic to many of their mystic thoughts around saints. With my recent experience with the host of heaven, this actually made a lot of sense to me. When I’ve thought about the host of heaven throughout my life, I’ve normally just imagined the angels, but now that I think more deeply about it, I suppose I also have always thoroughly believed that I mean all of the saints who have gone before me as well. So Mary, the mother of Jesus is part of this ‘host of heaven’ that I keep talking about.

Alright.......... here comes something new.........

I made this Sleepers ‘wake back in April 2024. It was around the time I went to the funeral for my nephew, Roman.

My parents, two brothers and I all traveled to New York to be with my sister and her family. We came from all of our various homes, some of us with more family members in tow. It was a beautiful and unique time for us. We’re like just about every other family in that, when we get together, there are some tensions, maybe some sarcastic or passive aggressive moments. But not this time. There were no tensions. Only the clear deep desire and focus that we all had to comfort my sister and her family as much as we possibly could. And it was beautiful. It was so beautiful. The sorrow of Roman’s death somehow created maybe the most beautiful weekend I will ever spend with my family. It felt like we were all the closest we could be to each other.

Afterwards I found myself reflecting on this phenomenon. And I started seeing it more as further tragedies happened throughout the year within my church community. It became clear to me that, when we genuinely invite others into our grief, we invite them to become closer to us, and dearer to us. 

I started seeing the tragedy of Roman’s death as a sort of heavy stone that had dropped right into the center of the woven tapestry that was my family, but in doing so, it pulled us all together tighter, and not just us, but the community that my sister was a part of, and my own community back home. All vital members of this tapestry.

In my mind, I see each thread in the tapestry as an individual person. When the boulder of grief drops onto the tapestry, the weight causes the threads, on which it lands, to almost open and separate a little, as if the boulder is trying to part the threads and destroy the tapestry. But due to the many many threads that make up the tapestry, there is strength. The threads on the outside pull close and tight, and in doing so, they keep the tapestry together. If you imagine this happening to one of your own fiber pieces, you’d simply take the stone out, and stretch the cloth flat, causing the threads to re-align accordingly. 

In the case of Roman’s death, the threads resting beneath the boulder, the ones that were pulled apart, represent my sister, her husband and their children. The threads near to those are my family and also the members of their church, who prayed, brought us food, gave Roman their funeral plot, and countless other loving supportive actions. The tapestry goes on though, I know that there were threads far from the boulder, squeezing tight, holding the tapestry together, that were members of my own church, and members of my parents’ church, praying miles and miles away for my sister’s family to have the peace that surpasses understanding. I can’t name all the people that are a part of this specific tapestry, but I know there are a lot. For weeks, people were telling me that they were praying for my sister and her family, completely out of the blue. Some of them, I didn’t even know were acquainted with my sister or her husband.

Within this metaphor, the people being hit hardest by the boulder allow other people within the community to essentially “come in” to their grief and participate in it with them, by caring for them, and by carrying the grief with them. Yes, we are back to the word carry. It was certainly my word of the year last year, and probably the year before.

Now let’s bring the three ideas together.

1) Doctors and members of our community have the ability to lift us (wake us) out of despair and darkness and then carry us and our despair as we re-acclimate to the light and wake up fully again to life. 

2) The host of heaven is present and joins in with our community when we worship God together. 

3) There is a warp and weft that makes up our community, like a tapestry, and it is made tighter, and more secure, when we carry one another’s griefs.

So what if the warp and weft of our tapestry also includes the host of heaven, and they are also carrying our griefs with us?

Behind (or above) each sleeper, is something new. Each colorful point is an “awaker” reaching down to pull the sleeper out of their misery, and into the awake portion of life. Each “awaker” is a different person who perhaps is alive now, like you or me, it could be a saint gone before, or it could be God. The “awaker” reaches down with compassion, empathy, insight, understanding, and love. They do not try to rush the grieving person out of grief. They enter into the grief with them and comfort them with their presence. Then they pull them up and out of the temptation to grieve poorly and into the awake portion of life, where the now awake sleeper continues to appropriately carry their grief, and the person who pulled them out carries their grief with them. 

You’ll note that as the colorful points extend upwards, they criss-cross over each-other. This was my intention to visually mimic the warp and weft of a tapestry. 

With these next two, Sleepers ‘wake XCVIII - ‘wakers wake sleepers and Sleepers ‘wake CIII - Immanuel (‘wakers wake sleepers), I continued to process the idea visually. 

Then I made Sleepers ‘wake C - Immanuel (‘wakers wake sleepers) and Sleepers ‘wake CI - Immanuel (‘wakers wake sleepers). These two almost finalize the idea. As you can see, I chose to make the backdrop black, which I’ve never done for a Sleepers ‘wake before.

As I was finally wrapping up this thought process, I created Sleepers ‘wake CIV - Immanuel (‘wakers wake sleepers) as a sort of punctuation mark to the chapter. In this piece, you can clearly see the tapestry. I also chose to leave the top portion fully gold, in a sort of nod to the fact that everything good comes from God and He is the one bringing it into our lives, regardless of who carries it to us. I’m excited that the tapestry accidentally reminds me of a net. I’m choosing not to interpret that for now, because I have another chapter to write, which will be similarly long and as complex as this one, but has nothing to do with this net that I accidentally painted, at least, I don’t think it does. So let’s all look at that net and get excited to see what comes from it one day. Feel free to interpret as you wish. Maybe something will come from it right now, for you.

For now, I’ll just leave you with Isaiah 53:4a, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…” 

I hope that your burdens are not too heavy for you today. If they are, tell someone. They can help you to carry them. We humans love each-other, and as much as our society wants us to think that we don’t want to be “burdened” by one another, that is a lie. Don’t believe it. Carry a piece of your loved ones’ burdens and let them carry some pieces of yours. It’s how we live.

Here’s a link to the wind symphony performance from Doc’s anniversary weekend. If you start at 1:54, you’ll get to here him introduce Alleluia Laudamus Te.

And here’s a link to a Psalm Festival that we did at the 2024 Institute on Liturgy, Preaching and Church Music. I don’t think the first service was livestreamed, but this one is pretty great too. So enjoy : )